GovernmentExecutive.com

Fedblog is taking a little spring break. I'll return on Tuesday, April 1.

Feeling angry about the size of your federal paycheck? Glenn Sparling of Ravenden Springs, Ark., certainly is.

Sparling says he's a former federal employee who wasn't paid what he was owed for his work. So Sunday afternoon, he decided to take out his anger on the nearest federal building he could find -- the local post office.

Sparling, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, drove his 1984 Chevy Blazer into town -- and straight through the wall of the post office.

But that apparently wasn't enough to calm him down. Because when the Blazer broke down on his way home, Sparling walked the rest of the way, then got behind the wheel of his 1972 Ford Mustang, and drove that back to the post office -- and right through the hole he had previously made.

"This time he really crammed it in there," said Ravenden Springs Police Chief Kevin Montgomery.

Luckily, nobody was in the building because it was Easter Sunday. As of Monday, the post office was open for business -- and Sparling was awaiting trial on multiple charges, including driving while intoxicated.

From his appearance yesterday at Foggy Bottom:

Our citizens have really no idea how competent, courageous and successful the people here who work at the State Department are -- I do. After my -- now my eighth year as president, I've gotten to know the people in the State Department well, and I'm impressed, and so should our citizens.

But the president also spoke of the need "to strengthen the State Department's capacity to bring freedom and peace around the world" through "efficiencies" and "interoperability." That, apparently, was the subject of deeper discussions that occurred behind closed doors.

Here's an excerpt from a piece in the Sunday Denver Post by Fred Brown, the paper's retired capitol bureau chief:

A reader recently forwarded what amounts to a gibberish generator. It's a list of 30 words, numbered 0 to 9 in each of three columns. The trick is to think of a three-digit number, then match those numbers with a word from each column. The result is a three-word phrase of stunningly bureaucratic buzzwords. For example, today's date, 323, yields "parallel, monitored mobility."

This highly amusing device is known as the Systematic Buzz Phrase Generator. I'd never heard of it, but apparently it's been around since 1968. And is it any surprise at all that the person who created it, a guy by the name of Philip Broughton, was a federal employee at the Public Health Service?

Here, by the way, are some other phrases the generator randomly turns out: "integrated reciprocal flexibility" (031) and "functional transitional contingency" (469). It strikes me that those are every bit as meaningful today as they would have been 40 years ago.

Once you get past issues of basic pay and benefits, nothing raises the ire of federal employees faster than dress codes -- especially those involving uniforms. The Air Force waded into this tricky area last summer by moving to require all of its air reserve technicians to wear uniforms on the job. The technicians technically are civilian federal employees, but they're required to be in the reserves as a condition of their employment. They always have worn uniforms while in military status, but they used to have the choice of deciding whether or not to suit up while working in their civilian capacity.

The shift to required uniform wear has drawn the ire of Joel Perry, vice president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 1764 at Travis Air Force Base in California. In a letter to the editor of the Vacaville, Calif., Reporter, Perry ripped the new approach, noting that air reserve technicians have served well under the old policy since 1958. "To have them play dress-up soldier to please the Air Force Reserve commander is a waste of taxpayers' money and a detriment to the welfare of the ART employees who serve this nation," he wrote.

The folks over at the Merit Systems Protection Board might want to take a little closer look at who's in charge up on Capitol Hill these days. The agency routinely sends its research reports to Congress and the White House, and the recent ones (here's one example) have come with cover letters addressed to the following people: the President, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

That's all well and good, but then the letters begin:

"Dear Sirs:"

I'm not sure how much House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., likes being addressed as "sir."

Many times, information security problems aren't with the systems, but the people -- be they federal employees, contractors, or the managers who are supposed to monitor their work and keep higher-ups informed about potentially embarrassing incidents.

Such is the case the the news that three contract employees at the State Department poked through Barack Obama's passport files. Two of them were fired, and the other was disciplined, but didn't get canned.

The department's official position so far, expressed in a late-night conference call with reporters by spokesman Sean McCormack, is that this was merely a case of "imprudent curiosity." The department's inspector general will look into whether that's actually the case.

Obama's camp was quick to place blame on the Bush administration. "This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years," said campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

The incidents took place on Jan. 9, Feb. 21, and March 14. But McCormack said senior State Department leaders only became aware of them yesterday. Which begs the question: Contract employees were fired for improperly accessing sensitive records on a high-profile presidential candidate, and no one thought of reporting it to the top brass for, in one case, more than two months?

