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Fedblog is taking a little holiday break. I may post some updates if I stumble upon items of interest between now and Jan. 2, but hopefully I'll be spending most of my time enjoying the company of family and friends. Happy holidays to all!

Oh, and be sure to check out our annual holiday poem if you haven't already.

GSA has made it official: The agency will merge its policy and legislative affairs operations into a new Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs and
Governmentwide Policy. It's a win-win-win-win, says GSA Administrator Lurita Doan, enabling the agency to "improve services to all of our customers, including the Congress, federal agencies, as well as state and local governments."

The Office of Personnel Management keeps telling agencies they should use recruitment, relocation and retention incentives to try to attract new employees and hold on to the ones they've got -- especially since so many federal workers are becoming eligible for retirement. Now OPM wants agencies to report on just how they're using such incentives.

Sandy Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, not only sneaked out of the National Archives with classified documents, but hid them under a construction trailer so he could go back and get them later? And then lied about it? And for all of this he only had to pay a fine, perform some community service and agree not to access to classified information for three years? I'm not saying the guy should do hard time or anything, but it seems like maybe they ought to keep him away from the classified stuff forever.

The New York Times parses President Bush's new "we're not winning, we're not losing" line on Iraq.

Flexible spending accounts for medical expenses are growing in popularity among federal employees, OPM reports. During this year's health benefits open season, 227,000 employees signed up for accounts in the FSAFEDS program, a 26 percent increase over last year. The employees can put up to $5,000 in the accounts on a pre-tax basis to pay for expenses not covered by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program or other insurance, such as dental care, eyeware, prescription drug co-payments and over-the-counter medicines.

The Washington Post's Steve Barr notes today that the government's Web portal, Firstgov, is highlighting holiday gifts available for sale from federal agencies. Of course, he also notes that "it's too late to order many of Uncle Sam's items in time for postal delivery by Christmas."

A report prepared by the Republican staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has concluded that military personnel are effectively taking over at some U.S. diplomatic posts overseas, the New York Times reports today. The shift isn't just happening in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but in remote parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. At one small (and unnamed) embassy in Africa, the ambassador told committee staffers that military personnel might outnumber diplomats within a year. Military experts say the trend results from the fact that some U.S. outposts have been reduced to a skeleton staff of civilians.

Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner has a prediction. He told the Washington Times that we're about to have our first $1 billion presidential election. Toner says the major-party nominees are likely to reject public financing and seek to raise up to $500 million for their campaigns. He predicts that the "entry level" for getting into the race will be $100 million by the end of 2007.

OPM's Linda Springer has been hearing from the folks in New Orleans about federal employees in the area who continue to struggle to rebuild their homes and lives. "A number of sources, including the New Orleans Federal Executive Board, local agencies, and individual employees have expressed concerns about the personal hardships caused by sharp increases in the cost of living and difficult living and working conditions," Springer wrote in a memo to federal chief human capital officers yesterday. The memo addresses flexibilities agencies can use to increase employees' pay. But it mostly focuses on what government can't -- or won't -- do.

For example, Springer says, "an across-the-board pay increase for all employees in the area to offset the higher cost of living in the Gulf Coast area" is out of the question. Locality pay regulations are based on the cost of labor in various areas, not the cost of living, and "cannot be fine tuned to respond to temporary, emergency situations," Springer says. Likewise, special pay rates can only be used for raising the pay for certain categories of workers, and "are not the appropriate vehicle for increasing pay for all employees, regardless of staffing needs."

So what's left? "A more strategic approach," Springer writes, focusing on retention incentives. These, she notes, "provide a short-term fix and do not confer the same ongoing impact on agency salary outlays associated with other flexibilities."

"The Divine Cup Runneth Over." Divine Imaging Commodities, a small woman-owned California company, has nabbed a multi-million-dollar, five year blanket-purchase award from the General Services Administration to supply soup cups to U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. The woman owner of that business is one Kimberly Devane, who just happens to be the niece of actor William Devane. That's right, the same guy who had prominent roles in "24," "Knots Landing," and about 100 other TV shows. Maybe he gave his niece some inside advice on government operations. After all, he's played the secretaries of both State and Defense in his long career, along with various military officials.

