FederalDaily - May 2, 2005

Whistleblower Protection Voted Down

Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., announced he would introduce legislation to provide all federal employees, contractors and private sector workers who report homeland or national security flaws, threats to public health and safety, violations of laws, or waste, fraud and mismanagement with improved whistleblower protections. An amendment version of Markey’s legislation has already failed on a vote at a markup of the Homeland Security Authorization Act. Under Markey’s bill, if the Department of Labor fails to act on a whistleblower’s case within six months, he or she would have the right to bring a case in civil court, and if successful, be entitled to compensatory and punitive damages. For more on this story, see the upcoming May 9, 2005 , issue of Federal Employees News Digest. To subscribe, click here.

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Contractor Settles After Defrauding Air Force

The Department of Justice on April 27 announced that a San Diego, California, based defense contractor, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), has agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle allegations that it filed false claims for payment with the Air Force and engaged in defective pricing on a contract that the company was awarded to perform environmental clean-up work prior to the closure of Kelly Air Force Base in the late 1990s. The settlement also resolves a federal whistleblower lawsuit filed in January 2002 against SAIC by one of the company’s former project managers, Michael Dwight Woodlee, who alleged that SAIC had defrauded the government by padding cost estimates. Woodlee will receive $500,000. SAIC has denied all allegations of wrongdoing. “This is a victory in the ongoing battle against alleged contractor fraud,” stated U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton.

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Challenges to President’s Agenda

The IBM Center for The Business of Government released a magazine discussing the next steps of the President’s Management Agenda, in particular the challenges the federal government is facing:

• The magazine said public/private competition—of all the management challenges—is likely to be the most contentious.
• The second most contentious issue will be pay-for-performance. The Departments of Homeland Security and Defense are now implementing pay-for-performance. The administration has proposed plans to extend pay for performance to the entire government.
• To “manage for results,” the administration introduced the Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART), which IBM’s Center for The Business of Government said could “substantially change” the way government allocates its increasingly scarce resources.

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DHS Authorization Approved by House Committee

The House Committee on Homeland Security approved H.R. 1817, the “Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006” on April 27. H.R. 1817, approved by voice vote, is the first Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authorization act considered by the newly permanent Homeland Security Committee. Among other details, H.R. 1817 provides full funding for 2,000 new Border Patrol agents, refines the current color-coded terror alert system, includes an authorization of overall DHS spending for FY2006, accelerates deployment of homeland security technology and provides incentives to enhance recruitment of homeland security intelligence professionals. The bill is expected to be considered by the full House in the near future.

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