"I will fully acknowledge that this information should have been passed up the line," said Patrick F. Kennedy, State's undersecretary for management, at last night's briefing. "It was dealt with at the office level where the incidents occurred by the office-level supervisors, who took immediate steps when they saw this. ... We have a very, very sophisticated computer tracking system that looks out for and looks out over the use of the computer, and when it sees anything that is potentially inappropriate, the computer calls it to the attention of the working-level supervisor. The system worked; it was called to their attention. They acted and -- but I will admit, they failed to pass the information up the chain to a sufficiently high level."

Will a former federal employee become the next American Idol? Chikezie Eze, who's among the finalists in this season's competition, is a former Transportation Security Administration screener at Los Angeles International Airport.

TSA reports that Raul Matute, Chikezie's former boss, says he was "a fun guy to have on staff." TSA notes that "during breaks or on his way to work in the bus, Chikezie would sing along with his iPod for everyone to enjoy."

Really? People "enjoyed" a guy -- even a guy of Chikezie's talent -- singing along with his iPod?

You can make up your own mind about Chikezie's ability -- and federal experience. Here he is talking about his work at TSA and putting his own spin on the Lennon/McCartney classic, "She's a Woman":

Harvard Law School is putting its money where its mouth is in promoting public service. The school, the New York Times reports, is offering third-year law students free tuition if they agree to spend five years working for a government agency or nonprofit organization. Right now, around 90 percent of Harvard Law grads choose to join law firms, where they can earn upwards of $100,000 right away.

If you've looked at GovernmentExecutive.com today, you may have noticed a new box on our home page featuring headlines from Nextgov.com. And if you've looked even more closely, you may have seen that when you put your mouse over the word "Technology" on our navigation bar at the top of every page, it turns into a link to Nextgov.

That's because we've found a new home in the Government Executive family for our technology coverage -- and much more. As I explained in my column in the March issue of the magazine, Nextgov is aimed at serving the federal information technology community by providing not only news and information, but an opportunity for a shared conversation between and among federal IT officials, program managers, private sector officials and outside observers about building the high-performing, outcome-oriented public sector organizations of the future.

Allan Holmes, Nextgov's executive editor, provides more information about the site in a welcome message he's posted.

Nextgov is built on the idea that information technology will be the backbone of effective government in the future. Our goal is to provide a forum for the sharing of information about how that process is unfolding. We're pretty excited about it, and we hope you'll come along for the ride.

Take your mind back to the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the throes of the Cold War. Suppose somebody would've told you then that you'd live to see the day that a Finnish band called the Leningrad Cowboys would perform live with the Red Army Choir in Russia -- and that they'd be singing "Sweet Home Alabama."

Here's the YouTube proof:

(Hat tip: Russia Blog, via Danger Room.)

Lying about serving in the Marines for 25 years and winning the Congressional Medal of Honor is contemptible. And it also may be criminal, the New York Times reports today.

Legal columnist Adam Liptak describes the case of Xavier Alvarez, an elected member of the board of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District in California. After describing his fictitious service and honors at a board meeting, Alvarez was charged with violating the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, a federal law that makes it a crime to lie about receiving certain military medals.

Alvarez is claiming the First Amendment protects his deception. He's drawing some support for that position among constitutional lawyers, but, it seems, little or no sympathy for the actions that got him in the position he's in.

The General Services Administration has announced that it has raised the federal mileage reimbursement rate for using a privately owned car for government travel from 48.5 cents a mile to 50.5 cents. But you already knew that, if you read Robert Brodsky's GSA roundup Friday. The agency is seeking legislation that would eliminate the annual delay between when the IRS sets a new mileage rate and GSA verifies that it's acceptable for use in the federal sector.

Emilio T. Gonzalez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Sevices, thinks his agency can pick up the pace on processing citizenship applications. He announced Friday that USCIS was lowering its projections for how long it would take to complete applications filed last summer from 16-18 months to 14-16 months. That would mean hundreds of thousands of applicants could be naturalized in time for next fall's elections.

The agency experienced a surge of applications last summer just before it implemented a big fee increase. Overall, USCIS received 1.4 million naturalization applications in fiscal 2007. Applications in June and July alone were nearly 350 percent higher than the year before. As a result, the agency has a huge backlog of paperwork to move through the pipeline.

Meeting the new target for processing times won't be easy, the New York Times reported Saturday. Of the more than 1 million applications the agency is currently processing, 75 percent are still in the early, less labor-intensive phases.

The New York Times picked up on the IRS tax collection privatization story yesterday, with a headline that doesn't exactly mince words: "Taxpayer Advocate Says Outsourcing at I.R.S. Is Inept."