The Transportation Security Administration has stepped up efforts to conduct background checks on airport employees across the country. Now, USA Today reports, Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., wants to go a step further and force nearly 1 million such employees to go through screening checkpoints before they report to work each day. That's impractical, say airport officials.

A number of military service members have been convicted of crimes related to abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other locations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the New York Times reports today that a special Justice Department team is having much less success tracking down and prosecuting civilian government employees accused of misconduct. Part of the problem? Collecting evidence and finding witnesses in war-torn regions.

There's a whole other point of view from the one expressed in Friday's item referencing a Washington Post story quoting put-upon feds saying potential Metro fare increases would hit them in the pocketbook. Here's one representative e-mail I received on the subject today:

I was flabbergasted at the tone of the Washington Post article you quoted. I think the Post generally does a good job, but this article did little more than quote a few malcontents, without noting a few pertinent generalizations. First, am I the only fed who collects a transit subsidy? It was $105 per month, but we were advised today that it will be increased immediately to $110. This subsidy pays most of my commuting cost. I sympathize with riders who do not get a federal-level transit subsidy and have inflexible schedules, but the number of feds in that category is small and diminishing.

I know there are lots of worthy requests for leave donations for federal employees in difficult circumstances, but as a coach of my son's sports teams, I can't resist this one. Richard Amrhine of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star opined yesterday about Billy Greer, a computer specialist at the Defense Technical Information Center who has devoted countless hours outside the office to coaching youth baseball and basketball. Earlier this year, Greer developed osteosarcoma, a cancer of the bone tissue, in his hips and pelvis. As a result, he's worked only about 50 hours since August, and is on the verge of using up all of his available sick and annual leave. But other federal employees can step up to donate some of their unused leave for Greer as he recovers from chemotherapy and surgery. You can find the OPM leave donation forms here.

Thinking of bringing some traditional holiday treats home for the holidays? You might want to reconsider, warns the Transportation Security Administration. Seemingly innocuous items like eggnog and six-packs of beer now fall victim to restrictions on liquids aboard aircraft. "We don't like to disrupt traditions, but it's an unfortunate by-product of our responsibility," Doug Johnson, TSA spokesman at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas told Cox News Service. In what Johnson called a "heartbreaking story," one traveler had to give up a 100-year-old bottle of scotch.

Interesting federal employee perspective in today's Washington Post story on a potential Metro fare increase during the peak of rush hour. "Many riders," the Post reported, "said the proposals unfairly target suburban commuters who work for federal agencies and have no control over when they start their workdays." Here's one employee's take:

"Stick 'em up," said John Parker, 61, raising his arms in a mock holdup as he got off a Red Line train at Metro Center about 8:15 a.m. yesterday. "We're the easiest targets," said Parker, a Rockville resident who commutes between Twinbrook and Foggy Bottom, where he works at the State Department. Parker has to travel during rush hour, and he doesn't want to drive because there is no parking.

Here's further evidence that agencies need to get prepared for a whole new level of oversight. House Democrats are planning to create a new type of committee to oversee U.S. intelligence spending, the New York Times reports. The new panel would include members of both the Intelligence and Appropriations committees.

According to Michael Chertoff, it can be summed up as follows: There's "a lot more work to do."

The U.S. Mint has a new rule, CNNMoney.com reports: Stop melting down money. Apparently, at current metal prices, pennies and nickels are worth more as metal than currency.

So how is Lurita Doan's effort to rein in General Services Administration Inspector General Brian Miller's office playing in the heartland? If Racine, Wis., is any example, not all that well. The editors of the Racine Journal-Times opined on Doan's efforts yesterday, saying she lives in a "hazy world" in which "it would appear that one way to reduce government waste is to muzzle the watchdog. Less yapping that way." The editors said they "would urge our local congressional representatives to make sure that Miller’s watchdogs can keep on growling as they sink their teeth into some $55 billion in government contracts for the Pentagon, Homeland Securities and other agencies."

Suddenly, information about whether small businesses are actually small has gone missing from the Defense Department's Central Contractor Registry. Or so says the American Small Business League. At about 3 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday, employees of the organization were using the registry (specifically, "compiling information for an investigative report by a television network," they say) when key data suddenly disappeared. In its place was the following message: "A firm's actual revenues and number of
employees are not releasable under the Freedom of Information Act." Interesting, especially since this story emerges at a time of a lot of angst over recent federal efforts to tighten up the process of certifying companies as small businesses for contracting purposes.

