Federal Drive

Thursday Morning Federal Newscast – May 19th

Plan to cap federal bonuses detailed, Navy details enlisted quotas; chiefs get break, Email breach risks SEC worker data

Federal News Network Staff

May 19, 2011 10:14 am

4 min read

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air.

The Obama administration is talking about sharply reducing performance bonus awards. Under discussion is a limit of 5 percent bonuses for Senior Executives, and one percent for everyone else. A six page memo outlining the plan was obtained and published by the Washington Post. Administration officials say the plan is still under discussion. The memo was sent to federal department heads. It was authored by OPM Director John Berry and Deputy OMB Director Jeff Zients. The two expressed worry that federal employees have come to expect awards as entitlements.
The Office of Personnel Management is touting its reforms to the federal hiring process. OPM director John Berry says less than 4 percent of all agencies require job applicants to write knowledge, skills and abilities essays, or KSA’s. That in part, has cut down the average hiring time down to 105 days. Berry also touted lessons learned from how the private sector recruits and hires new employees.
Lawmakers want federal employees’ to increase their retirement contributions from 0.8 percent to about 6 percent. It’s one of several deficit reduction plans targeting federal pay included in the House GOP’s 2012 Budget proposal. The pension change idea was part of the President’s bipartisan deficit commission report. Dan Adcock, legislative director of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, tells Federal News Radio the White House seems to be “warming up to” the idea. Vice President Joe Biden and lawmakers reportedly discussed changing federal employee pension contributions in closed door talks last week.
The Navy says its enlisted retention boards will meet this summer to cut about 3,000 sailors from the ranks. Chief petty officers and senior chief petty officers will be largely spared. Stars and Stripes reports, more than 15,000 sailors between the ranks of E-4 and E-8 with seven to 14 years of experience will be reviewed for adverse performance. The remaining sailors in grades E-4 through E-6 will face full performance reviews.
A data breach at the Securities and Exchange Commission affects about 4,000 employees. The Los Angeles Times is reporting an unencrypted email was sent containing the social security numbers and other payroll information for the SEC workers. Software meant to catch such errors, reportedly failed. The employees have been notified of the breach.
The General Services Administration is preparing to consolidate it’s contractor databases using open source software. Federal Times reports the current databases are kept in eight separate systems. The new process is called SAM, or the System for Awards management. IBM has already developed the architecture and requirements for the first phase of SAM. GSA is now soliciting development bids. It wants the system to be a single point of entry for contractor registration, and contract and performance data. It also wants information to be available to the public.
Everybody wants to skip the airport pat-down, and not just travelers, either. USA Today reports the airline industry, business and leisure travel groups and the federal government agree that the process must change. The alternatives are traveler verification systems, when your background is checked well before you fly. The Transportation Security Administration is testing a verification program for airline crews, and has said that it needs to have a similar system for frequent travelers who pose no risk and are able to prove it.
The National Nuclear Security Administration has set an ambitious 10-year strategic plan for itself. It promises to speed up the dismantling of retired nuclear weapons and improve the way it does business. The 20-page report puts the planned actions into five categories. Reducing nuclear danger, managing the U.S. stockpile, modernizing the agency’s infrastructure, boosting its science, and becoming more efficient. NNSA, part of the Energy Department, is headed by Thomas D’Agostino. He promises that by 2016, the agency will be able to remotely monitor nuclear facilities. NNSA’s mission is to oversee nuclear weapons and provide nuclear propulsion systems to the Navy. Commercial nuclear reactors come under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.