RENO, Nev., Aug. 25 — Federal employees lost a good friend when Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) died Tuesday night.

Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, recalled a man who was “visible and up front in his recognition of federal employees.”

When he spoke to the organization’s rallies and legislative conferences, his remarks “were from his heart and from knowledge that he had about the work that they did,” Kelley said. “It was never a scripted speech that he read. ... You could see the passion that he had for federal employees, for the country and for the work federal employees did for the country.”

From a long list of federal workplace issues that Kennedy advocated, Kelley made particular note of his efforts to fight plans by the George W. Bush administration to have outside contractors do government work.

“He believed first and foremost that the work of the federal government could best be done by federal employees and [they] needed to be supported in the work they were trying to do. So, his work against privatization of federal work, I would say his fingerprints are all over that,” Kelley said.

The White House plans to create a National Council on Federal Labor Relations, with the intention of fostering cooperation between federal employees and management and the goal of improving government service.

The Council would be patterned on the labor-management partnerships created under former President Bill Clinton, then largely abandoned under George W. Bush. Federal unions have pushed the Obama administration to issue an order creating the council, and it is preparing to do so.

A draft executive order being readied for President Obama says “Labor-Management Forums will allow managers and employees to collaboratively champion change in the Federal Government so that agencies can deliver the highest quality services to the American people.”

A few weeks ago, President Obama declared cybersecurity to be “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation” and said “we’re not as prepared as we should be, as a government or as a country.”

His words basically sum up a new report by a nonprofit organization that calls on his administration to quickly and significantly improve the quality and quantity of the federal cybersecurity workforce.

“Critical government and private sector computer networks are under constant attack from foreign nations, criminal groups, hackers, virus writers and terrorist organizations,” said the report, published by the Partnership for Public Service and the consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton.

The report outlines four primary challenges it says threaten the quality and quantity of the cybersecurity workforce.

»There are not enough qualified applicants for federal cybersecurity jobs.

»The government’s approach to cybersecurity is fragmented and uncoordinated.

»The “notoriously cumbersome hiring process” that affects all of government also hinders the cybersecurity workforce.

»Front-line hiring managers are frequently more dissatisfied with cybersecurity hiring efforts than are their peers in human resources. And many front-line hiring managers and human resources managers are dissatisfied with the level of collaboration with Office of Personnel Management.

To deal with these problems, the report offered several suggestions:

»The cybersecurity czar the White House plans to appoint “should develop a government-wide strategic blueprint for meeting current and future cybersecurity employment needs” and work closely with OPM and other agencies to implement the plan.

»The White House should lead a nationwide effort to steer more U.S. citizens into math, science and technology. Congress should fund the expansion of scholarship programs for students in computer science and cybersecurity.

»Government officials should update job classifications for cybersecurity functions and establish certification requirements for the positions.

»Using the new job classifications, OPM should map cybersecurity career paths starting at the entry level.

»Agencies should develop a corps of managers to lead a multi-sector cybersecurity workforce.

The Senior Executives Association is marking the 30th anniversary of the Senior Executive Service by trying to find out why upper-level federal workers don't want to join the very top ranks of the civil service.

The association is surveying GS-14s and GS-15, those employees at the upper levels of the federal General Schedule workforce classification system. The SES ranks are above GS-15.

"Many talented, able members of this feeder group do not aspire to positions in the executive corps," according to SEA President Carol Bonosaro. "The reasons most often cited include the loss of locality pay and of a guaranteed annual national comparability raise, increased hours and responsibilities, and executive pay overlap with the General Schedule and the National Security Personnel System."

She said the survey is timely because many senior executives are eligible to retire.

“It is important that we know the thoughts of the group of individuals next in line for these senior leader positions, and most especially that we take what we learn from this survey to ensure appropriate incentives are in place to attract the most talented of the GS-14s and 15s to help lead agency programs to address critical service delivery requirements both now and in the future,” said Linda Brooks Rix, co-chief executive of Avue Technologies, which is providing technical support for the survey.