Charles Paidock, a regional vice president for the National Federation of Federal Employees in Chicago, is steamed. According to a Chicago Sun-Times report, the General Services Administration took issue with a display he put up at the Kluczynski Federal Building in the city featuring union membership literature and holiday treats. Paidock, apparently, hadn't filled out the necessary forms for approval of such a display. So in the middle of the night Monday, it suddenly disappeared. Paidock's take on the situation? "This is a lot of Doo-wa-ditty."

The Transportation Security Administration has made a huge dent in the number of on-the-job injuries suffered by airport screeners, USA Today reports. The agency's injury rate in fiscal 2006 was 16 per 100 employees, down from 29 in 2005 and 36 in 2004. Of course, that's still a higher rate than almost anywhere else in government (or private industry, for that matter), but that's what happens when the job involves hoisting heavy luggage on a regular basis.

The Justice Department is appealing a judge's ruling that the Treasury Department is discriminating against the blind by issuing paper bills that are all the same size. Switching to different-sized bills -- like 180 other countries do -- or adding features like Braille lettering to paper currency would place an undue burden on the vending machine industry, government lawyers argue. And the shift would require the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to make an initial investment of $178 million and then spend another $37 million to $50 million to produce new printing plates, they say.

Courtesy of Defense Tech, here's a link to a rather odd exchange between Donald Rumsfeld and Cal Thomas of Fox News Watch, in which the the soon-to-be departing Defense secretary reveals the following:

• He hasn't been to a movie in six years.


• He loves The Sound of Music, but thinks Julie Andrews is "showing her years."

Are you a new Schedule C political appointee? Then the Office of Personnel Management wants you to know that even though there are only a couple of years left in President Bush's term, "you will play a key role in turning President Bush’s principles of a citizen-centered, results-oriented, and market-based government into reality." And OPM wants you to attend the next in its series of briefings for Schedule Cs on Feb. 7. It'll cost your agency $425, OPM says, but that'll be money well spent, because you'll get "an overview of executive branch priorities and a unique opportunity to interact with a broad range of policymakers." OPM's being coy for now about who exactly those people might be, but its announcement promises that "the keynote address will be delivered by a senior Bush Administration official." And what's more, a federal judge will be there to formally swear you in to your new position.

The old civl service hiring exam is a thing of the past, a victim of lawsuits and the mainstreaming of what had once been alternative hiring techniques. But the rigorous Foreign Service exam lives on as the leading example of merit-based competitive federal hiring. Not for long, though. The Washington Post reports that the State Department has proposed to shorten the test and eliminate its status as the make-or-break first step in a Foreign Service career. The department is seeking to use a new approach, known as "Total Candidate," that would include resume submissions, reference checks and an evaluation of things like team-building skills. The impetus for the switch? That bugaboo all federal agencies are struggling with: The need to replace aging baby boomers.

Almost forgot--my favorite part of the GAO report on how the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet program is failing to meet its strategic objectives was this bit about how the project met one of its more specific goals:

Reduction of civilian IT workforce: The target was to have a zero reduction in its civilian IT workforce. The Navy reported that it met this target.

The IRS began moving employees back into its headquarters Friday, following the completion of construction to repair damage caused by flooding in the building's basement in June. About 400 employees returned to the building at 1111 Constitution Ave. NW on Friday, with another 600 slated to move back in today. On Dec. 19, another wave of 800 workers will make their way back, and a handful of others won't return until after Jan. 1. The employees had been scattered at 15 other buildings in the Washington area.

I hope agencies didn't go spending any money in the middle of the night on Friday. Because while the continuing resolution keeping government open expired at midnight, President Bush didn't sign a new CR, keeping agencies funded through Feb. 15, until Saturday morning.

There were lots of kind words last week for departing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. But Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., the soon-to-be former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, couldn't get resist getting in a last-minute dig at his fellow GOPer, the New York Times reports. Speaking after Congress failed yet again to pass most fiscal 2007 spending bills, Lewis said: “The breakdown of regular order this cycle -- indeed the failure to get our bills done -- should be squarely placed at the feet of the departing Senate majority leader who failed to schedule floor time for the consideration of appropriations bills.”

