Federal Daily - February 12, 2010
OPM’s Man at the Center of the Storm Provides Insights During Web Session
For the last week, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry may have been the most important man in Washington. Because for five workdays in a row, Berry has been the one making the final decision on whether the capital area’s 270,000 snow-weary feds should report to work.
On Thursday—the fourth consecutive day federal workers were told to stay home—feds and non-feds alike had the chance to ask questions of the man with the power during a live online Q&A session on the Washington Post Web site.
Some highlights from the Post session:
Top decision-making concerns? Safety, Berry said—both of employees and the public, and secondly, keeping the government running as much as possible. And it’s always safety first.
Why wait until 7 p.m.? Actually, said Berry, OPM moved the time of its critical call with the Council of Governments (one of the key groups consulted before closings and delays) back from 4 a.m. the same workday until 6 p.m. the night before. So the decision is made earlier than it was at the beginning of winter.
What about that $100 million-a-day figure? Out of date, Berry said. That old estimate of the daily cost of closing down D.C.-area federal facilities is just the daily payroll for all those workers, and does not account for teleworkers, emergency and essential personnel and other considerations. The formula needs to be updated, he said.
Lessons learned from this episode? The storms demonstrated the power of telecommuting to ensure continuity of operations, Berry said, and OPM is “exploring all options to enhance the government’s teleworking capability.”
To see the entire Q&A session, go to: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/02/10/DI2010021003017.html.
(Oh, and you D.C.-area feds can stop worrying about that rumor—Berry assured questioners that President’s Day is still a holiday as far as OPM is concerned.)
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GSA Launches Healthier Food Plan for Government Cafeterias
Under the Obama administration, even government cafeterias are going green—with vegetables.
The General Services Administration on Feb. 10 announced it was launching a template for a healthier food plan under a new GSA food service contract for the State Department’s Washington, D.C., headquarters building. The State Department headquarters dining facility will be the first to use this template, which features healthier food choices, locally grown produce and healthy cooking techniques. The template also calls for more sustainable—or green—cafeteria operations. The facility serves about 6,500 employees and more than 1,000 visitors each day.
The template also includes a nutrition education program that will help employees make better food choices. It will highlight healthy food, proper portion sizes and the use of whole grains. GSA plans to use the template for other federal dining facilities.
“Through the new State Department contract and other food service contracts in federal buildings, GSA will help drive the market toward more sustainable, healthier, and locally-grown food options,” said Stephen R. Leeds, GSA senior sustainability officer.
The contract is an element of a government-wide wellness initiative. As part of that effort, GSA also is providing healthier food snacks in vending machines and sundry shops in federal buildings. During a recent pilot program at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, two-thirds of the total sales in vending machines that featured healthier snacks and beverages came from the healthier options, GSA said.
To see more, go to: www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?pageTypeId=10430
&channelId=-24825&P=X&contentId=29091&contentType=GSA_BASIC.
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OPM to Enhance Oversight of ‘3R’ Bonuses
Concerned over the growth of recruitment, relocation and retention (3R) bonuses, the Office of Personnel Management has initiated an effort to enhance the oversight of these incentive payments.
In a Feb. 3 memo to chief human capital officers, OPM Director John Berry said he was troubled over the growth of the bonuses, which amounted to more than $284 million paid by 47 agencies in 39,512 individual incentive payments in calendar year 2008. Between 2007 and 2008, the total number of incentives paid increased by more than 21 percent, and the total incentive cost increased by more than 37 percent, Berry wrote.
Berry noted that agencies find the bonuses essential to meeting their most serious staffing challenges and report they would have difficulties accomplishing their missions or may need to resort to more expensive solutions if they were not available.
However, Berry said he was concerned that most agencies delegate the administration of their incentive programs to subordinate organizations and to field offices. While understandable from a practical standpoint, it also means that bonuses are paid out without appropriate upper-level management review, Berry said.
“It appears the problem for many agencies is that there is neither detailed knowledge nor adequate overview at the headquarters level of [bonus programs] in the subordinate organizations and field,” offices, Berry said.
To improve oversight, OPM will develop additional guidance and tools to help agencies write stronger justifications for bonus authorizations and improved bonus plans, Berry said. OPM also wants to implement more explicit agency internal monitoring procedures with greater emphasis on the consideration of the costs and benefits of the incentive payments, Berry said.
And, OPM will issue proposed regulations to require agencies to review all retention incentives and group recruitment incentives at least annually to determine whether they should be revised or discontinued, Berry said.
To see more, go to: www.chcoc.gov/Transmittals/TransmittalDetails.aspx?TransmittalID=2848.
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With Blizzard, Lawmaker Urges Broader Adoption of Telework
With the federal government closed for a record fourth consecutive day, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va. said a more robust telework program could significantly reduce the $100 million per day it costs to shut down federal agencies.
In the wake of the double-whammy February blizzards that paralyzed Washington, Connolly asked the Office of Personnel Management to document productivity savings generated by employees who teleworked while the rest of the government was closed.
“It is my hope that we can use this recent snow emergency to reinforce the importance of telework reforms that we are pursuing while demonstrating specific steps that can be taken to improve implementation of telework programs in the future,” Connolly said in a Feb. 9 letter to OPM Director John Berry. “I believe that a more robust telework program could negate some of those productivity losses in the future.”
Specifically, Connolly wanted to know the percentage of teleworkers required to continue working on days when the federal government is unexpectedly closed, the productivity savings that teleworkers generated, and the projected savings if 20 percent of the federal government’s eligible workforce had been teleworking during the closures. Connolly co-sponsored a bill that would require that agencies put at least 20 percent of employees under telework contracts.
Connolly also noted that some federal agencies, such as the Defense Information Systems Agency, were particularly successful with telework during the shutdown, and he wanted to know how they did it. He also asked Berry to collect information on managerial, technical, or equipment shortcomings which prevented broader use of telework during the storm and its aftermath.
“Applying these lessons to subsequent storms or disasters could improve the ability of the federal government to maintain continuity of operations and reduce productivity losses associated with employees’ inability to travel,” Connolly said.
Connolly also asked Metro General Manager John Catoe if the Washington-area transit system could have done a better job in reacting to the snowstorm and keeping its operations open. More than 40 percent of federal employees depend on Metro to get to work, Connolly said.
To see more, go to: http://connolly.house.gov.
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