The survey will be available until Aug. 14 at www.seniorexecs.org.

Tomorrow is an anniversary Bob Whitmore never sought and it has been marked with a present he doesn’t want.

Two years ago Thursday, Whitmore was placed on paid administrative leave by the Labor Department, where he is a senior executive in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Now, after the agency paid him $300,000 to do nothing, he learned yesterday that he will be fired this month.

This is not a story about whether Whitmore deserves to get the boot or not. It is a story about a bureaucracy that strings along a 37-year employee with a good record of service. The bosses prohibited him from doing a lick of work, even from home, causing taxpayers to pay for zilch.

Certainly there should be no rush to judgment in cases where a career is at stake. But there is nothing to suggest Whitmore’s case should have taken so long to decide. Perhaps it’s not only the federal hiring process that is broken. If this is any example, the firing process is in pretty bad shape too.

As we’ve reported in previous columns, Whitmore was placed on leave after an altercation with his supervisor that involved allegations, on both sides, of shouting and spitting. He said it was not until April of this year that he was given the specific reasons for his proposed dismissal in a 19-page document.

He fought the firing but lost.

The “decision letter” he received from Deputy Assistant Secretary Donald G. Shalhoub yesterday said Whitmore engaged “in a high degree of disruptive, intimidating and inappropriate behavior in the workplace.”

Shalhoub’s letter said Whitmore’s offer to submit to stress management counseling “rings hollow.”

Whitmore also offered to work at home for 90 days, during which supervisors could evaluate his performance. That would have given them time to decide “am I worth salvaging or do you want to throw me out with the rest of the trash,” Whitmore said.

A lesser penalty, Shalhoub wrote, is insufficient because of “the pervasive nature of your misconduct and the detrimental effect it has had on the efficiency and morale of employees.”

The decision to throw Whitmore out can be appealed.
His lawyer, Robert C. Seldon, said they plan to use an alternative dispute resolution process, which the agency must agree to. After that, Whitmore could appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

“I just think it was shockingly arrogant and completely illegal,” Seldon said of the firing. “This is not over yet.”

Previous columns on Whitmore can be found with a click: here and here.

Contact Joe Davidson at federaldiary@washpost.com

“Pay parity” is a mantra federal civilian employees have long chanted to great effect.

For most of the last 20 years, they have used the power of positive thinking, not to mention good hard lobbying, to persuade Congress they should get the same pay raise rate as members of the military.

But at this point, Frankie and Flo Fed don’t appear to have much more than a hope and prayer that Congress will give them the 3.4 percent increase the men and women in uniform are slated to get.

More likely for civilians is the 2.9 percent cost-of-living increase the Senate Appropriations Committee approved last week. That’s certainly better than the 2 percent raise President Obama proposed in his budget for fiscal 2010. And because the House appropriations bill is silent on civilian pay, there currently is no vehicle Frankie and Flo can ride to the land of 3.4.

That doesn’t mean they won’t keep trying.

“At this point we’re still fighting for pay parity,” said Beth Moten, legislative director for the American Federation of Government Employees. “I believe that the cause is far from lost. If you get to 2.9 it’s only a half point to 3.4.”

They aren’t fighting alone.

Last month, two main House members on federal workforce issues urged the House Appropriations Committee to bump salaries to the higher level.

Democratic Reps. Ed Towns, of New York, and Stephen M. Lynch, of Massachusetts, are chairmen of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and its subcommittee on federal workforce, postal service and District of Columbia, respectively. They deal with a variety of topics affecting the federal workplace, but their panels don’t set federal salaries.

So they urged the committee that does to maintain pay parity.

