"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 ...

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. ...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will look into the quality of agencies' decisions about bias claims, after a new report revealed that during a five-year period, the percentage of those decisions upheld on appeal declined considerably. Click here to read the new report "Federal agencies must step up their efforts to improve complaint processing time, while also focusing on quality results," ...

Participation in telework rose in 2008, but the percentage of eligible federal employees who took advantage of the alternative work arrangement on a regular basis remained small, according to a report released Wednesday by the Office of Personnel Management. Click here to read the report Last year, 102,900 federal employees worked off-site at least once a month, the report stated. That's ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission this week unveiled a wide range of changes to how discrimination complaints in federal agencies are filed, processed and decided. The recommendations were the product of an internal agency working group, led by acting EEOC Chairman Stuart Ishimaru, and inspired by a 2002 public meeting held to solicit suggestions for improving the EEO complaint process. Peggy ...

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 ...

Not long after Kristen Taddonio and Clare Rowley moved into their George Washington University dorm in 2001, the freshman roommates bonded while watching the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, on a Lafayette Hall television. They went their separate ways after graduation and lost track of each other, but both ended up pursuing careers with the federal government. Eight years later, ...

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 ...

The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program typically includes an array of health insurance options. But this year the choices are more limited than before because 32 health insurance plans are leaving FEHBP or reducing their coverage across the country. "It's kind of a disturbing trend," said Dave Snell, retirement benefits service department director for the National Active and Retired Federal Employees ...

By unanimous consent, the Senate on Thursday passed legislation (S. 806) to stabilize the funding and management of Federal Executive Boards, which coordinate the actions of federal offices outside the Washington area. "President Kennedy showed great foresight when he called for the coordination of federal agencies' activities in 1961, and FEBs have done a good job since then in coordinating their ...

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 ...

You know things are bad at a government agency when a Cabinet secretary says as much while swearing in the new boss. It happened at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in August, when Commerce Secretary Gary Locke showed up to swear in the new director, David Kappos, and told the rank-and-file that the agency's backlog had a negative impact on ...

Federal employees submitted more than 38,000 ideas to help the government save money. An Office of Management and Budget official says as of Oct. 14 employees suggested about 38,400 ways to make the government more effective and efficient. OMB stopped accepting official entries as of last Tuesday, but says on its Web site that it would still take ideas. The official, ...

The federal government is wading into the supermarket aisle, making its first effort to provide better nutritional information on food products since it developed the black-and-white Nutrition Facts label 15 years ago. Margaret A. Hamburg, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said Tuesday that shoppers are bombarded by slogans ("Heart Healthy," "Good for You," "A Better Choice") on products ...

A Republican senator is holding up legislation that would prevent Transportation Department workers furloughed earlier this month from losing pay. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said he is upset by the bill's funding mechanism. "Time and time again, Congress intentionally waits until the last minute to consider important legislation and then declares the billions of dollars in foreseeable costs as emergency spending ...