This, of course, isn't the first time that the taxpayer advocate, Nina Olson, has raised concerns about the IRS effort to use private debt collection firms. But this kind of mainstream media attention to the issue may put the program in jeopardy, especially if it becomes a factor in the confirmation hearings of Douglas H. Shulman, whose nomination to head the agency is pending in the Senate.

Update: Oops. As I should have known, Shulman already has had his confirmation hearing. In fact, the Senate approved his nomination early this morning.

Want to know what Barack Obama likes in the way of earmarks? He's released a full list of his requests for fiscal 2006 and 2007.

(Hat tip: Politico's Ben Smith, via Andrew Sullivan.)

The American Federation of Government Employees on Wednesday announced that it would lobby for a 4.4 percent pay increase for federal workers in 2009.

The union's proposal is much more generous than what President Bush requested in his fiscal 2009 budget request, which included a 2.9 percent pay increase for federal workers and a 3.4 percent pay boost for military personnel. AFGE noted that the president's proposal could "jeopardize the government's ability to recruit and retain quality talent."

Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, pledged last week to lobby for a 3.9 percent pay increase for federal workers and military personnel.

Also last week, the House Budget Committee passed a resolution that includes a statement in support of pay parity for federal employees and military service members in 2009. Congressional support indicates that both groups could receive at least a 3.4 percent pay raise next year. --Brittany Ballenstedt

Attention Americans: Super Bowl-winning quarterback Eli Manning, appointed by President Bush to serve on the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, wants you to get off the couch and be more active. Manning is launching an effort to register a million people for the National President's Challenge, six-week program designed to combat obesity by raising particpants' levels of physical activity.

I wonder if this is the kind of "activity" Manning has in mind:

American troops are generating a lot of trash in Iraq. Now, the military is hoping to use some of it as a fuel source. The Associated Press reports that the Army is sending two 4-ton biomass refineries to the country. A ton of garbage can run one of the refineries for 20 hours, generating enough power to light a small village. Assuming the biomass machines actually work in the extreme heat and dust of Iraq, that should result in reduced need for diesel fuel to run conventional generators.

The old labor-management partnership councils at federal agencies created under the Clinton adminstration are ghosts of their former selves since President Bush dissolved them in 2001. But now the one at the Environmental Protection Agency is officially out of business, the Washington Post reports today. Unionized scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency have severed their official relationship with management, citing concerns that leaders are failing to follow "principles of scientific integrity."

"It's gotten worse than ever in terms of the agency just doing unilateral decision-making," said J. William Hirzy, executive vice president of Chapter 280 of the National Treasury Employees Union and a senior scientist in EPA's risk assessment division. "We're tired of it."

We're only just beginning to see that question explored. McCain himself hasn't given a great deal of hints in this area, other than to say he's more of a leader than a manager and that he's not a fan of "bloated, irresponsible and incompetent government."

But eight years ago, McCain's then-communications director offered this morsel of wisdom about what a McCain administration would look like: it would, he said, be based on the idea that "government should have a limited but activist role in those areas where government is involved."

Former Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., who served with McCain in the Senate, indicated he would be a hands-on manager as president. "He would be the chief of staff, he would be the commander, no question about it," Packwood said.

Attention high-ranking federal officials: EPA's Marcus Peacock is daring you to blog. So what if it almost guarantees that somebody's going to call you a "weasel"? Peacock apparently wears the name with pride.

There have been plenty of TV shows about the FBI and the CIA. Heck, even the Naval Criminal Investigative Service has its own show. So I guess it's about time that the Drug Enforcement Administration has its turn in the limelight.

Spike TV announced today that next month it will debut DEA, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the agency.

This is no made-up drama, either. "Television viewers will get the same unprecedented access to the inner workings of the DEA as our camera crews -- the raids, the risk and the danger," said Al Roker, weatherman at NBC's Today show and DEA's executive producer. "This series is the real deal, exposing elements of illegal drug trade that you could not imagine. When you watch 'DEA,' you will feel like you have gone undercover."

The stars of the show are a group of special agents and task force officers in DEA's Detroit field office.

The Veterans Affairs Department is looking for a new undersecretary for benefits. But VA officials can't pick just anybody. By law, VA Secretary James B. Peake must appoint a commission to come up with a slate of non-political candidates for the position. Their names are then forwarded to the president, along with any recommendations the VA chief himself has.

The 10-member commission will be led by VA Deputy Secretary Gordon Mansfield.