“Federal employees work side-by-side with military personnel both here and abroad, and deserve to be recognized for their extraordinary efforts,” said their letter to House Appropriations Committee leaders. “Civilian employees serving at DOD [Defense Department], FBI, State, DHS [Homeland Security Department], and at many other agencies support the men and women of the armed forces and work tirelessly to ensure the security of our nation.

“Pay parity has long enjoyed bipartisan and bicameral support, and we ask your Committee to continue this tradition.”

A House committee has thrown the U.S. Postal Service a lifeline, but it won’t be enough to fully stop the financial quicksand that continues to pull the agency under.

Legislation the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee advanced on Friday would allow USPS to pay for the health benefits of current retirees out of its Retiree Health Benefit Fund instead of its operating budget. That would save about $2 billion a year, during the three years the bill covers.

That sounds good until you realize the Postal Service — which is funded by customers, not tax dollars — lost that amount in just the second quarter this year and expects to lose $6 billion this fiscal year. Changing the funding of retiree benefits will help, but it won’t stop the recession from sucking revenue from the agency.

That sucking sound is the financial stability of the Postal Service draining away as the recession cuts deeply into the volume of mail USPS delivers. But unless the economy makes a miraculous recovery, Postal Service officials say more drastic measures are needed than the retiree funding bill provides. Cutting delivery from six days to five is the drastic measure they have in mind.

The retiree funding bill, however, does allow officials the ability to continue to fight for the structural changes they insist are necessary. Lacking this temporary relief, people in the know spoke of the Postal Service’s death without exaggeration.

“Without this legislation the Postal Service will reach its mandated debt ceiling and could very well have to inconceivably end operations,” Bill Krejci,Ö legislative cochairman for the National League of Postmasters, said in a message to the organization’s members.

The measure “would help provide relief for three years at which time the economy hopefully will be on the road to recovery along with the mailing industry. Keep in mind, HR 22 [the bill’s number] alone will not save the Postal Service but it does provide some ‘breathing room’ and in effect could also be considered a jobs bill as well.”

In case there was any lingering doubt from last fall about the government’s position on providing domestic benefits for same-sex partners of federal workers, Office of Personnel Director John Berry erased them this afternoon.

The White House and OPM, he said at the top of his statement to a House hearing, “wholeheartedly endorse passage” of legislation that would provide that health and retirement coverage.

His clear, declarative statement could not have been more of a turnaround from the agency’s bumbling presentation in September. Then, an OPM official told a Senate committee that the Bush administration had no position on similar legislation, only to minutes later correct himself after being slipped a note by an aide, to say OPM actually opposed the bill.

His use of the movie “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry,” an Adam Sandler film about two fire fighters who pretend they are lovers so they can get domestic partner benefits, to demonstrate the dangers of insurance fraud, also gained his position more incredulity than respect.

But now, the Obama administration has reversed the Bush administration’s position and the new policy was presented by the government’s highest-ranking openly gay official.
The current policy, Berry said in his prepared testimony, “is unjust and it directly undermines the Federal Government’s ability to recruit and retain the nation’s best workers. Historically, the federal government has in many ways been a progressive employer, but we’re behind the private sector and 19 states, including Alaska and Arizona, on this one. Almost 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies already offer similar benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of their employees. ..... ...The Federal Government does not effectively compete with these companies for every talented person when we fail to offer comparable job benefits to our employees.”

That did not convince Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the top Republican on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on federal workforce, postal service and the District of Columbia, which held the hearing. He said the bill “is directly discriminatory against heterosexual couples” who cohabitate without marriage. The legislation would not cover them.

Berry said those couples have the option to marry, which would allow them to be covered.

His vigorous efforts to improve federal workforce practices led a meeting host to introduce Office of Personnel Director John Berry at a forum last week as the Energizer bunny.

But in a recent memo he wrote to agency chiefs, Berry sounds more like a modern-day Elliot Ness, a determined enforcer of personnel policies, setting deadlines to transfer those plans into practice.

