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READ THE CURRENT ISSUE OF THE FEDERAL MANAGER MAGAZINE!
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- 2019 Sammies Winners Reveal the Inspiration for Their Public Service - October 17, 2019
- Todd Wells and Greg Stanford Honored to Represent FMA at Celebration of Outstanding Federal EmployeesJessie Bur, Federal TimesSix federal employees were recognized Oct. 16 as outstanding examples of federal service and recipients of the Partnership for Public Service’s Samuel J. Heyman Service to American Medals.“Our nation’s health and safety depend in significant measure on the work of career civil servants, who are largely unknown to the American people,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, in a news release. “We are working to change that with our Service to America Medals, which are designed to showcase the remarkable work taking place every day on behalf of all of us. When we have a great workforce, we get big problems fixed.”
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- FMA INTEGRAL IN RESEARCH ON INVESTMENT IN MIDDLE MANAGEMENT - October 9, 2019
- The Performance Management Alarms Keep Getting LouderBy Howard Risher, Workforce Management Consultant, Government ExecutiveOn October 9, Government Executive published a management matters article by Howard Risher, a respected workforce management consultant. Risher found,"government is clearly overlooking a straightforward and inexpensive way to tackle its talent management problems as well as improve agency performance—investing in its middle managers." FMA members assisted in his study, responding to a 10-question survey on investment in middle managers in the federal workforce.
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- Artificial Intelligence In The Federal Government: How AI Might Affect Federal Managers - October 2, 2019
- Hear It from FMA, FEDmanager.comOn September 25, 2019, FMA attended the Kalaris Intelligence conference at Georgetown University. Sponsored by Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies, the theme revolved around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and national security. For federal managers and their employees, AI has the potential to become a useful tool for gathering data, sifting through that data, and accomplishing long term goals in an effective manner. FMA attended to learn more about this emerging technology, how it is currently being used, and how it can be used in the future.
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- Senate Sends Shutdown-averting CR To Trump’s Desk - September 27, 2019
- Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News NetworkThe Senate on Thursday afternoon sent a seven-week continuing resolution to the president’s desk, delaying the possibility of another government shutdown until Nov. 21.The measure passed the Senate with a 82-15 vote. The CR would fund agencies at 2019 levels through Nov. 21, buying lawmakers more time to negotiate over several full-year appropriations bills. The House overwhelmingly cleared the bill last week.FMA National President Johnson stated, “We credit Congress with averting a government shutdown and urge President Trump to sign this CR into law.”
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- Employee Groups Encouraged by End to Pay Freeze Threat - September 5, 2019
- By Erich Wagner, Government ExecutiveOfficials with groups that represent federal employees applauded President Trump’s decision last week to end his quest to implement a pay freeze for civilian federal workers, but said his proposed 2020 raise is not enough.Last week, Trump surprised many by announcing an alternative pay plan that would provide federal civilian employees with a 2.6% across-the-board raise next year. The plan, which is issued each year to avoid much higher automatic pay increases under the Federal Employee Pay Comparability Act, marked a reversal from the White House's fiscal 2020 budget proposal, which advocated freezing federal employee pay at 2019 levels.
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- Here We Go Again - September 4, 2019
- Hear It from FMA, FEDmanager.comAfter five weeks of recess, both chambers of Congress will return to Washington, D.C., on September 9th. Committee work will restart, speeches will be made on the floor, and representative work for the American people will begin again. For anyone, returning to work can be an arduous undertaking, but for this first session of the 116th Congress it is set to be particularly so. As of the writing of this article, the Senate has yet to pass any appropriations bills to fund the federal government for Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20) and Congress has a little over three legislative weeks to avoid the second government shutdown of 2019.
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- FMA Seeks to Restore Leadership and Resources At The Merit Systems Protection Board - August 7, 2019
- Hear It from FMA, FEDmanager.comThe Senate has a lot of business to tend to when it returns from its State Work Period on September 9. Most notably, it will have barely three weeks before the end of the current fiscal year to pass appropriations to fund the federal government for Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20) and prevent another government shutdown. Among the other important priorities on the Senate’s plate is finally confirming nominees for the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the primary appeals board for federal employees.
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- Federal Managers Association Participates in 31st Annual Clean the Bay Day - July 9, 2019
- By Kristi Britt – Norfolk Naval Shipyard Public Affairs SpecialistMembers, families, and friends of Chapter 3 of the Federal Managers Association (FMA) braved the stormy weather June 1 at Paradise Creek Nature Park to participate in the 31st Annual Clean the Bay Day. The team joined more than 6,000 volunteers across Virginia to clean the rivers, streams, and beaches of the Chesapeake Bay watershed and remove harmful litter and debris.
