Federal Daily - March 16, 2010

OPM Issues Final Five-Year Plan

The Office of Personnel Management has posted its final version of “A New Day for Federal Service, the agency’s five-year strategic plan for improving recruitment, management and compensation systems in the federal government.

“I am convinced we can make bold changes,” OPM Director John Berry stated in the document. “Achieving the strategic goals outlined in this plan may not be easy, but doing so is absolutely necessary to make the Federal government the model employer in the United States, and OPM its model agency.”

Among the many general tenets of the plan, the document states that OPM aims to “improve Federal labor-management relations across the government by … meeting regularly with national and local leadership of organizations which represent employees and management” and “facilitating opportunities for labor and management to meet regularly across the government.”

Long-term objectives in the plan include hiring reforms to enable 80 percent of departments and major agencies to meet targets for manager and applicant satisfaction and for reduced hiring times. The plan also calls for a 50 percent boost over 2009 in the number of eligible federal teleworkers.

“We are going to be getting feedback from the agencies as to how well they are doing,” Edmund Byrnes, an OPM spokesperson, told Federal Daily. “We’ve already put out a call for questions and comments,” Byrnes said. “This is the final strategic plan.”

For more, go to www.opm.gov.

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VA Launches IT Virtual Training Center in West Virginia

The Department of Veterans Affairs on March 12 announced that it had opened a national virtual training center for its information technology workforce in the rural town of Falling Waters, W.Va.

The national training center will serve as a hub for VA’s four existing regional IT training centers in Denver, Arlington, Texas; Orlando, Fla.; and Washington, D.C. The department intends to add three more regional sites this year, including offices in Salt Lake City and Vancouver, Wash.

The national facility will teach trainers at the regional sites via the Internet, and the regional centers will deliver training to front-line staff through a VA distance-learning network, VA said. The academy will use videoconferencing and virtual desktop technology to offer more frequent training at reduced cost, and will be able to reach more than 200 students at one time across the country, VA said.

The new technology also enables various presentation formats in addition to interactive video, including Web-based courses, on-demand recordings and live meetings.

“VA must use education, technology and nationwide collaboration to build a workforce with the knowledge that supports fast delivery of secure information about veterans and accessible services for them,” said VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki.

To see more, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ycadltt.

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FCC Suggests Outfitting Military Installations With High-Speed Internet

Military families at certain installations soon could get access to blazingly fast Internet service. The Federal Communications Commission on March 12 recommended that DoD select a few military installations under a demonstration project to offer ultra-high-speed broadband connections to military personnel and their families.

The recommendation is part of the National Broadband Plan, authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which looks to more widely deploy Internet broadband connections.

The FCC suggested that DoD create a task force to study where the broadband connections should be installed, and examine the level of connectivity and applications that could be deployed and supported. FCC noted that the military would retain operational control over the requirements and project implementation.

While military installations typically already have broadband connectivity, they are ideal communities for ultra-high-speed broadband connectivity because of the scale and variety of services they provide to military personnel and their families, FCC said.

“The nation’s military installations house, train, educate, heal and support tens of thousands of service personnel and their families,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. “These military communities should be first in line to benefit from the latest technologies and ultra-high-speed connectivity.”

To see more, go to: http://tinyurl.com/y98aakp.

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