Berry has created SWAT teams and wolf packs to push federal agencies to improve the government’s hiring process and better conditions for those already on the payroll.
In a June 18 memo to department and agency heads, he said that by Wednesday “each agency will establish a SWAT team” to map current hiring procedures, identify and analyze barriers to efficient hiring, and develop “streamlined and plain language job opportunity announcements.” In addition, Berry named high-level OPM managers as his “hiring wolf pack team lead” and “wellness wolf pack team lead” to be the point of contact for those initiatives.

Members of the SWAT teams will include agency managers and human resource professionals. To keep those teams cracking, Berry also will have OPM representatives on them. And to ensure that agencies do not shun the mission of the teams to a low priority sidetrack, Berry wants the team leaders to hold “a policy or core mission-related role in the agency.”

He set a Sept. 30 deadline for the SWAT teams to provide their agency’s leadership, OPM and the Office of Management and Budget an update of their work. By Dec. 15 the agencies are to develop “an action plan to tackle the barriers” to hiring and should have their plain language job announcements in full use for their top 10 positions.

The mention of OMB is significant because it shows the increased level of involvement by the White House in federal personnel matters. “It is unprecedented for human capital issues to have such a significant role in the overall President’s budget and performance plans,” Berry wrote.

If the past provides lessons, he may need the power of the presidency to make slow moving bureaucracies get with the plan. Many of them all but ignored the End-to-End Hiring Roadmap that the Bush administration unveiled in September.

Some agencies regarded the roadmap the way moonshiners regarded prohibition. “To date, there has been sporadic effort, at best, applied to making this initial first step in our overall hiring reform a reality,” OMB Director Peter Orszag scolded in a June 11 memo to department heads.

A House panel approved legislation today that would provide some relief to the ailing U.S. Postal Service, with a bill that would allow the agency to pay for the health benefits of current retirees out of its Retiree Health Benefit Fund instead of its operating budget.

The Postal Service estimates the measure would save the agency between $2 billion and $2.6 billion a year for each of three years. Originally, the measure was designed to provide eight years of relief, but Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, chairman of the House subcommittee on the federal workforce, postal service, and the District of Columbia, said Congress probably would not approve that because the longer term would be too costly to the Treasury.

The postal service is in dire straights because mail volume has been dropping sharply. The number of pieces delivered in May was down about 30 percent compared with May 2008, according to Lynch.

“The postal service lost $2.2 billion in the first two quarters of fiscal year 2009 and lost another $400 million in April 2009, an almost 15 percent higher loss than in April 2008,” Lynch (D-Mass.) told the panel before a unanimous voice vote on the legislation.

The measure has 335 co-sponsors and approval by the full Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the House and the Senate is expected.

Lynch said quick action is a must. Without the relief provided in the bill, the Postal Service would have to choose between meeting payroll and making mandated payments to the retiree fund.

“They could not do both without this bill,” he said in an interview.

Yet, the bill only provides partial relief to a big problem.

“This allows the post office to fight another day,” Lynch said. “But there are some structural problems that are remaining.”

In addition to changing the way the Postal Service funds retiree health benefits, postal officials also want congressional approval to cut delivery from six days to five. That is a much more controversial issue, and it was not the subject of discussion at today’s meeting.

Legislation the House Armed Services Committee will consider today could make many Pentagon civilians giddy.

Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) plans to offer an amendment to the Defense authorization bill that would effectively end the pay for performance system known as the National Security Personnel System. Federal employee unions and many workers have long called for the dismantling of NSPS. "With worker morale reaching an unprecedented low, the time has come to abandon this ill-conceived plan, which has wasted billions of taxpayers' dollars," Richard N. Brown, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said in a letter supporting the amendment.

Under the Shea-Porter amendment, within one year all NSPS employees would convert to the General Schedule, the pay system for most federal workers, unless the Defense secretary notifies Congress of significant NSPS improvements. Similar provisions would apply to the Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel System.