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- FMA, OTHER MANAGER GROUPS SUPPORT PICK FOR OPM - May 26, 2017
Federal Managers Groups Largely Support Trump OPM Pick
By Erich Wagner, Government Executive
The Trump administration’s nomination of George Nesterczuk to serve as director of the Office of Personnel Management is already making waves among groups that represent federal workers.
While groups representing managers voiced varying levels of support for the announcement Wednesday, a union official was warier of the choice.
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- FMA STATEMENT ON SENATE PASSAGE OF CONTINUING RESOLUTION - September 26, 2019
- Alexandria, VA - On September 26, the U.S. Senate approved a Continuing Resolution (CR) providing government funding through November 21. The final vote was 82-15. Federal Managers Association (FMA) National President Renee Johnson made the following statement in response to its passage:"FMA is relieved that Congress was able to avert another government shutdown, days away from the beginning of Fiscal Year 2020. In the absence of full appropriations for the new fiscal year, the CR is obviously preferable to another lapse in funding. However, we strongly caution, once again, against the over-reliance on short-term CRs to fund the government.
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- FMA CONGRATULATES CABANISS ON CONFIRMATION AS OPM DIRECTOR - September 11, 2019
- Alexandria, VA – The U.S. Senate voted to confirm Dale Cabaniss as Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) by a vote of 54-38 today. FMA National President Renee Johnson made the following comments following the confirmation vote:"FMA congratulates Dale Cabaniss on her confirmation as OPM Director. OPM has lacked Senate-confirmed leadership for many of the last several years and will benefit from clearly-established direction. Ms. Cabaniss has experience as Chairman of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, as well as serving as a senior staffer on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Senate Committee on Appropriations. We look forward to working with her and her staff on the crucial task of overseeing the federal civil service."
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- FMA ENCOURAGED BY ADMINISTRATION’S CALL FOR CIVILIAN PAY RAISE - September 3, 2019
- Alexandria, VA – On Friday, August 30, President Donald Trump announced an alternative compensation plan to implement a 2.6 percent pay raise for all civilian federal employees for 2020. This is a reversal from the proposed pay freeze called for in the administration’s budget request. The alternative compensation plan freezes locality pay increases for feds in the upcoming year. Federal Managers Association (FMA) National President Renee Johnson made the following comments on the Trump administration's decision:
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- FMA COMMENDS HOUSE PASSAGE OF FINANCIAL SERVICES AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT FUNDING BILL - June 26, 2019
- Alexandria, VA – On Wednesday, June 26, the House of Representatives passed the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2020 (H.R. 3351) by a vote of 224-196. The bill provides for a 3.1 percent pay raise for feds in 2020, and would prevent the administration’s proposed merger of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) with the General Services Administration (GSA). Federal Managers Association (FMA) National President Renee Johnson made the following comments on the subcommittee passage of the legislation:"FMA commends the House of Representatives on passing this important funding bill for FY2020. We are particularly pleased the bill includes a reasonable pay raise for feds in 2020. As I’ve repeatedly stated, Congress and the administration must compensate federal employees fairly, show our country they are valued, and ensure our agencies receive the funds they need to execute their critical missions. The 3.1 percent pay raise included in H.R. 3351 demonstrates a well-deserved commitment to the federal workforce.
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- FMA Washington Report: October 15, 2019
- This report communicates what FMA’s professional staff is doing on behalf of FMA members in Washington, D.C., and provides an update on issues affecting federal managers. Click here to view the October 15, 2019, edition of FMA's Washington Report. In this issue, we discuss the continuing resolution funding Fiscal Year 2020 through November 21, new social security fairness legislation, OPM's proposed rules affecting managers, and other items. As always, we encourage you to visit www.fedmanagers.org on a regular basis for information on these and other matters.
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- VA Exposes Sensitive Veteran Data to Thousands of Unauthorized Employees - October 18, 2019
- By Jack Corrigan, NextGovA regional office of the Veterans Affairs Department mishandled its patients’ personal data, leaving medical records, internal communications and other sensitive information accessible to thousands of unauthorized agency personnel, according to an internal watchdog.According to the VA Inspector General, the agency’s Milwaukee regional office was storing personally identifiable information on its patients in two shared drives on the Veterans Benefits Administration’s enterprise network. The security lapse, first flagged by a whistleblower in September 2018, left the data exposed to more than 25,000 remote users across the country, many of whom had no need to access the information, auditors found.
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- The Army Has Ideas For Reducing Civilian Time-To-Hire - October 17, 2019
- By Jared Serbu, Federal News NetworkArmy leaders say they’re committed to bringing modern talent management principles into their personnel system — not just for soldiers — but for civilian employees too.That second category is in some ways trickier, because the Army can’t overhaul the federal civil service system all by itself. But officials say there’s a lot they can do, including, hopefully, a significant acceleration of the hiring process.
