Is David Letterman to blame for the lack of diversity at the Department of Homeland Security? The talk show host's recent admission of trysts with women who worked for him, a Republican lawmaker said Wednesday, has provoked not outrage among his fans and the media, but rather a sense of reluctant acceptance. And Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) suggested that such a ...

"When the Senior Executive Service began 30 years ago, all the assistant secretaries for administration in the government," said Carol Bonosaro, "were career executives. Over time, you will now find only two who are career executives and that's because of statute." Which is a real shame, according to the president of the Senior Executives Association. Bonosaro told the Federal Drive that ...

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had cancer surgery earlier this year, was kept at a hospital overnight after she became drowsy and fell from her seat aboard an airplane. Court officials blamed a reaction to medicine. Ginsburg was taken to Washington Hospital Center around 11:15 p.m. Wednesday by paramedics and released Thursday morning, court officials said. Ginsburg, ...

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 ...

Remember when President Obama said he wanted to make working for the federal government cool again? The government's chief human resources officer told lawmakers Thursday that they need to approve a bill that extends full benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of gay or lesbian federal employees in order to ensure the government's coolness factor. “Young people are looking at this ...

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 ...

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. ...

President Obama will call for a five-year freeze in non-security, discretionary spending during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, according to a White House official. The spending freeze will save roughly $400 billion through 2015, according to White House estimates. "In areas outside the freeze, we also will be looking for cuts and efficiencies," a White House official said. ...

A leading government online learning program that serves as a model for job training programs in China soon will allow federal employees to use more social media tools for training. The Agriculture Department's program, AgLearn, is scheduled for an upgrade to a new version of its supporting software, allowing it to provide its employees with blogs and wikis related to their ...

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 ...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Census Bureau on Friday severed its ties with ACORN, a community organization that has been hit with Republican accusations of voter-registration fraud. "We do not come to this decision lightly," Census director Robert Groves wrote in a letter to ACORN, which was obtained by The Associated Press. In splitting with ACORN, Groves sought to tamp down GOP ...

The U.S. Postal Service must look for new ways to generate revenue beyond simply reducing its workforce, said lawmakers and witnesses during a House hearing on Thursday. Employee layoffs are not the only solution to digging the agency out of debt, said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform's federal workforce subcommittee. "It would be a ...

Nearly 1,000 American Federation of Government Employees members marched on the Capitol on Tuesday, urging Congress not to target the federal workforce in efforts to reduce government spending. AFGE members from all 50 states delivered petitions to their senators, arguing that freezing federal salaries, cutting benefits and reducing the government workforce were not good ways to balance the federal budget. The ...

Rep. Gerry Connolly wants to make sure the 2,000 or so Transportation workers who were furloughed last week get paid. The Virginia Democrat introduced a bill Tuesday and the House passed it this morning to pay the employees for the two days they were off due to the lapse in the Highway Trust Fund legislation. President Obama signed into law a ...

At a Government Executive breakfast meeting yesterday, I was asked about salaries for federal employees – an issue that has received some attention lately in the popular press. Especially in these difficult economic times, everyone is understandably concerned about the performance and salaries of our federal workers (which is one reason why the President is freezing salaries and bonuses for all ...

In greater detail than he has before, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry outlined his thinking on remaking the federal personnel system during a speech this week. His address to a Human Capital Management: Federal conference was part of a series of discussions he is holding to help in the monumental task of developing a new civil service system. With ...

John Berry fired the first salvo for how to "reinvigorate" and "unshackle" all aspects of federal human resources. The director of the Office of Personnel Management laid out Monday some initial ideas about changes that he hopes could bring agency hiring, firing, recruiting and retention practices in line with other Fortune 500 companies. Listen to WFED's Federal Drive "Our hiring system ...

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 ...

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 ...

Imagine working for an outfit with a 3-step rank-in-person system instead of 15 grades. A system where outstanding employees could be rewarded, big time, and losers could be punished financially (maybe losing annual leave) and, if necessary fired quickly without red tape and endless appeals. Imagine that if the boss proposed to fire you, you could demand a trial, complete with ...