FederalDaily - January 6, 2006

DoD Civilian Pay Raises in Effect

The upcoming pay period for Department of Defense (DoD) civilian General Schedule (GS) employees will reflect a 2.1 percent across-the-board pay raise, plus a range of locality pays that bring the overall pay hikes between 2.83 and 5.62 percent, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The 2006 federal pay raise goes into effect with the first full pay period of the year, which for most DoD employees begins Jan. 8. Pay charts on the OPM Web site (www.opm.gov) show new annual and hourly rates for GS workers, DoD’s white-collar work force, and workers in 31 designated locality pay areas. Wage-grade or blue-collar workers, who make up a small percentage of the DoD work force, will receive comparable increases for their areas.

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New EEOC Commissioner Sworn In

Christine M. Griffin was sworn in on Jan. 3 as a commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), bringing the bipartisan panel to its full five-member complement for the first time in more than a year. EEOC Chair Cari M. Dominguez said Griffin worked at the agency in the mid-1990s as a senior staff attorney. Griffin served as the executive director of the Disability Law Center in Boston from 1996 to 2005. Her federal work experience includes serving in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, the Food and Drug Administration and the Army. Last month, Griffin was selected as one of the nation’s eleven “Lawyers of the Year” by the newspaper Lawyers Weekly USA.

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USPTO Addresses “Enormous” Workload

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said there have been “enormous increases” in the number of patent applications filed each year. “Since the USPTO’s resources have not increased at the same rate as filings, it has become much more difficult to provide reliable, consistent and prompt patentability decisions,” the agency stated. “Simply hiring more patent examiners will not slow the growth in the time it takes to get a patent or improve the quality of examination.” This week the USPTO proposed changes to prioritize claims and better focus the agency’s examination of patent applications. USPTO said it has also instituted measures over the past two years to improve patent quality. “The percentage of patent examiners certified for promotion to full performance level increased from 59 percent in FY 2004 to 70 percent in FY 2005.” The new rules can be found at www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/sol/notices/71fr48.pdf and www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/sol/notices/71fr61.pdf.

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Deadlines for Agency FOIA Improvements

On Dec. 14, the president issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to improve Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) operations. Then on Dec. 30, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memo highlighting actions required, including:

• By Jan. 13, each agency has to designate a chief FOIA officer, and report the designation to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and OMB, as well as post it on the agency’s Web site.
• By June 14, 2006, each agency is required to send a report with a summary of its FOIA operations review and FOIA improvement plan to DOJ and OMB, and post it to the agency’s Web site.
• Each agency has to establish at least one FOIA requester service center and place contact information for the center on the agency’s Web site.

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