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- Feds Call For Family Leave Guarantee In 2020 Budget - October 16, 2019
- By Jessie Burr, Federal TimesFederal employee groups are calling on Congress to include provisions in the final National Defense Authorization Act for 2020 that would guarantee civil servants 12 weeks of paid leave in the event of the birth or adoption of a child or a family member falling critically ill.“The idea that in 2019 federal employees don’t have paid leave to use to welcome a new child into the family or to care for a sick and aging family member is truly unacceptable. As one of the country’s largest employers, the U.S. government should be leading this effort. Candidly, it should be a model employer, but instead they’re lagging behind the private sector employers and nearly every other industrialized country in the world,” Tony Reardon, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in an Oct. 10 press call.
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- How OPM Cut the Paper Out of the Performance Review Process - October 15, 2019
- By Aaron Boyd, NextGovUSA Performance—an in-house app created by two teams in the Office of Personnel Management—is set to grow by more than 117% in 2020 as adoption of the digital performance review system spreads across government.Up until seven years ago, OPM would intake reams of paper every year on every federal employee as part of the annual performance review system. In 2012, the agency began a long digitization process that has coalesced into a comprehensive system that is based on a single code base while also being highly customizable for the agencies that use it.
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- Agencies Get Even More Performance Management, Disciplinary Guidance From OPM - October 11, 2019
- By Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News NetworkAgencies have even more new performance management guidance from the Office of Personnel Management this week.This time, OPM is reminding agency leaders and managers that when it comes to disciplining employees, their own discretion, as well as the facts and history associated with the employee and his or her individual situation and potential violation, hold more importance than a suggested list of punishments.
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- OPM Encourages Work-life Balance Despite Agency Flexibility Cuts - October 10, 2019
- By Jessie Bur, Federal TimesThe Office of Personnel Management encouraged other federal agencies to leverage programs that help employees maintain balance between their home and work life, as part of the 2019 National Work and Family Month.“OPM identified work-life supports as one of the major drivers of employee engagement. When employees know their overall well-being is highly valued by their employer, they are more likely to feel and exhibit a sense of commitment to the organization,” OPM Director Dale Cabaniss wrote in an Oct. 8 memo to heads of agencies.
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- Navy Preparing Data Strategies To Revolutionize Future Programs - October 8th, 2019
- By Scott Maucione, Federal News NetworkIn the next few months the Navy will unleash a handful of new policies it hopes will transform the way it handles data so that information can be harnessed for technologies like artificial intelligence, analytics and other forward-facing technologies.The policies follow a trend of revolutionizing data management found in the Defense Department and other military services as they recognize the current way they label, sort, store and organize data is making the military vulnerable, keeping it from making better informed decisions and missing out on advanced technologies.
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- Agencies May Now Enforce Trump’s Controversial Workforce Orders - October 7, 2019
- Katherine Mcintire Peters, Government ExecutiveFederal agencies are now free to implement three controversial executive orders signed by President Trump in 2018 aimed at limiting the power of employee unions. A court injunction against the orders was lifted Wednesday, a week after a federal appeals court declined to rehear a case brought by the unions.The three executive orders would shorten the length of performance improvement plans to 30 days, exempt adverse personnel actions from grievance proceedings, streamline collective bargaining negotiations, and significantly reduce the number of work hours union members can spend on official time.
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- It’s Time to Start Thinking About Health Insurance Open Season - October 4, 2019
- Tammy Flanagan, GovexecAmong the signs that fall is upon us is that health insurance open season looms in the not-too-distant future. The 2020 open season will run from Nov. 11 to Dec. 9, 2019. It makes sense to do some homework before the start of open season because, as usual, you’ll have a lot of options.The 279 health plans available in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program include:18 fee for service plans open to all4 fee for service plans with availability limited to certain groups257 HMO plans19 high deductible health plans28 consumer driven health plans
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- Federal Employees Will Pay Over 5% More Toward FEHB Premiums in 2020 - October 3, 2019
- Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News NetworkParticipants in the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program looking for another year of record low premium increases will likely be disappointed in 2020.Federal employees and retirees will pay, on average, 5.6% more toward their health premiums next year.The Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday announced premium rates for 2020 ahead of the upcoming open season, which will run from Nov. 11 through Dec. 9. Participants in the FEHB will have an opportunity to make changes to their health, dental and vision plans ahead of the upcoming benefit year, which begins Jan. 1.
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- 50,000 Feds Will Get The Chance To Judge Their Benefits - October 1st, 2019
- Jessie Bur, FederalTimesA random selection of federal employees will soon get the chance to offer their feedback on whether the benefits offered by their agency match up with their needs.The Office of Personnel Management announced Sept. 30 that 50,000 feds nationwide will soon receive emails asking them to participate in the 2019 Federal Employee Benefits Survey.
