management

Feds@Work: IRS’ Top Cop on the Frivolous Claims Beat

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This is one in a series of profiles on the 2012 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal finalists. The awards, presented by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, recognize outstanding federal employees whose important, behind-the-scenes work is advancing the health, safety and well-being of Americans and are among the most prestigious honors given to civil servants. This profile features a finalist for the Justice and Law Enforcement medal Shauna Henline, senior technical coordinator for the Frivolous Return Program at the Internal Revenue Service in Ogden, Utah.

Year after year, thousands of people try to avoid paying federal taxes by making outlandish claims, including that wages are not income, or that taxes are voluntary, are only paid by federal employees, can be avoided because of religious beliefs or can be exempted as reparations for slavery. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 23, 2012 at 9:00 AM

Transferring Workplace Knowledge Starts With Diversity Training

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Competitive pressures have increased the demand for superior performance by employees in every setting imaginable. Yet with a tight budgetary environment as well as workforce shifts, the challenge for federal agencies is how to bring employees’ knowledge base up to the required levels of excellence with the least disruptive impact on operations and cost.

That is particularly true as successive generations move into positions of responsibility. Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, account for 26% of the total U.S. population. Although many are postponing retirement, nationally, 10,000 Boomers retire each day – taking with them years of work experience and institutional knowledge. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 18, 2012 at 1:19 PM

Feds@Work: FEMA, Private Sector Team Up to Combat Disasters

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This is one in a series of profiles on the 2012 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal finalists. The awards, presented by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, recognize outstanding federal employees whose important, behind-the-scenes work is advancing the health, safety and well-being of Americans and are among the most prestigious honors given to civil servants. This profile features a finalist for the Homeland Security medal Daniel Stoneking, director of the private sector division in the Federal Emergency Management Agency‘s Office of External Affairs in Washington, D.C.

When tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes strike communities throughout the United States, federal, state and local teams immediately rush to the scene to provide emergency aid and to assist in recovery and rebuilding efforts. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 18, 2012 at 10:30 AM

US Firefighters Gain Access To Federal Health Insurance

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The Office of Personnel Management took steps today to extend federal health insurance coverage eligibility to temporary firefighters and fire protection personnel working on wildland fires across the country.

OPM published an interim final regulation under the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) program, in response to direction from President Obama, that ensures federal firefighters and their families will have access to the same health insurance afforded to full time federal employees, according to a statement issued by OPM Director John Berry. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 17, 2012 at 12:21 PM

There Will Be (Virtual) Blood – Navigating the Hypervisor Boom

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There’s a battle brewing in the agency IT world, and for once, it has nothing to do with cloud computing — at least on the surface.

This fight is over hypervisors – a key component of a virtualization strategy and one that forms the basis for a successful private or hybrid cloud implementation. Specific battle lines are drawing around the various hypervisor “flavors” and which, if any, federal IT teams should standardize upon. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 17, 2012 at 10:00 AM

Putting The 2012 IOGDC Data To Work

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Last week’s International Open Government Data Conference offered a lot of worthy ideas and insights. Among them was the Best of the Lightning Talks by Tariq Khokhar, World Bank Open Data Evangelist, and Jeanne Holm, Data.gov Evangelist, which summarized 29 different presentations that made virtually in the initial days of the conference.

I have been compiling and auditing the presentations and materials presented throughout the conference and found, however, some real deficiencies that suggest things presented are not as advertised. For instance: Keep reading →

 /  Published July 16, 2012 at 11:00 AM

New NIST Draft Standards Update Federal Identity Cards

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Personal identity verification cards required for all federal employees and contractors will now be easier to use and more secure thanks to new draft standards just released by National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The changes incorporate the latest round of comments and revisions aimed at updating the original 2005 standard. “In 2011, we had our first draft,” said Hildegard Ferraiolo, a computer scientist with NIST. “We got about 1200 comments.” Keep reading →

 /  Published July 16, 2012 at 10:30 AM

Feds@Work: Reform Effort Protects Poor, Uninsured Children

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This is one in a series of profiles on the 2012 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal finalists. The awards, presented by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, recognize outstanding federal employees whose important, behind-the-scenes work is advancing the health, safety and well-being of Americans and are among the most prestigious honors given to civil servants. This profile features a finalist for the Citizen Services medal Lance Rodewald, Director of the Immunization Services Division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Lance Rodewald reformed the nation’s publicly-funded vaccine system so that more poor and uninsured children are protected against life-threatening diseases and the immunization process is more efficient. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 16, 2012 at 7:00 AM

Feds@Work: VA Designs Learning Institution to Develop and Identify Talent

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This is one in a series of profiles on the 2012 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal finalists. The awards, presented by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, recognize outstanding federal employees whose important, behind-the-scenes work is advancing the health, safety and well-being of Americans and are among the most prestigious honors given to civil servants. This profile features a finalist for the Management Excellence medal Alice Muellerweiss, Dean of the VA Learning University at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C.

Alice Muellerweiss helped design, establish and now heads a new learning institution that provides web-based and in-person leadership, management, technical and professional training to Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employees nationwide. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 12, 2012 at 10:30 AM

Measuring Telework Outcomes: The Agency Perspective

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Trying to measure the real return on investment for allowing federal employees to telework has inevitably involved a bit more art than science. Intuitively and anecdotally, it seems obvious that giving federal workers more flexibility to work remotely makes smart economic sense; and it goes a long way toward improving employee productivity and satisfaction too.

Yet after years of trying to implement telework policies in the federal government, it’s clear from the Office of Personnel Management‘s first comprehensive report to Congress on Telework, released July 6, that assembling reliable figures about telework implementation is still not an easy task. Keep reading →

 /  Published July 9, 2012 at 3:45 PM
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