FederalDaily - April 11, 2005
NTEU Wants Comp Time Regulations Changed
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has suggested changes to proposed
federal regulations on the new program of comp time off for official federal
employee travel. The union said their suggested changes would make the regulations “as
simple and fair as possible.” NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley submitted
comments to the Office of Personnel Management saying there are “significant
areas of concern” with the regulations. The union recommendations are:
- agencies should not have discretion to determine ‘usual
waiting time’;
- bona fide meal periods should be included in creditable time;
- unusual or extended waiting times at the transportation site
should not be excluded from creditable time; and
- employees should be entitled to receive comp time off for
required travel on holidays.
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VA Hires Vets to Counsel Other Vets
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will hire 50 veterans of Operations
Iraqi and Enduring Freedom (OIF/OEF) to provide outreach services to veterans
returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. They will join 50
other OIF/OEF outreach counselors already hired by VA. The outreach counselors
will brief servicemen and women leaving the military about VA benefits and
services available to them and their family members. They will also encourage
new veterans to use their local Vet Center as a point of entry to VA and its
services. “We believe that our outreach to veterans is most effective
when the message is carried by their comrades,” said Dr. Jonathan B.
Perlin, VA's Acting Under Secretary for Health.
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Agencies Progressing on Information Security
For years, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that poor information
security was a widespread problem among federal agencies and information security
has been on GAO’s high-risk list since 1997. But by last year, federal
agencies’ efforts to comply with the Federal Information Security Management
Act of 2002 (FISMA) have improved, GAO reported last week. FISMA permanently
authorized the federal information security program, evaluation and reporting
requirements for federal agencies. In FY 2004 reports, 24 agencies reported
an increasing number of systems that met security requirements, such as percentage
of systems certified and percentage of employees who received security training.
However, GAO said there are still challenges. For example, 17 agencies reported
that they had not tested contingency plans for all of their systems.
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Senators Want Anthrax Investigation at DoD
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Susan Collins,
R-Maine, and Ranking Member Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., asked for an investigation
of the response to a recent anthrax scare at the Department of Defense (DoD).
A government contractor waited four days to notify DoD that a routine swab of
a DoD mailroom had tested positive for the presence of anthrax. It turned out
to be a false alarm. The two senators said several aspects of the DoD’s
response to the positive reading for anthrax led many to wonder if DoD had learned
the lessons of the 2001 anthrax attack when five people died. They asked the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review the DoD procedures now in place
regarding response to a bio-terror incident. “We have asked GAO to determine
what has been done since the anthrax attacks, and where we must improve,” said
Collins.
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