GovernmentExecutive.com

The annual battle for civilian-military pay parity is back. First the House Armed Services Committee voted this week to increase President Bush’s proposal for a military raise from 2.2 percent to 2.7 percent. Now, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. is calling for the civilian raise to follow suit.

“As in past years, I will lead the effort this year to ensure pay parity for federal civilian employees,” Hoyer said in a press release Friday. “The Appropriations Committee will begin their work next month and I will use my position on that committee to work with its members to provide a fair pay adjustment for federal employees in recognition of their contributions to our country.”

In a twist, after years of battling Bush’s attempts to reward the military with higher raises than civilians, this time Hoyer cited Bush in making his case. That’s because Bush’s budget itself provided parity, in the form of identical 2.2 percent raises for service members and civilians.

The National Treasury Employees Union is royally irritated about President Bush's announcement yesterday that he would appoint Donald V. Hammond, the Treasury Department's fiscal assistant secretary, as the designated representative of IRS employees on the IRS Oversight Board. “There are no circumstances under which this proposed nominee--who doesn’t even work for the IRS--can be thought of as a representative of IRS employees,” said NTEU President Colleen Kelley.

Hammond is a career federal executive (and a distinguished one at that), but it seems pretty clear he's not exactly what lawmakers had in mind when they established the oversight board in IRS reform legislation passed in 1998.
The law specifies that one member of the board "shall be an individual who is a full-time federal employee or a representative of employees and who is appointed by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate."

Ben Sliney's 15 minutes of fame have arrived, but you have to think that it's at best a bittersweet moment for him, given the events that brought him into the public eye. Sliney was the FAA operations manager who gave the order to ground all planes in U.S. airspace after the Sept. 11 attacks. Now he stars as himself in the new film United 93, which tells the story of the jet that crashed in rural Pennsylvania after its passengers fought back against hijackers. Sliney had initially been slated only for a brief cameo in the film, but he performed so well that the director decided no one else could do a better job of playing him.

In case you weren't already excited that Public Service Recognition Week is just around the corner, here's some news that may perk up your interest: Rex the Homeland Security Mountain Lion will be down on the National Mall to help celebrate it. I'll admit, I didn't even know of Rex's existence (let's face it, he's not exactly Smokey the Bear) until this morning. But he's already been interviewed in Playboy, so he's gotta be something of a player.

Well, here's an interesting comparison: Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, says Americans spent as much on "plastic Santa Clauses and tinsel and all this stuff for Christmas last year" as they did on the Defense budget for the entire year. Military spending, he told reporters, is only 3.9 percent of the nation's nearly $13 trillion overall economy--the lowest level ever in wartime.

President Bush has given each agency 20 days to designate officials at or above the minimum level of pay for Senior Executive Service members to serve as "liaisons for volunteer community service." The idea, the president said in an executive order, is to "help ensure that the federal government supports and encourages" such service. Bush's order comes during what he has declared to be National Volunteer Week. Earlier in the week, the Office of Personnel Management issued a notice highlighting its guidance on employee participation in volunteer activities.

Given the drubbing Donald Rumsfeld has been taking lately at the hands of some retired generals, it should come as no surprise that he loves Defense Department civilian employees. At least that's what David S.C. Chu, the Pentagon's top personnel official, says, according to the Defense Department's official news service. Controversial DoD personnel reforms, including implementing a pay-for-performance system, are simply part of Rumsfeld's plan to "restore the civil service to its rightful place as an equal partner with the military," DoD reported. "Too often in recent years managers have avoided using a federal civil service solution because the system has been too cumbersome," Chu told attendees at a workforce conference in Falls Church, Va.

The National Treasury Employees Union praised Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., Wednesday for urging the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Carl Truscott to work with the union on implementing a broad telework program. According to NTEU, Wolf said that a telework program would increase employee productivity, allow more family time for employees and help alleviate the current spike in gasoline prices.

In related news, Reuters reported Wednesday that "telecommuting is becoming a win-win for companies and their staff." Along with reducing employees' need to fill up their gas tanks, Reuters says that telework offers other "hidden benefits for employers."--Daniel Pulliam

With the federal budget deficit spiraling upward, the pork-barrel earmarking process on Capitol Hill is under fierce attack. But now some defenders are stepping into the fray. They argue that the system is absolutely necessary. Why? To save the country from the nefarious influence of federal bureaucrats.

Here's Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., in a letter to the editor of the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot-News:

Earmarking, by its very nature, shifts federal dollars away from the discretion of federal agencies and puts them in American communities. Earmarked dollars generally go to projects that are short-term in nature and small in scope. If federal dollars did not go to these projects, they would be deposited in the accounts of federal agencies and be at the discretion of regional federal offices.