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- Hurricane-impacted Feds To Receive Emergency Leave Flexibility - September 30, 2019
- Jessie Bur, FederalTimesHurricane Dorian devastated parts of the U.S. and Caribbean in late August 2019, with approximately 3,163 federal employees impacted by the storm, according to the Office of Personnel Management.Those employees still recovering from the aftermath and unable to return to work will now be able to look to their fellow feds for assistance, as OPM authorized an emergency leave transfer program Sept. 27 for those hit by the hurricane.
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- A New Sprint Wants To Accelerate AI Solutions - September 27, 2019
- Andrew Eversden, Federal TimesA new sprint effort between the General Services Administration and the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) is underway to expand the use of artificial intelligence in both the civilian federal agencies and the Department of Defense, GSA announced Sept. 25.According to the news release, the partnership will aid JAIC’s push to quickly deliver AI tools to the department and syncing AI-activities across the DoD to “expand Joint Force advantages.”
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- OPM Tells Agencies To Review, Streamline Performance Management, Disciplinary Policies - September 26, 2019
- By Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News NetworkThe Office of Personnel Management is calling on agencies to conduct a top-to-bottom review of their existing performance management policies, and then update and tighten up those procedures for disciplining employees for poor performance or misconduct by removing unnecessary steps.The new guidance is part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to streamline the employee disciplinary process and more quickly address poor performance and misconduct.
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- New OFPP Administrator Seeks to Reduce Risks of Federal Contracting through AI, Robotics - September 24, 2019
- Jason Miller, Federal News NetworkMichael Wooten became the 15th administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy about six weeks ago. More importantly, he became the first permanent head of federal procurement during the Trump administration.In his first two public speeches last week, Wooten hit all the expected notes that an OFPP administrator is supposed to reach—building on existing efforts like category management, upskilling the workforce, unlocking technology to create innovation and harnessing acquisition data to turn it into business intelligence.
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- Committee Approves Plan To Protect Feds’ Credit During A Shutdown - September 23, 2019
- Jessie Bur, FederalTimesThe House Financial Services Committee voted Sept. 20 to report legislation favorably to the House floor that would prevent federal employee credit scores from being impacted by financial difficulties resulting from a government shutdown.“The shutdown directly affected nearly 3 percent of the entire U.S. labor force. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the shutdown cost the American economy $11 billion and delayed approximately $18 billion in discretionary spending for compensation and purchases of goods and services,” said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the author of the bill.
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- House Passes Seven-Week Stopgap Spending Bill In Hopes Of Avoiding October Shutdown - September 20, 2019
- Eric Katz, Government ExecutiveThe House on Thursday approved 301-123 a stopgap spending measure that will keep agencies afloat through Nov. 21 and avoid a shutdown in October.The measure will now move to the Senate, where lawmakers are at odds over how to proceed with their own spending legislation. Democratic leadership in the House opted to move forward with the continuing resolution to give the two chambers more time to pass their own appropriations bills and subsequently reconcile the differences between them.
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- Defense Spending Bill Hits Border Wall in Senate - September 19, 2019
- Leo Shane III and Joe Gould, FederalTimesSenate Democrats on Wednesday blocked Republican plans to advance an appropriations package including $693 billion in defense spending for fiscal 2020, all but assuring that lawmakers will have to adopt a short-term budget extension in coming days to avoid a possible government shutdown.That means defense planners will likely start another fiscal year without clear answers on their military spending priorities and flexibility. House Democratic leaders said they expect later this week to take up a continuing resolution to keep the government open through Nov. 21.
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- Senate Appropriators Join House in Blocking OPM-GSA Merger - September 18, 2019
- Erich Wagner, Government ExecutiveSenate panel on Tuesday advanced a fiscal 2020 spending bill that would, among other things, block the Trump administration from implementing its plan to merge the Office of Personnel Management with the General Services Administration, a development that could mark the end of the fight over the future of the federal government’s HR agency.The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Financial Services and General Government sent its fiscal 2020 appropriations package to the full committee, totaling $24.2 billion across 27 agencies and representing a $773 million increase over fiscal 2019 spending.
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- OPM Proposes Changes to Federal Employee Removal Process - September 18, 2019
- Ralph R. Smith, FedSmithThe Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is issuing proposed regulations governing probation on initial appointment to a competitive position, performance-based reduction in grade and removal actions, and adverse actions. Comments on the proposed changes are due by October 17, 2019.The proposed changes are implementing some of the changes in Executive Order 13839 that were not subject to a nationwide injunction as a result of a District Court order.
