GSA chief of staff resigns, cites leadership void

The hold Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., placed on the Martha Johnson's nomination to lead the General Services Administration has led to another gap in the agency's leadership: the loss of its chief of staff.

Danielle Germain resigned last week, citing Bond's hold as a chief reason she decided to leave GSA after just seven months as chief of staff.

"Based on the length of time it has taken to confirm a permanent administrator, Danielle Germain has decided to take advantage of another opportunity outside the agency," said Sahar Wali, an agency spokeswoman.

GSA has not had a permanent administrator since Lurita Doan resigned amid scandal in 2008. Johnson was nominated to lead GSA in April. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved Johnson for the post in June, but Bond placed a hold on a final Senate vote because he is unhappy with GSA's changes to a federal building project in his state.

Moving up at GSA is Steven Kempf, the new deputy commissioner for the Federal Acquisition Service. Kempf replaces Tyree Varnado, who recently retired. Kempf will continue to serve as assistant commissioner of FAS's Office of Acquisition Management until a replacement is named.

Despite improvements, VA fights growing backlog

Facing an unending avalanche of veterans disability and benefits claims, the Veterans Affairs Department is fighting a multipronged assault on paperwork that officials hope can reduce the number of pending claims and improve accuracy.

Michael Walcoff, VA's top official responsible for the claims process, said in a Jan. 7 interview that VA has cut the average time it takes to process a claim from 170 days a year ago to about 158 days today. But the sheer number of claims being received continues to increase, overshadowing the reduction in processing time.

Claims processors have increased their production by 9 percent in the past year, but the number of new claims has risen by 14 percent.

Walcoff said improvements are coming. Since January 2007, VA has hired 4,200 new employees to help process claims. It takes about two years to fully train new employees in the complicated claims process, so VA is only now beginning to reap the full benefits of that hiring surge.

But making significant progress in reducing the backlog of claims requires more than just hiring people, Walcoff said. The biggest step won't come until 2012, when VA expects to have a fully electronic, paperless claims system that should improve accuracy and speed processing of claims involving multiple disabilities, he said.

OPM reorganizes into five new divisions

The Office of Personnel Management announced plans to reorganize itself into five branches:

• Employee Services, led by Nancy Kichak.

• Retirement and Benefits, led by Kathy McGettigan.

• Merit System Audit and Compliance, led by Jeff Sumberg.

• Federal Investigative Services, led by Kathy Dillaman.

• Human Resources Solutions, led by Kay Ely.

OPM Director John Berry said in November that the planned Retirement and Benefits division will be charged with setting a new strategy for modernizing the government's outdated retirement systems, which now take several months to accurately calculate a retiree's pension.

Gates agrees to stay on as Defense secretary

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will remain at his job for at least another year, the Pentagon said Jan. 7.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Gates met with President Obama before Christmas and agreed to stay on. Gates, a Republican, was first appointed by President Bush in 2006 and is the only Cabinet member Obama retained.

Gates is supported by key lawmakers from both parties, and last year helped Obama craft his "surge" plan to deploy 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. By staying at least through early 2011, he will oversee that surge, as well as planned troop drawdowns in Iraq.

Earmarks in spending bills cut by a third

The 2010 federal spending bills disclose $10.2 billion for pet projects inserted by members of Congress, a drop of nearly a third since 2008, an analysis of the bills shows.

The 9,297 earmarks were down from 11,282 reported for fiscal 2009, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. The 2009 earmarks were worth $14.3 billion.

Still, the spending bills contain billions of dollars for other special-interest programs that aren't reported as earmarks, says Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense. Ellis said his group found $4.9 billion worth of such undisclosed funding in last year's spending bills, for example, but hasn't finished its analysis of the latest bills.

"At least in the disclosed earmarks, there has been a haircut," Ellis said. "Although we would like to see a much deeper reduction, it's a small step, a shuffle, in the right direction."

Ellis also noted that the $787 billion economic stimulus package passed last year included billions of dollars for projects often funded with earmarks, such as highways, levees and federal buildings.

Congress required earmarks in the annual spending bills to be publicly listed for the first time in 2008. There were 11,234 worth $14.8 billion that year.

Potential ID theft victims notified of hard-drive loss

The National Archives and Records Administration last month warned 150,000 more people who interacted with the Clinton administration that their personal information may be at risk after a hard drive was lost.

The December letters were the second batch sent in connection with the March data loss. Previously, NARA mailed more than 26,000 letters to potential identity theft victims, according to the agency's Jan. 4 statement. Data on the drive included the names and Social Security numbers of White House employees, job applicants and White House visitors.

NARA offers affected individuals one year of free credit monitoring, identify theft insurance and fraud resolution assistance through the credit monitoring firm Experian.

A July posting on NARA's Web site says it is unclear whether the hard drive's disappearance was theft or other criminal activity.

VA, Kaiser Permanente to share electronic records

The Veterans Affairs Department is launching a pilot program to exchange electronic medical data with Kaiser Permanente.

More than half of veterans and active-duty members receive care outside of the VA system, so interoperability between government and private-sector hospitals is crucial, VA said in a Jan. 6 news release announcing the pilot.

The pilot connects VA's Veterans Affairs Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture [VistA] with Kaiser Permanente's HealthConnect.

VA and Kaiser Permanente members in the San Diego area will be eligible to participate in the pilot. When a veteran visits a doctor, all of his or her medical history will be immediately available electronically.

The pilot will be expanded later this year to include data from the Defense Department's health care system.

Feds get more leave to help relatives in military

New rules make it easier for federal employees to take time from work to help sick or injured family members who are in the military or veterans.

Previously, federal employees could take up to 26 weeks off of work under the Family and Medical Leave Act to help active-duty service members who become sick or injured in the line of duty — not veterans. But new rules that took effect when the 2010 Defense Authorization Act was signed Oct. 28 allow federal employees to:

• Take up to 12 weeks of paid or unpaid leave per year to help a family member being called up for active duty, or who is already on active duty, and needs help related to his service.

• Take up to 26 weeks of paid or unpaid leave per year to help a family member who is a veteran and became sick or injured as a result of active duty.

• Take up to 26 weeks of leave to care for a service member or veteran who had a pre-existing condition that was worsened by active-duty service.

The rule changes were outlined in a Dec. 29 memo to all agency heads from Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry.

Rate for auto mileage reimbursement declines

Federal travelers will receive 50 cents per mile when they use their privately owned cars on official business, under new rates published by the General Services Administration.

That's a drop from last year, when travelers received 55 cents per mile.

Travelers will receive 47 per mile if they use privately owned motorcycles, down from 52 cents last year, and $1.29 per mile for privately owned airplanes, up from $1.24 in 2009.

The new rates took effect Jan. 1.

Surveyed women oppose performance pay

A majority of members of the group Federally Employed Women do not support the government's pay-for-performance systems, such as the soon-to-be defunct National Security Personnel System, a recent survey shows.

Of 224 FEW members surveyed, 146, or 65 percent, "expressed their discontent with current pay-for-performance personnel systems," according to a Jan. 7 FEW report.

Among the ways the women said the government's pay-for-performance systems suffer:

• Untrained managers, who respondents claim give "average" ratings to everyone except their favorite employees.

• No written or consistent guidelines for how managers should execute performance reviews.

• Pay pool panels without members who know the workers they are rating.

• Over-reliance on employees' written self-evaluations, rather than an assessment of completed work, meaning those who sell themselves better get higher bonuses.