I strongly believe the local congressman has a better idea of the needs for their communities than some federal employee in Washington or a regional office. If we abandon the practice of earmarking, decisions will be made and millions of dollars spent, by tens of thousands of federal employees who have no accountability to taxpayers, voters, or anyone else.

And here's Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., quoted in a story in the Peoria Journal Star: "I would much rather have a voice in what goes into Illinois than some faceless federal bureaucrat who has never visited the state. I know the state better than any federal employee in this town."

That's right folks. Hundreds of congressmen jockeying and horse-trading for approval of their pet projects is better than experienced professionals--accountable to their politically appointed overseers--making rational decisions about how to most effectively distribute appropriated dollars.

Looking for a new line of work after your federal career ends? How about pet sitter? That's the job Toni Eaton took on after 22 years in government, the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser reports.

I'm still catching up on what I missed last week. Here's one quote I liked, from a Wall Street Journal profile of Alex Joel, the new civil-liberties protection officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:

There is no silver-bullet answer. There are actually a lot of silver BBs and if you put enough of those together in a coherent way, wrap it with good policy, procedures and training, then you can have the same impact as a silver bullet.

Members of Congress will take publicity for legislation they have sponsored wherever they can get it. So Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Larry Craig, R-Idaho, is tickled that Garry Trudeau, creator of the comic strip Doonesbury, has chosen recently to highlight legislation passed last year that offers compensation of $25,000 to $100,000 to help traumatically injured military service members. In a series of recent strips, Doonesbury character B.D. agonizes over whether to accept $80,000 in such benefits. (Here's one example.)

Wait just a minute. The folks over in Hawaii get to live in paradise and those of us on the mainland have to take their garbage? So say the folks over at the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, who have announced a proposal to "allow, under certain conditions, the interstate movement of municipal solid waste from Hawaii to the continental United States."

That's "green" in the sense of being highly efficient fuel engines, according to research conducted by the Energy Department's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Apparently the venture capital business at the CIA isn't all it's cracked up to be. Former federal cybersecurity chief Amit Yoran has left his job as head of In-Q-Tel--the CIA unit that invests in cutting-edge technologies in the hopes they'll prove to be of value in the intelligence world--after only four months on the job, AP reports.

It seems that whenever an upcoming presidential campaign race begins to simmer ever so slightly, at least one of the would-be candidates comes out with a proposal related in some way to the pay of federal officials. Case in point: Hilary Rodham Clinton thinks it would be a good idea to link congressional pay raises to increases in the minimum wage.

I'm back! I see that Josh Bolten went ahead with the whole White House/OMB shakeup without consulting me, but other than that I guess it was pretty quiet while I was away. Now that I'm back on the job, I'll start digging up some other stuff to post.

Interesting tidbits from TIME's profile of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte:

• DNI officials say a new "open source" center near Reston, Va., where analysts sift through publicly available information, is working well. For example, open source analysts recently detected what Deputy DNI Michael Hayden called a "shift in the themes that have been appearing on Jihadist web sites."


• Negroponte has hired an ombudsman to hear complaints from intelligence officers when their views are ignored or underemphasized. And reviews of mistakes are launched immediately.


• Negroponte said the FBI is "moving toward the idea of having officers writing up reports for their intelligence value, not only to make cases," but FBI agents are "probably not doing it as much as they could."


• Here's the magazine's description of the DNI's offices: "The DNI suite looks nothing like the sleek and spacious workspaces of TV's "24" -- the Hollywood version of U.S. terror-hunting headquarters. Instead, it's a warren of pathetic-looking workspaces in a 40-year-old building around the corner from the White House. The rooms are dingy, stuffy and overcrowded."

Criminal prosecutions in which the FBI served as lead investigator have fallen by about 25 percent in the past five years, USA Today reports. The agency handled nearly 19,000 cases in fiscal 2001, and a little more than 14,000 last year. Convictions are down by about 11 percent over the same period.
Over the same period, convictions in the FBI's national security and terrorism cases quadrupled, from 84 to 336.

Wired News reported this week that a computer virus known as Zotob crippled the Customs and Border Protection’s US VISIT screening system in August 2005, one week after a patch was released to block the virus. The virus caused significant system failures at several U.S. airports, including those in Los Angeles, New York and Dallas, and resulted in long lines at checkpoints. Wired did not come by this information easily. Only after the publication filed a Freedom of Information Act request and then a lawsuit (that is ongoing) did the agency release a heavily redacted six page document on the incident as well as an inspector general's report concluding that the system was “generally secure,” but vulnerabilities existed that “could compromise” its data.--Daniel Pulliam

Fedblog is off for spring break starting tomorrow and continuing through next week (and no, we're not hitting some hot spot like Daytona or Cancun). We'll be back on April 24.