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- Agencies Paid Federal Employees $3.7 Billion Not to Work During Recent Shutdowns - September 17, 2019
- Eric Katz, NextGovThe federal government wasted $4 billion over the last three government shutdowns, according to a new report, including $3.7 billion that went to federal employees who were sent home and prohibited from working but later granted back pay.Agencies spent an additional $338 million on administrative work, lost revenue and late fees on interest payments due to the shutdowns, Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Tom Carper, D-Del., found on behalf of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee panel on investigations. The three shutdowns totaled 52 days over the last six years. Federal workers cumulatively spent nearly 15 million days on furlough, which amounted to 57,000 years of lost productivity.About 350,000 federal employees were furloughed during the record-setting 35-day shutdown that ended earlier this year, while about 850,000 were sent home during the 16-day shutdown in 2013.
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- Personnel Office Gets New Leader After A Year’s Vacancy - September 12, 2019
- Jessie Bur, FederalTimesThe Office of Personnel Management finally has permanent leadership, after the Senate voted 54 to 38 to confirm Dale Cabaniss Sept. 11 to head up the agency responsible for the federal workforce.OPM has been under the leadership of acting Director Margaret Wiechert following the unexpected retirement of Jeff Pon from the position in October 2018, after just seven months on the job.Cabaniss has received mixed response since her March 2019 nomination, as employee unions have said that her previous leadership within the federal government at the Federal Labor Relations Authority was marked by poor employee satisfaction and a high reversal rate of her decisions upon appeal.
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- House To Vote On Stopgap Measure- September 11, 2019
- By FEDmanagerThe Senate and House return this week with just three weeks to pass a funding measure to avoid a government shutdown. To remove some pressure on this time limit, lawmakers in both chambers have endorsed a continuing resolution (CR) to delay the end of the fiscal year. The House has pledged to vote on a proposal while the Senate Majority Leader has offered support.House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) announced in a letter to the caucus on Thursday that the chamber will be taking up a short term CR during the week of September 16. While legislation has not been made public, Rep. Hoyer pledged to a “clean continuing resolution to fund the government past September 30th.”“As we wait for [the Senate] to complete their work so that we can begin conference negotiations, a continuing resolution will be necessary to prevent another government shutdown like the one we experienced earlier this year, which harmed thousands of American families,” Hoyer wrote.
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- Pentagon, HHS temporarily restore employee assistance for DoD civilians - September 10, 2019
- Jared Serbu, Federal News NetworkPrograms that provide a wide range of benefits to the Defense Department’s civilian workforce were being restored Monday after being suddenly suspended a week earlier, leaving hundreds of thousands of employees without access to services like mental health counseling and various forms of financial assistance.A message posted to the Defense Logistics Agency’s website on Monday said the Department of Health and Human Services’ office of Federal Occupational Health (FOH) had agreed to bring the Employee Assistance Program back online for the next 60 days while Defense officials find another way to deliver EAP programs to their workforce.Up until Sept. 1, FOH provided EAP and a separate program, Wellness and Health Promotion to DoD’s more than 700,000 civilian workers via an interagency agreement. But those services ended, apparently without warning, during the Labor Day weekend.
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- DOD Will Require Vendor Cybersecurity Certifications By This Time Next Year - September 9, 2019
- Aaron Boyd, NextgovThe government has stringent processes for verifying the IT products and services it uses comply with relevant cybersecurity standards, such as authorities to operate for cloud services and supply chain regulations for hardware products. But those standards and processes don’t cover the vendors.For the Defense Department, this is a critical issue, as doing business with industry requires the department to share sensitive information, even at the earliest steps of the process.The department has been kicking around the idea of creating a certification standard for defense industrial base companies to ensure vendors’ cybersecurity posture was adequate to handle controlled and classified information. That became an official effort in March, and Wednesday the department released the first draft Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, or CMMC, outline for public comment.
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- Pentagon, NSA Prepare to Train AI-Powered Cyber Defenses - September 6, 2019
- By Jack Corrigan, NextGovThe Pentagon’s newly minted artificial intelligence center is creating a framework for the military’s cybersecurity data, which will lay the foundation for AI-powered cyber defense tools.The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is partnering with the National Security Agency, U.S. Cyber Command and dozens of Defense Department cybersecurity vendors to standardize data collection across the Pentagon’s sprawling IT ecosystem, according to Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, who leads the JAIC.By creating a consistent process for curating, describing, sharing and storing information, the JAIC intends to create a trove of cyber data that could ultimately be used to train AI to monitor military networks for potential threats, Shanahan said Wednesday at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit.
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- What The Federal Cloud Market Could Look Like In 5 Years - September 4, 2019
- By: Andrew Eversden, FederalTimesA new report on the federal cloud market expects the government to increase its expenditure on cloud computing by nearly $4 billion in the next five years.According to Deltek’s forecast of the federal cloud market, released Aug. 30, the government will likely spend $9.1 billion in fiscal year 2024 on cloud computing, an increase form $5.3 billion in FY2019.Deltek, a enterprise software and information solutions company, found that cloud spending in the last two years has increased dramatically among civilian agencies. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs have both spent over $1 billion from FY2016 to FY2018. Since FY2016, the VA’s cloud spending has increased 258 percent. The Department of Homeland Security’s cloud spending increased 359 percent, with the increase largely attributable to its immigration services — Customs and Border Protection and Citizenship and Immigration Services — which spent $102 million each on cloud.
