For a long time there has been a lot of empty noise about the federal hiring process. Now the squeaky wheel is finally getting some high-level grease. Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has put agency and department heads on notice about the urgent need to fix federal hiring. He gave them six months to make progress ...

Throughout the week, Federal News Radio has been covering the debate over federal employee pay. From an analysis in USA Today on Monday, to a rebuttal from the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Thursday, there is a lot of anger on both sides of the issue. Last Friday, The Washington Times printed an editorial, The Federal Bonus Bonanza. John Berry, director ...

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 ...

Federal agencies are on course to start hiring new job applicants with a quicker, résumé-based system in November, government hiring managers said Tuesday. President Obama in May ordered federal agencies to hit the gas on hiring, giving officials until November to cut the federal job-application process to an average of 80 days by switching from a reliance on lengthy essays to ...

The White House and the Office of Personnel Management this week announced hiring initiatives aimed at halting a decline in the representation of disabled employees in the federal workforce. President Obama earlier this week said he hoped the government could become a model for other employers. "Across this country, millions of people with disabilities are working or want to work, and ...

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 ...

OSLO (AP) -- President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to encourage his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism. Nobel observers were shocked by the unexpected choice so early in the Obama presidency, which began less than two ...

A new rule giving agencies authority to hire acquisition employees directly could aid the Obama administration's efforts to bring contract jobs back in-house, and could inform the conversation about hiring reform, according to federal workforce advocates. In a Federal Register notice published on Tuesday, the Office of Personnel Management finalized a regulation extending direct hire authority for procurement jobs. The rule ...

The U.S. Postal Service posted a $3.8 billion net loss during the fiscal year that ended in September, despite $6 billion in cost-cutting moves. Total mail volume fell more steeply than ever -- by 25.6 billion pieces, or almost 13 percent, more than double any decline in postal history. Worse, the Postal Service expects that 2010 mail volume will drop by ...

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 ...

Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry sees great advantages to having federal workers stay home. That wouldn't mean taking the day off, however. Berry is an advocate of teleworking and is asking federal managers and employees to help sell the idea to skeptical managers and lawmakers. Berry was making his pitch Thursday, the same day that Washington area commuters experienced ...

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 ...

In a State of the Union address that ranged from job creation to education reform, President Obama also called for restoring trust in government, streamlining the federal budget, and extending debt forgiveness to students who spend 10 years in public service careers. Saying "no one should go broke because they choose to go to college," Obama proposed a program that would ...

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 ...

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 ...

With logic only a lawyer -- and perhaps only a government lawyer -- could love, the Obama administration is refusing to obey a federal judge's order that agrees with a position the administration supports. Last month, Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, ordered the Office of Personnel Management to allow health insurance companies ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...