The new undersecretary will replace retired Navy Vice Adm. Daniel L. Cooper, who announced his resignation as undersecretary for benefits recently after six years on the job. That's longer than any previous holder of the position.

The Wall Street Journal has a great story today about Martin Bennett, who spends his days hunting down unsafe products and hassling their makers to comply with federal laws and regulations. So he must work for the Conusmer Product Safety Commission, right? Not any more.

The 69-year-old Bennett retired from the agency more than six years ago. But he just can't stop spending his days researching products at his computer and making unannounced visits to manufacturers and suppliers -- even if that results in him getting thrown off the premises from time to time.

"It's part of the job," he says. "I mean my old job."

From DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff's roundtable with bloggers Sunday:

Question: What else would you propose that Congress do, just to make the functionality of the department work better?

Chertoff: I think consolidating us; I think funding our budget requests for the not-particularly-glamorous-but-indispensable things having to do with management, acquisition capability, IT capability. You know, this is stuff which -- you know, when they're trying to make the budget at the end, and often, in order to have more money for grants, they cut that stuff. And the problem is when you cut that stuff, invariably what happens is, six months later, we get a criticism for, we're not managing our acquisitions well. Well, you can't manage your acquisitions well if you can't hire people to do it.

The NCAA basketball tournament is just around the corner, and in private-sector workplaces around the country, that means one thing: It's time to start cranking out those brackets for the office pool. Last year, I was told by several readers that the same wasn't really true in federal offices (although some former federal employees have acknowledged the existence of pools).

Now comes the Interagency Ethics Council to throw cold water on the whole idea, reporting that the Small Business Administration has officially informed its employees that pools are verboten. "First," the agency noted, "regulations promulgated by the General Services Administration (GSA) bar anyone from participating in games for money or personal property, the operating of gambling devices or the conduct of a lottery or pool, while in or on property controlled by GSA." And second, "Office of Personnel Management (OPM) government-wide standards of conduct regulations, ... prohibit federal employees from conducting or participating 'in any gambling activity including the operation of a gambling device, in conducting a lottery or pool, a game for money or property, or selling or purchasing a numbers slip or ticket' while on government-owned or leased property or while on government duty."

That sure makes it seems like college basketball aficianados are out of luck. Unless maybe we elect a bracket-loving presidential candidate.

Apparently, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff thinks security measures at airports are a bit much. He has told Transportation Security Administration to take 30 to 45 days to "take a look at the whole system of screening at the airport," USA Today reported yesterday. The idea is to "maybe make a couple of significant changes to remove some of the burden" on travelers, Chertoff said.

It seems the agency has already started by trying to get companies to design a better laptop case so that travelers don't have to take their computers out of their bags to go through checkpoints.

A new survey released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that only one out of three adults in four states -- Delaware, Hawaii, New York, and Rhode Island -- said they got enough rest or sleep every day in the past month. And 10 percent reported they didn't get enough sleep every day out of the previous 30. Somewhere between 50 million and 70 million people nationwide suffer from sleep disorders, the agency says.

The National Sleep Foundation says that most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep each night to feel fully rested.

Newsweek takes up the subject of federal recruiting this week, with a story about agencies' efforts to intensify the hunt for talent. A few thoughts:

• The piece picks up on the age-old notion that "the biggest hiring crisis in U.S. government history" is right around the corner, which, of course, is where it seems to have been since the turn of the century. As Brian Friel reminded us on GovernmentExecutive.com just a couple of weeks ago, this long-awaited retirement tsunami seems to be turning out to be more of a manageable trickle.
• The piece contains some "ouch" quotes. Like this, from John Cassidy, 29, who plans to take a job with consulting firm Deloitte & Touche after graduating from Harvard University's Kennedy School this spring: "Why would you want to work for government when you can earn more and get more done working for a government contractor?" And this, from Matt Volner, who spent a year as a building management specialist at the General Services Administration, before quitting to become an actor: "The whole year was a Kafkaesque nightmare in which my job was to find out what my job was."
• Max Stier of the Partnership for Public Service, again promotes his anti-JFK notion of inspiring today's youth. "Kennedy's message is no longer the right one," he says. "It's not about what you can do for government. We need to convey what government can do for you." As I've said before, I hope Stier turns out to be wrong, both because I think that today's youth are no less likely than their elders to be motivated by a desire to serve and because of what John Cassidy says above: If it's about getting something for yourself, you're always going to be able to do better outside of government. The problem now is that people who have grown up being told that government is a bureaucratic morass -- and then seeing it underperform in key situations -- think they can make just as much of a difference outside of government, too.
  
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