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- Trump’s Planned Federal Pay Freeze Begins To Melt - September 3, 2019
- Jessie Bur, FederalTimesFederal employees’ biggest obstacle to seeing a bump to their salaries in 2020 appears to have been lifted, as the White House announced Aug. 30 that it intended to reverse the planned pay freeze for feds and instead institute a 2.6 percent across the board increase.“As noted in my Budget for Fiscal Year 2020, our pay system must reform to align with mission-critical recruitment and retention goals, and to reward employees whose performance provides value for the American people,” Trump wrote in a letter to the Speaker of the House.
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- Lawmakers: VA’s Main Website—Designed To Be One-Stop For Vets—Is Missing Critical Links - August 29, 2019
- By Aaron Boyd, NextgovThe newly revamped VA.gov—relaunched in November—was designed to be a one-stop shop, providing veterans with links to any and all information they would need. However, the site appears to be missing links to some critical resources, some of which are mandated by law, according to lawmakers on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.Committee members Reps. Gilbert Cisneros, D-Calif., Max Rose, D-N.Y., and Chris Pappas, D-N.H., sent a letter Wednesday to VA Secretary Robert Wilkie noting that the website is missing links to three federal websites.
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- Lawmakers Expect a Stopgap Spending Measure to Avoid an October Shutdown - August 28, 2019
- Eric Katz, Government ExecutiveDespite a budget deal signed into law by President Trump this summer, agencies probably won't receive new appropriations by the start of the 2020 fiscal year. With current funding set to lapse on Oct. 1, lawmakers appear resigned to pass a continuing resolution to give themselves more time to iron out the details of line-by-line appropriations bills.The two-year budget deal hammered out primarily between House Democrats and the White House in late July set top-line spending levels, but Congress still must approve a package of 12 funding measures—or pass a CR—to avoid another government shutdown before current appropriations expire.
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- A Navy ‘Tech Refresh’ Is Ahead Of Schedule - August 27, 2019
- Andrew Eversden, FederalTimesThe U.S. Navy completed its largest-ever cloud migration 10 months ahead of schedule, according to a service news release Aug. 23.During its “tech refresh,” the Navy moved over to the cloud its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, which it uses to budget, track and audit its resources and manages over half of the Navy’s resources. According to the news release, nearly $70 billion of the U.S. economy runs through the Navy ERP. The migration was completed Aug. 19 and is a “critical step” in the modernization of the Navy’s financial management capabilities, the release said.
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- Trump Signs Constituent Services Bill into Law - August 25, 2019
- Frank Konkel, NexgovMembers of Congress may soon have improved avenues with which to work on behalves of their constituents.On Thursday, President Trump signed into law the Creating Advanced Streamlined Electronic Services for Constituent, or CASES, Act. The bill, which was introduced by Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, revises the Privacy Act of 1974 in a major way, giving constituents the option to electronically authorize congressional offices to engage federal agencies.
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- Agencies May Not Meet EIS Deadline, But Future Extensions Aren’t in Sight - August 22, 2019
- By Brandi Vincent, NextGovThough some agencies will not meet the General Services Administration’s Sept. 30 deadline to award task orders for the massive Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions telecommunications contract, they’re making progress and GSA does not anticipate extending any of the other related deadlines, Director of GSA’s Office of Telecommunication Services Allen Hill said Wednesday.“I’ll say this—it is extremely important to be deliberate in the beginning. There’s a lot of mission needs that agencies have and they are complex,” Hill said at an event hosted by ACT-IAC in Washington. “And it’s easy for an outsider to look at things and say, ‘Why isn't it going faster?’ But we have a responsibility to the American public to not only modernize but to not break our services that we provide to the public.”
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- USDA Slashes Money Offered To Employees Leaving After Relocation - August 21, 2019
- By: Jessie Bur, Federal TimesEmployees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture that decided to leave the agency rather than relocate to the new Kansas City location will not get the full separation payments originally offered to them.According to Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment documents sent to employees and published by the American Federation of Government Employees, the agency reduced the payment offered to departing employees from $25,000 to $10,000, due to the large volume of employees choosing to leave the agency rather than move.
