WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's national security adviser, retired Gen. James Jones, says decisions on how best to stabilize Afghanistan and beat back the insurgency must extend beyond the issue of troop levels to improved governance and how best to foster economic development. The debate over sending up to 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan is just one element that ...

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 ...

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 ...

Lawyers, lobbyists, librarians and concerned citizens, rejoice: As of Monday, it is much easier to access the Federal Register. The de facto daily newspaper of the executive branch publishes approximately 80,000 pages of documents each year, including presidential disaster declarations, Medicare reimbursement rates, and thousands of agency rulings on policies ranging from banking to fishing to food. It's a must-read for ...

Citing the ongoing economic crisis and a ballooning federal budget, President Obama announced he would use his authority to set a 2 percent pay raise for federal employees starting in January 2010. The proposal angered employee groups and lawmakers who have pushed for pay parity between civilians and members of the military, who are slated to receive a 3.4 percent raise ...

Never let it be said that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano doesn't know how to kick off National CyberSecurity Awareness Month. "I'm pleased to announce today that we've been given direct authority to hire up to 1,000 additional cyberspecialists within the Department of Homeland Security, to assist, and make our efforts more robust and vibrant than they are right now." The ...

Federal employees have submitted more than 10,000 ideas to improve government, and feds still are two more weeks to enter. The Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag wrote in his blog today that his office has received 10,266 entries under the Securing Americans Value and Efficiency (SAVE) Award. OMB announced the competition Sept. 23, and it runs through Oct. ...

Civil servants are no longer in danger of being forced off the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program under the Senate Finance Committee's version of health care reform legislation. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, agreed to scale back a proposal that would have required all federal employees to move from FEHBP to state-based health exchanges so it applied only to members of Congress ...

President Obama has banned federal employees from text messaging when they are behind the wheel of government vehicles and from texting in their own cars if they use government-issued phones or are on official business. The ban, in the form of an executive order signed Wednesday night, was announced Thursday by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood at the culmination of a ...

On Nov. 3, 2008, Elizabeth Colton, a Foreign Service officer, received an e-mail with good news: She had been offered a two-year posting as chief of the political-economic section at the U.S. Embassy in Algiers. "Congratulations!" wrote Maggie Nardi, acting director of the Office of Maghreb Affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. "On behalf of NEA and ...

In a move designed to improve employee morale and to help reduce a growing backlog, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office proposed changes Wednesday to its way of determining how long a patent examiner has to complete a patent examination and the incentives that examiners earn. The modifications, which must be approved by agency employees in the coming weeks, would be ...

Complaints from the federal workforce alleging discrimination by the government increased slightly in the latest figures from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ending a recent downward trend. The EEOC's Annual Report on the Federal Workforce notes 16,752 complaints alleging employment discrimination filed against the federal government in Fiscal Year 2008 -- up 2.4 percent from the prior year. The complaints ...

As major Capitol business and labor groups denounced a tax overhaul package released Tuesday by a blue-ribbon commission, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger essentially embraced the plan, whose key components would flatten the state's income tax and install a new form of consumption tax on businesses. The Republican governor said he would sign the plan if it landed on his desk in ...

Miami commissioners finally balanced the city's 2010 budget shortly before midnight Tuesday, after unanimously accepting hard-fought agreements with the city's police, fire and general service unions. All told, the agreements -- two of which were voted on by union members Monday, the other only a few hours before the city's third budget hearing got under way Tuesday -- will save Miami ...

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 federal program to allow borrowers with little or no equity in their homes to refinance is struggling to gain traction, according to government data released Tuesday, showing that only 93,070 borrowers have been helped since the effort was launched in April. The program has encountered difficulties that government regulators had not expected, such as the limited capacity of lenders to ...

Federal government employees can expect a big jump in their health-care costs in 2010, officials said Tuesday. Employees enrolled in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program will pay an average 8.8 percent more in health-care costs, according to figures released by the Office of Personnel Management. The increase averages $5.98 per paycheck for individual health-care coverage, and a $12.87 increase for ...

Michigan state government operations are being prepared for a partial shutdown Thursday -- one that almost everyone in Lansing agrees will not take place. Liz Boyd, spokeswoman for Gov. Jennifer Granholm, declined Monday to discuss plans for shutting down operations if the governor and Legislature haven't reached an agreement by midnight Wednesday on spending for the budget year that begins Oct. ...

The House last week overwhelmingly passed legislation that supporters say will save money for thousands of federal retirees facing a potential increase in their Medicare Part B premiums. The 2009 Medicare Premium Fairness Act would affect many retirees under the Civil Service Retirement System, who do not receive Social Security payments since CSRS was designed to be equivalent to the Social ...

Pay increases will be the same in 2010 for almost all Defense Department employees, regardless of whether they are covered by the controversial pay-for-performance or General Schedule system, the Pentagon has decided. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates's conclusion provides yet another measure of the troubled state of pay-for-performance, the National Security Personnel System, which was created by the Bush administration to ...