Federal employees saved more money between March and September than the general population, according to a new survey from a financial firm. On average, fed workers contributed $2,289 per month to their savings -- either through short-term, long-term or retirement savings accounts -- during the six-month period studied by First Command Financial Services, a firm that serves military and public sector ...

Frustrated California voters think a state government overhaul is needed, but a majority believe it shouldn't be so easy for them to change the state's constitution at the ballot box, a new Field Poll has found. Raising the ballot box threshold for approving a constitutional amendment from a majority to two-thirds was favored by 56 percent in the poll and opposed ...

Federal agencies soon will be required to create dashboards on their Web sites tracking the amount of money they have spent on improper payments, under a new directive from President Obama. The executive order -- which Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R. Orszag previewed last week -- is aimed at increasing the transparency and public scrutiny of payments to ...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday he's been having an affair with a woman he visited on a secret trip to Argentina and said he'll resign as head of the Republican Governors Association. Sanford, a rumored 2012 presidential candidate, refused to say whether he'll leave office. "I've let down a lot of people, that's the bottom line," Sanford ...

BOSTON - Federal stimulus funds directly funded 11,692 jobs in Massachusetts during the first three months of the year, according to newly released federal data. That's up from 9,474 jobs in the fourth quarter of last year, indicating some additional stimulus projects in Massachusetts have started ramping up hiring. Nationally, the government says 682,779 jobs were directly funded by the awards ...

Federal government offices in the Washington region will be closed on Monday. Nonessential government workers will be granted excused absences. Emergency employees are expected to report for work on time, and some employees who telework may be expected to work from their telework sites, as specified in their individual agreements. The Office of Personnel Management made the announcement Sunday afternoon, well ...

A new report from a national coalition of mayors urges President Obama to adopt dozens of reforms to help curb gun violence, including steps to crack down on problems at gun shows and the creation of a federal interstate firearms trafficking unit. The "Blueprint for Federal Action on Illegal Guns," a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, presents ...

The Government Accountability Office has again found widespread flaws in how the office administering Medicare and Medicaid manages contracts. The watchdog agency studied a random sample of contract actions at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and estimated that more than 84 percent of fiscal 2008 contract actions had at least one instance where officials failed to implement a key ...

Federal managers tend to be more enthusiastic about their work and more committed to their organizations' missions than their counterparts in the private sector, a new survey shows. The survey, conducted by McKinsey & Co. in partnership with Government Executive, found that the federal government earns higher marks than the private sector on questions relating to what McKinsey calls the "heart ...

Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry announced at a White House forum on Wednesday that he is moving 400 agency employees into a pilot program that will go beyond existing workplace flexibility and telework programs and could serve as a model for the rest of government. "If flexibility can succeed in the federal government with the unrivaled complexity of our ...

WASHINGTON - Wake up and smell the coffee, Seattle. The D.C. metro area is tied for first place with Seattle as America's most-desirable city for the young and restless. The Wall Street Journal asked six experts which 10 cities will emerge as the hottest, hippest destinations for highly mobile, educated twenty-somethings, after the recession. One economist calls the D.C. region the ...

A day after a report released by the Internal Revenue Service showed that federal workers owe more than $3 billion in taxes from 2008, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee has asked the agency to turn its attention on contractors, specifically those working within Medicare and Medicaid programs. According to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the Government Accountability Office previously ...

Proposed changes to rein in state tax incentives for renewable energy projects would do little in the short run to reduce subsidies going to the large, utility scale wind farms that are capturing the lion's share of the incentives. The 13 proposed large-scale wind farms that have submitted applications for Oregon's Business Energy Tax Credit would be eligible for up to ...

The Office of Personnel Management on Thursday announced it will monitor movement of political appointees to career civil service jobs continuously to better protect against politicization of the merit system. In a memorandum to agency heads, Director John Berry said starting in 2010 all agencies must get OPM's permission before giving current or recent political appointees competitive or nonpolitical excepted service ...

WASHINGTON, DC - new Pew poll finds historic levels of unhappiness about the federal government and its role in the lives of average Americans, unrest that is at the foundation of what is shaping up to be a strongly anti-incumbent political year. The current conditions in public opinion amount to a "perfect storm" of disgust/distrust toward government, according to Pew poll ...

In recent years, the web portal, USA.GOV has become one of the most popular destinations in the federal government's web presence. But now, the site's managers are plotting the "next generation" of the site, at a time when social collaboration tools are reshaping the way that people use the World Wide Web. David McClure, associate administrator with the Office of Citizen ...

After wrapping up their national conventions in August, leaders of some of the largest federal employee unions prepared to aggressively pursue a broad set of legislative priorities when Congress returns on Tuesday. They also said their members are looking for clarity about what kind of reforms to the pay and personnel systems the Obama administration might pursue. One of the first ...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Census Bureau kicks off its $300 million campaign Monday to prod, coax and cajole the nation's more than 300 million residents to fill out their once-a-decade census forms. The bureau will mail out the 10-question forms to about 120 million households in March. On Monday, Census Director Robert Groves starts the nationwide campaign with an event ...

Madison — The first solid - if still incomplete - employment numbers for federal stimulus spending by Wisconsin state government show that retaining government positions was job one. Three-fourths of 8,284 stimulus-related jobs accounted for so far were public-sector posts protected by the federal infusion into state and local government coffers, Gov. Jim Doyle's office reported. That included teachers, police officers ...

WASHINGTON — The White House has filled important policy jobs at the two departments essential to President Barack Obama's domestic priorities at a much slower rate than elsewhere in his administration after eight months in charge of the government. At the Treasury Department, which is overseeing one of the largest financial rescue plans in history, just 12 of the 33 high-level ...