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- GSA Extends A Pilot To Save The Government Millions - August 20, 2019
- By: Andrew Eversden, FederaltimesThe General Services Administration decided to extend its Transaction Data Reporting (TDR) pilot through fiscal year 2020, a program GSA has said saves the government millions, according to a Aug. 14 news release.The TDR rule allowed GSA to remove “complex and burdensome” tracking and disclosure requirements mandated on contractors, in addition to asking contractors to electronically report specific procurement data, like prices paid, quantity and product description. The rule requires monthly reporting of transaction sales data from governmentwide contracts, which the GSA wrote increases transparency. GSA estimated when it made the initial announcement about the new rule in 2016 that it would save the government around $29 million a year.
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- VA Migrates 23.5 Million Veteran Patient Records To Cerner Data Center - July 30, 2019
- By Aaron Boyd - NextgovThe Veterans Affairs Department is getting ready to pilot the first instances of its new electronic health records system next spring but took the first major step this week, migrating millions of veterans’ health records to a third-party data center.The department announced reaching a “critical milestone” Monday with the transfer of 23.5 million records to a shared data center managed by Cerner Corp., the health IT company awarded the 10-year, $10 billion contract to overhaul VA’s electronic health records system and integrate it with the Defense Department’s MHS GENESIS system.The migrated records account for some 78 billion data points compiled from across the VA, totaling about 50 terabytes of information. The data includes “lab results; pharmacy prescriptions; inpatient and outpatient diagnoses and procedures; and other medical data of both living and deceased veterans,” according to the release.
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- Senator Says He Has Trump and McConnell's Support for Bill to End Shutdowns Permanently - July 26, 2019
- By Eric Katz, Government ExecutiveA bill to permanently end government shutdowns and protect federal employees from being sent home during spending fights is gaining momentum in Congress, with key leaders promising to support the reform.Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., are renewing their push for the legislation after receiving a stamp of approval from Senate leadership and the White House. The bill is one of many lawmakers have advocated in order to end shutdowns for good since the 35-day partial appropriations lapse that ended earlier this year. Those measures have included automatically cutting lawmakers’ pay, or agency spending levels, as shutdowns drag on. One Democratic proposal would increase agency spending until the government reopens.The Prevent Government Shutdowns Act (S. 589) would instead ban official travel for members of Congress, their staffers and Office of Management and Budget personnel until appropriations bills are signed into law. It would institute a stopgap continuing resolution to keep agencies funded at their existing levels until a spending agreement is reached. The bill would require a recorded quorum call each day the CR is in effect to motivate lawmakers to show up to the Capitol daily and would prevent non-appropriations bills from receiving a vote during appropriations stalemates, except for national security emergencies.
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- The Pay Raise State of Play, and TSP Contribution Changes - July 25, 2019
- By Erich Wagner, Government ExecutiveAlthough developments regarding the prospect of a pay raise for federal civilian employees next year have been sparse in recent weeks, that could soon change, now that officials have agreed to top-line spending levels for fiscal 2020.Earlier this week, President Trump announced that he and congressional leaders in both parties had reached a two-year budget deal that would lift spending caps as well as the debt ceiling. The deal gets rid of sequestration, and increases discretionary spending at non-defense agencies by $27 billion.Although the House last month approved an appropriations package that provides an average 3.1% pay raise for civilian federal workers—a 2.6% across the board raise, and an average 0.5% increase to locality pay—the Senate has not introduced any of its appropriations bills for consideration. Senate Republicans said they would wait until a decision had been made on top-line spending amounts before advancing their spending bills. Now that a budget deal has been reached they can proceed with the appropriations bills.
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- White House and Lawmakers Agree to Two-Year Budget Deal - July 23, 2019
- By Eric Katz, Government ExecutivePresident Trump announced late Monday the administration had reached an agreement with House and Senate leaders to lift spending caps and raise the debt ceiling with a two-year budget deal.The deal would raise discretionary spending at non-defense agencies by $27 billion in fiscal 2020 and boost defense spending by $22 billion, according to multiple reports. Compared to fiscal 2019, domestic agencies would see an increase of $10 billion more than their defense counterparts. Compared to the spending caps that would have been in place absent a deal, defense spending is set to increase by $20 billion more than the boost to non-defense. The funding caps, which first went into effect in 2013 as a result of the 2011 Budget Control Act, will no longer apply going forward.The deal avoids $125 billion in automatic spending cuts that would have taken place in fiscal 2020 across both defense and non-defense agencies had Congress not acted. Lawmakers agreed to offset about $77 billion through increases to customs user fees and extending automatic cuts to mandatory spending.
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- AGENCY REORGANIZATION PLANS IS LIGHT ON DETAILS - February 13, 2017
- Transferring Responsibilities and Consolidating Offices Highlight Trump Reorganization PlanBy Eric Katz, Government ExecutiveMore than one year after President Trump issued an executive order calling on all federal agencies to submit a comprehensive plan to reorganize and reform themselves, the administration has proposed what it is now calling a “first step” toward submitting those changes.The proposals were laid out in Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget, often focusing on consolidating administrative functions or merging various programs with similar functions, but not every agency detailed its plans. Some agencies put forward more specific ideas, such as shifting bureaus to new locations or transferring responsibilities to other agencies. The administration said more details would be forthcoming, pledging to create concrete goals and trackable metrics with “senior accountable officials” to oversee them.