$250 billion. That's how much federal agencies spent in March, an all-time record for government spending. With receipts at $164.6 billion, Uncle Sam broke another record, running a single-month deficit of $85.5 billion, AP reports.

AP has obtained a draft GAO report showing that "there is clearly potential unintended consequences or abuse" in the awarding of no-bid contracts to Alaska Native corporations by various agencies. Congressional hearings are on the horizon as this issue continues to heat up. For the full background on the situation, see Kim Palmer's feature story in Government Executive last July, and her
more recent update on GovExec.com.

It's not enough that the IRS is hiring private companies to collect tax debts. Now the agency wants wants PayPal's help in tracking down tax cheats. Oh, and by the way, as Tax Day looms, the Justice Department wants you to know that if you do get caught cheating, federal prosecutors will do their best to put you in the slammer.

Having added the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as another layer of bureaucracy in the intelligence chain of command in late 2004, members of Congress are now complaining that the office, well, adds a layer of bureaucracy to the intelligence chain of command. USA Today reports that the House Intelligence Committee is concerned that DNO John Negroponte actually wants to add staff to meet the daunting mission Congress and the White House have given it to improve the nation's capacity to detect terrorist threats. That, says the panel's ranking Democrat, Jane Harman of California, is just not how we do things in the government of the 21st century. Negroponte "needs to focus on capability, not on buildings, billets and bureaucracy," Harman told the paper. So how exactly do you build capacity without people or buildings to put them in? "Leadership, leadership, and leadership," says Harman.

The scientists over at NASA are really into smashing stuff. First it was the Deep Impact probe, which crashed into a comet to see what it was made of. Now, in 2009, the space agency plans to blast a probe into the surface of the moon in a collision so big people will be able to see it from Earth through telescopes, AP reports.

It turns out that two weeks after a Defense Information Systems Agency official was arrested on a charge of child pornography, the U.S. Attorney’s office handling the case dropped the charge. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office says the investigation is ongoing, Government Computer News reports.

OMG! XLNT! The military services, can now, like, IM each other all they want, says Federal Computer Week.

In the Washington Post Magazine Sunday, humor columnist Gene Weingarten shared his thoughts on recent research showing that 10 percent of teleworkers in the United States work in the nude. Weingarten conducted his own "Federal Study on the Policy of Working Naked," and came up with some conclusions that were decidedly different than those in the teleworking policy recently issued by the General Services Administration. Some of the columnist's findings:

• "Telecommuting naked can be an important weight-loss aid. Noshing is nearly impossible. This is because all reflective surfaces prove dispiriting, in particular the stainless steel refrigerator door."


• "The state of working naked is so foreign that one is constantly aware of it, and of its silliness and inappropriateness. This can be a crippling awareness, particularly when someone telephones. It is no problem with a call from one's wife, but it does become a problem with a call from one's daughter, who will want to know why one is giggling. It is bad to lie to one's daughter, but sometimes it is imperative. Also, giggling produces jiggling, which is not good."


• "Smoking a cigar is a bad idea."

Looks like the folks at the Navy aren't the only ones getting in on the ground training act. The Los Angeles Times reports that members of the Air Force--once deried as the "Chair Force" because they typically operate far from the front lines--are being trained in ground combat skills. In Iraq, Air Force members already are leading supply convoys and participating in combat patrols.

President Bush at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast Friday, after introducing several government officials in attendance: "Other members of the administration, thanks for coming. Don't tarry too long. Get back to work."

The Army may be having some issues with recruitment, but retention doesn't seem to be a problem. As of the end of March, the service was 15 percent ahead of its re-enlistment goal for the first six months of fiscal year 2006, USA Today reports. Two of three eligible soldiers had opted to re-enlist. Part of the reason is the bonuses the service offers to try to convince soldiers to re-up. They average $6,000 and can be as high as $150,000 for certain special operations troops.

Problems with the massive effort to upgrade the FAA's telecommunications infrastructure have caused at least three major failures recently in the air-traffic control system, the New York Times reports today. The agency already has lost out on $130 million in projected savings from the program, a figure that could top $200 million.

Consumers of America, the Food and Drug Administration is trying protect you from a nasty case of food posioning. The U.S. Marshals Service, acting on behalf of the FDA, seized 32,000 pounds of crabmeat Friday from American President Lines Limited shipping company in South Kearny, N.J., AP reports. The FDA says the seafood was not kept properly refrigerated while it was in storage, and the company refused to voluntarily destroy it.

Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma--we hardly knew ye. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that these names won't be used any more for hurricanes. They'll be replaced by Don, Katia, Rina, Sean and Whitney. This sets a new record for number of names retired in a single hurricane season. The names are put out to pasture, NOAA says, for "sensitivity reasons and to establish distinction within the scientific and legal communities."

Wow, is this kind of news never going to end? Now Government Computer News reports that Charles Lynch, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Internet Protocol version 6 transition program, has been charged with possession of child pornography that he obtained via a peer-to-peer file-sharing program on a computer in his office.

What is it called when a federal employee repeatedly goes online to pursue a sexual relationship with someone who he believes to be a 14-year-old girl? According to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, it's a "misstep."

Andrew Rose of Trinidad, Colo., and Loyd Holliman of Weston, Colo., went to New Orleans last year to help in search-and-rescue efforts. Unfortunately, then they hired on with FEMA to manage a camp for disaster relief workers, and decided to launch a scam to solicit bribes from a food contractor in return for inflating the head count at the camp. Now, the two have pleaded guilty and are facing up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, AP reports.

Push is coming to shove at national parks. AP reports today on a GAO study of 12 of the most-visited parks, whose top officials are singing a refrain that will sound familiar across government:

Park managers at the 12 sites said they couldn't stretch their budgets to cover higher salaries and benefits and utility costs and also comply with orders to spend more on maintenance and maintain law enforcement levels.

Who would shoot a bald eagle?

Noah Shachtman of DefenseTech.org takes on the FBI's technology woes in Slate this week, and comes to the conclusion that the real problem is an agency culture that is indifferent, if not actively hostile, to tech-savvy agents. (Be sure to check out Shachtman's blog item about the piece for some juicy quotes that didn't make it into the published version.)

That pesky Hatch Act rears its ugly head again. The Danbury, Conn., News-Times reports that Michael Sneideman, a 35-year-old would-be Republican challenger to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., has dropped out of the race after being informed that he couldn't be a mail carrier and a candidate for political office at the same time. Sneideman said he didn't even know about the law.

Here's NASA at its best: The New York Times does an update on the agency's Centennial Challenges, a series of contests offering prizes from $200,000 to $5 million for winning efforts to design everything from new astronaut gloves to elevators that could be used for hauling gear and people into space. The contests are exciting and fun, they stimulate new thinking about space exploration, they stoke public interest in the space program and, the Times reports, they send at least ripples of change through the agency's established bureaucratic procedures:

NASA officials say that some of their contractors are worried that the contests could undermine their work for the space agency. NASA already has companies working on gloves for its space suits; why, then, does it need an Astronaut Glove Challenge? Exactly how good ideas from the competitions will be integrated into the space program isn't entirely clear. "We're still writing the book on this," Mr. [Carl E.] Walz [of NASA's space exploration directorate] said.

Big weekend for agents of the Border Patrol's Marfa, Texas sector: Two busts netted more than a ton of marijuana.

In 1890, the Census Bureau began using tabulating machines to count millions of Americans after it took nearly a decade to complete the constitutionally required counting of U.S. residents 10 years earlier. Former Census employee Herman Hollerith invented the punch-card machines and went on to found what became IBM. In 2010, Pearson Government Solutions of Arlington, Va., will scan paper census forms and process surveys of Americans using the Decennial Response Integration System. According to the company, the contract for the system, which it won as a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin, is worth more than $100 million. In 2000, Pearson operated one of three data centers for the census, processing about 46 million census forms in 120 days.--Daniel Pulliam

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine has a message for the FBI and Coast Guard: Play nice.

The Navy is looking to make its mark in Iraq--on the ground. Stars and Stripes reports that sailors are flocking to the Army’s McCrady Training Center at Fort Jackson, S.C., to receive training in ground combat. The trainees then provide "individual augmentation" to ease the strain on Army and Marine Corps ground units in Iraq.

Seven people who were contacted by the Bush administration about taking the top job at FEMA took themselves out of the running for the post, the New York Times reported Sunday. So now Bush apparently will nominate R. David Paulison, who has held the job on an acting basis since Mike Brown left town, to take it permanently. It's a little difficult to fill a top executive slot in an agency when you've made it clear that if things go wrong, whoever holds that job will take the fall.

Federal agents last week raided the office of NASA program executive James Robinson on suspicion he has viewed and traded child pornography, The Smoking Gun reports. According to an affidavit filed in federal court, Robinson was caught in an undercover investigation led by U.S. postal inspectors. NASA's inspector general also apparently turned the agency's technology against the executive, using a state-of-the-art "skin tone filtering system" to conclude that he was viewing child porn from his office computer.

To make matters worse, the news came in the same week as this announcement.