This New York Times headline about the reelection of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. (who, you'll remember, was found with what the FBI says is $90,000 worth of bribe money in his freezer), says it all: "New Orleans Voters Support Their Man Over F.B.I."

Some people will do anything to retain their access to federal retirement benefits. In its latest semiannual report to Congress (only available in print for now), the inspector general at the Office of Personnel Management tells the story of an annuitant who shared a trailer with his son until the father died in Nov. 2005. Well, the two actually shared the home for quite awhile after that, too. It turns out the son kept the body around so he could continue to collect Dad's annuity payments, until his scheme was uncovered in July 2006. In September, the son pled guilty to abandonment of a corpse and theft, and was sentenced to 11 years in jail and ordered to pay almost $12,000 back to OPM.

Another DFAS employee weighs in with a story of being rebuffed in an effort to volunteer for service in Iraq:

I applied for an Internal Review audit detail in Iraq with the Corps of Engineers a couple of years ago, although I do not work for them. I had an audit background, having worked as Senior Auditor in Army Audit Agency, DoD Inspector General, and GAO. I had also worked for Defense Finance and Accounting Service internal review. I am very familiar with Army and COE accounting systems, accounting regulations and processes. I was also knowledgeable on Air Force accounting systems and processes. I truly believed I could have been a geat asset. I notified my supervisor in DFAS and I received a brief email that they would not approve the detail, but I could apply for a permanent job with COE. I was really surprised because I believed Iraq was the ultimate in customer support. It was sad because at that time, we had beefed up our office and the workload could have been distributed with little additional burden.

Here's a can't-miss tidbit from Peter Cohn's CongressDaily piece on the latest congressional effort to pass yet another continuing resolution and put off actually passing fiscal 2007 spending bills. Referencing the fact that the budget uncertainty has led some agencies to postpone bonuses for some employees, Cohn writes:

Sensitive to the plight of their own staffs as well, House leaders and the Appropriations Committee spent Thursday trying to figure how to provide for two-month severance packages for aides losing their jobs in January.

Aides to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and GOP committee staff will receive severance under a deal with Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and leaders initially wanted to write the cost into the CR. But they decided to handle the matter administratively using existing funds, out of concern that using the CR as a vehicle would appear to favor congressional staff over federal employees impacted by stagnant agency budgets.

Here's a cautionary tale, from an e-mail sent to me by an employee who was ready, willing and able to volunteer for duty in Iraq:

I am a government civilian in the Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency. I volunteered and was selected by the Army Corps of Engineers for a position in Iraq. Finally the Corps withdrew my job offer. Why? My agency took too long to process my detail! You may also note I had two years of Arabic language in college. It was many moons ago, but nonetheless, I expect I could pick it up again. I am also an Air War College grad so I have had the joint and interagency operational background. My agency claimed they might not get fully reimbursed for my pay and benefits! This out of an agency that gets $9 billion a year, and it is all Defense money anyway.

Looks like the Pentagon is back to square one on the search for an inspector general. David Laufman has withdrawn his name from consideration after a Senate committee decided not to vote on his nomination this year. The IG post has been open since Aug. 2005.

Remembering Pearl Harbor.

You might think that civilian federal employees are nervous about the possibility that they might be ordered to serve in Iraq. But some are rarin' to go. Here's an e-mail I got last night:

I am a (veteran) civilian employee working for the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. I would welcome an opportunity (as a civilian) to work in Iraq for our government. All I need to know is when my government would like me to go!

Don Brown, a recently retired air traffic controller and one of the founders of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, provides some interesting firsthand views on the subject of loss of institutional memory in government in this piece on AVWeb, an aviation news Web site.

Looks like the FBI can expect plenty of scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary Committee when Pat Leahy, D-Vt., takes the reins next month. TPM Muckraker's Justin Rood (a former colleague here at GovExec) reports today that Leahy dropped some rather large hints at a hearing of areas that he thinks are ripe for oversight. On the list: "Data mining and privacy; detainee treatment; the shortage of FBI Arabic translators; and the bureau's continued technology woes."

Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Clay Johnson is not a huge fan of NASA--or at least of the agency's mission statement. According to NASA's Web site, the agency's mission is "to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research." At a GovExec Leadership Breakfast this morning, Johnson said the agency's goals and objectives tend to focus on exploration for exploration's sake. That's "baloney," Johnson said. "How can you be held accountable for that?" He said he has offered his views on the agency to President Bush, along with the suggestion that 10 percent of NASA missions should be underwritten by the private sector.

Other highlights from Johnson's appearance:

• He's not buying the idea espoused by some federal program managers that what they do can't be measured. "Why don't you just take off for about six months?" Johnson asked. "And if nothing happens, we just measured that we don't need you."








• He and other OMB officials amuse themselves by sending messages to members of Congress on specially produced letterhead that is color-coded to agencies' grades on the President's Management Agenda score card. (When agencies' grades on the traffic-light-style report card were mostly red and yellow, those colors were used on the letterhead; now it's largely green.) Johnson lamented that no one on the Hill has ever given any indication they noticed.

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a Wyoming man can sue employees of the Bureau of Land Management personally under federal racketeering laws. He contends that the BLM officials pulled his grazing permits in an effort to force him to provide road easements on his land. Ordinarily, federal employees are protected from lawsuits by sovereign immunity when performing their official duties. Update, 12/6/06, 2:27 p.m.: David H. Rosenbloom of the School of Public Affairs at American University, enlightens me on the issues at stake here, as follows: "An important exception to official immunity (not actually sovereign immunity) is that federal employees can be sued for 'constitutional torts,' that is, actions within the framework of their jobs that violate individuals' clearly established constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. This standard was established by the Supreme Court in Harlow v. Fitzgerald in 1982."

AP reports that "streets around the White House were closed Tuesday morning after a woman threw a package into the courtyard of the adjacent Old Executive Office Building." No details on what was in the package. Maybe it was just an early Christmas present for some lucky OMB staffer.

Allegations of conflicts of interest on the part of some National Institutes of Health scientists have been floating around for quite some time. Now comes a criminal indictment in the case of Trey Sunderland, an Alzheimer's researcher. AP reports that Sunderland was charged yesterday with a felony for taking $285,000 in private consulting fees from Pfizer Inc.

Just how many contractors are working in Iraq? The military has finally come up with a ballpark figure, the Washington Post reports today: 100,000. That figure, which is about 10 times the number deployed in connection with the first Gulf War, includes Americans, Iraqis and third-party nationals.

The Los Angeles Times reports today on the rapid climb of Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates through the ranks of the CIA. Gates' rise was meteoric, but he was apparently pretty rough on the agency's analysts -- and on the civilian federal bureaucracy. "There are far too many people playing it safe," Gates wrote in a 1981 memo to then-CIA chief William J. Casey, just before he became Casey's deputy. "CIA is slowly turning into the Department of Agriculture."

The Postal Service failed to reach agreements with its major unions on new labor contracts last week. The National Association of Letter Carriers announced that negotiations had "failed." The sticking point in NALC's case was the union's insistence that the Postal Service not attempt to contract out any work performed by letter carriers in the nation's cities. In a message to NALC members, union president William H. Young wrote, "How postal management expects us to make fundamental changes and to work cooperatively with them to build a positive future for the Postal Service, while at the same time telling us they want to get rid of our jobs, is beyond me." The next stop is likely to be binding arbitration.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the total U.S. "correctional population," including those in state and federal prisons and on probation or parole, reached a high of more than 7 million for the first time last year. That's about 3 percent of the U.S. adult population.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has some good news and bad news about car vs. moose collisions in Maine. The good is that they occur less frequently than collisions with other animals in the state. The bad is that, not surprisingly, they result in more injuries and deaths. That shows a need for the development of new strategies to keep cars and moose apart, the agency says.

The Federal Election Commission has a proposal for politicians who break campaign finance laws: Admit that you broke the rules before somebody else blows the whistle on you, and we'll give you "significantly lower penalties."

Here's a homeland security term I haven't heard before: "aspirational threat." Those are the words DHS spokesman Russ Knocke used to describe a possible cyberattack by a radical Muslim group on U.S. financial institutions. Homeland Security officials issued a warning to the financial community after jihadist Web sites called for attacks in December, but they don't think that the would-be cyberterrorists will actually be able to pull off the plot.