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- BOTH STAFF CUTS AND BUDGET INCREASES FOR FY 2019 - July 13, 2017
Staff Cuts and Budget Increases Are Both on Tap for 2019
By Eric Katz, Government Executive
The Trump administration has provided federal agencies with the latitude to request up to a 5 percent funding boost in fiscal 2019, saying the White House may accommodate a “limited number” of programmatic increases in its final blueprint.
Generally, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said in a memorandum to department and agency heads, agencies should keep their 2019 spending requests in line with what the White House spelled out in the fiscal 2018 budget submission. They should also, however, “identify additional investments in effective programs that further support their mission and fill a clear federal role.”
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- OPM PROPOSED RULE: 5 CFR parts 315, 432 and 752
- HUMAN RESOURCES FLEXIBILITIES AND PROCEDURES FOR HURRICANE SEASON
- ATTEND FMA REGIONS 1 & 2 CONFERENCE
- ATTEND FMA REGIONS 3 & 4 CONFERENCE
- OPM: GUIDANCE RELATING TO IMPLEMENTATION OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS
- OPM GUIDANCE ON MANAGING FEDERAL EMPLOYEES' PERFORMANCE ISSUES
- Artificial Intelligence In The Federal Government: How AI Might Affect Federal Managers - October 2, 2019
- Hear It from FMA, FEDmanager.comOn September 25, 2019, FMA attended the Kalaris Intelligence conference at Georgetown University. Sponsored by Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies, the theme revolved around Artificial Intelligence (AI) and national security. For federal managers and their employees, AI has the potential to become a useful tool for gathering data, sifting through that data, and accomplishing long term goals in an effective manner. FMA attended to learn more about this emerging technology, how it is currently being used, and how it can be used in the future.
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- Here We Go Again - September 4, 2019
- Hear It from FMA, FEDmanager.comAfter five weeks of recess, both chambers of Congress will return to Washington, D.C., on September 9th. Committee work will restart, speeches will be made on the floor, and representative work for the American people will begin again. For anyone, returning to work can be an arduous undertaking, but for this first session of the 116th Congress it is set to be particularly so. As of the writing of this article, the Senate has yet to pass any appropriations bills to fund the federal government for Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20) and Congress has a little over three legislative weeks to avoid the second government shutdown of 2019.
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- FMA Seeks to Restore Leadership and Resources At The Merit Systems Protection Board - August 7, 2019
- Hear It from FMA, FEDmanager.comThe Senate has a lot of business to tend to when it returns from its State Work Period on September 9. Most notably, it will have barely three weeks before the end of the current fiscal year to pass appropriations to fund the federal government for Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20) and prevent another government shutdown. Among the other important priorities on the Senate’s plate is finally confirming nominees for the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the primary appeals board for federal employees.
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- FMA’s Take On The Agency Reorganization Proposals - July 3, 2018
- The Federal Managers Association, FEDmanager.comIt has been two weeks (as of writing) since the administration formally unveiled its long-awaited agency reorganization plan, called “Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century.” We at FMA have heard from many of our members and continue to analyze the merits for reform.
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- FMA HONORS SENATOR DANIEL AKAKA - A TRUE FRIEND TO FEDS - April 12, 2018
- With the passing of Senator Akaka, the Federal Managers Association pays tribute to his life and workHaving worked with Senator Akaka for many years on innumerable issues of importance to federal employees and good government, we came to know him as a reliable leader. He led by example, never disrespectful of others, and always endeavoring to make America the best it could be. We were saddened when he left the U.S. Senate, and now feel we have lost a friend.
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- THE IMPORTANT BUT LESS SEXY SIDE OF INVESTING IN OUR MILITARY - December 19, 2017
The Federal Managers Association, FedManager.com
The Federal Managers Association (FMA) is featured in the latest edition of FedManager.com. Hear it from FMA is a regularly scheduled article that runs once a month in the publication. In this article, we write about investing in modernizing infrastructure and facilities across the government. It is sexy and splashy when headlines announce next generation of sophisticated aircraft and advanced ships, but we need to make the necessary investments to keep them viable.
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- Good Intentions Start a Slippery Slide to the Bottom - June 14, 2017
Todd Wells, Executive Director
Federal Managers AssociationThe members of the Federal Managers Association (FMA) remain steadfast in their desire to work with Congress and the President to identify more effective and cost-efficient ways to ensure our veterans receive the treatment they deserve. However, we are extremely concerned by the erosion of due process for federal employees included in the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act.
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