Managers group blasts Pentagon for plan to lower pay raises

The Federal Managers Association today called on the Defense Department not to cut future pay raises of any employees transitioning out of the National Security Personnel System.

The Pentagon believes about 4,000 employees now under the NSPS pay-for-performance system are earning salaries higher than their General Schedule grade's step 10 salaries. Those employees will not have their salaries reduced when they are transitioned back to GS, but they will be placed on retained pay status and will have their future pay raises halved until their grade catches up with their salaries.

Congress has ordered the Pentagon to cancel NSPS and return all 225,000 employees to the GS system or their other previous personnel system by the end of December 2011. But the Pentagon said earlier this week that it expects at least half of those employees will be out of NSPS by the end of September.

FMA released a briefing paper outlining its concerns after the Pentagon announced its accelerated timetable.

"Establishing a cap on employees' pay contradicts the intent of the [bill's] language … which aims to protect employee pay," FMA said. "Employees who continuously displayed above-average performance under NSPS would be affected greatest, which sends the message that performance is not recognized in the workplace. Capping the pay of these top performers serves only as a disincentive for outstanding employees to continue their exceptional performance."

FMA also said the halved pay raises would hurt those employees' future pensions by reducing their high-three average salaries, which are used to calculate retirement benefits.

FMA said the first employees to transfer into NSPS should be the last transferred out, to give the Pentagon enough time to figure out how to transition them without hurting them.

In a December interview, FMA President Darryl Perkinson was sharply critical of the Pentagon's plans to dock pay raises. "That is one of the worst messages to send to federal employees," Perkinson told Federal Times. "Now they're going to get shafted. What was their reward for going on to a system they didn't ask for, and had no choice?"

OPM opposes bill to increase transparency in drug pricing

The Office of Personnel Management said yesterday it opposes a bill that aims to increase the transparency of prescription drug costs.

OPM said the bill, HR 4489, would restrict how OPM contracts with pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and impose "significant administrative costs" that could be passed on to federal employees. John O'Brien, OPM's director of planning and policy analysis, told lawmakers that OPM wants to write its own methods of oversight, contracting models and pricing into the contracts it strikes with PBMs.

"Requiring the use of specific contracting models and pricing methods via legislation will not allow the program flexibility in an industry where business practices are rapidly evolving," O'Brien said.

PBMs contract with insurers to provide prescription drugs to enrollees in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. But critics say PBMs have opaque pricing methods, retain most discounts or rebates prescription drug manufacturers give them, and receive little oversight from OPM.

OPM said nearly 30 percent of the government's $39 billion health plan goes to cover prescription drugs.

The FEHBP Prescription Drug Integrity, Transparency and Cost Savings Act, sponsored by Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., would require PBMs to return to the government 99 percent of all rebates, market share incentives and other savings they receive. It would place new transparency requirements on PBMs and cap drug prices to make sure the government doesn't pay more than the nationwide average. PBMs would also be prevented from switching federal employees' drugs to cheaper alternatives without their physicians' prior approval.

O'Brien said an OPM working group is now trying to figure out how the agency will mandate transparency in its contracts with PBMs. He said OPM might contractually require PBMs to make their pricing transparent and pass on the full value of discounts, rebates or other credits that PBMs receive from drug manufacturers.

Lynch, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on the federal workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia, called O'Brien's testimony "more than a little disappointing."

"Sometimes I feel like I'm pulling you folks along toward the road of reform," Lynch said. "I just wish we were working more closely together to get to the same object. I'm concerned that the agency has become captive to the current system and resistant to change."

Gates names first woman to head major intel agency

The next director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency will be the first woman to head a major intelligence agency, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Feb. 22.

Letitia Long, currently the Defense Intelligence Agency's deputy director, will take over NGA this summer, Gates said. Navy Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, the current NGA director, will stay on for several months to ensure a smooth transition.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair called Long's appointment historic.

"She is highly respected throughout the intelligence community and Department of Defense," Blair said. "Her strong leadership skills and understanding of the entire intelligence enterprise will ensure that NGA can continue to deliver outstanding information to policymakers and operators in support of our national security objectives."

Long has more than three decades of engineering and intelligence experience. She has also served as deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, deputy director of naval intelligence, and coordinator of intelligence community activities at the CIA.

National Capital CFC raises ‘record-breaking' $66 million

Federal employees in the Washington, D.C., area raised $66 million in last year's Combined Federal Campaign, the local CFC chapter announced today.

The final tally was $2 million ahead of the chapter's goal, and $3.3 million ahead of the preceding year's figure. Linda Washington, chairwoman of the CFC's National Capital Area chapter and assistant secretary for administration at the Transportation Department, called the result "record-breaking."

"It was a tremendous year for compassionate caring," Washington said at an event at the Grand Hyatt Washington.

The results were particularly helped by a big jump in online contributions. Feds raised more than $9 million in online pledges this year, Washington said; at some agencies, online contributions accounted for more than half of all giving. The Transportation Department received 81 percent of its donations online; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 65 percent; and the Education Department, 50 percent.

Other agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency — which received nearly $1.2 million in donations this year — reported electronic contributions for the first time this year.

Small-business contracting bill misses the mark, trade groups say

A bill designed to expand small-business opportunities for federal work could instead have the opposite effect, according to leading trade groups.

The bill, introduced earlier this month by the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, would among other things require agencies to reserve some prime contracts for small businesses.

The provision would apply to solicitations through the Federal Supply Schedule, Government Wide Acquisition Contracts and similar multiple-award contracting vehicles.

Larry Allen, president of the Coalition for Government Procurement, which represents Federal Supply Schedule vendors, said small businesses already do quite well under those contracting programs. They currently receive between 30 percent and 35 percent of all Federal Supply Schedule business, for example, which is well above the government's 23 percent small-business contracting goal.

By requiring small-business set-asides in the schedules program, some federal buyers could find it more difficult to use the schedules and could end up using other contracting methods that have less participation by small businesses, Allen said.

"If you have a special requirement for the schedules program you don't have for other programs, that's more of a hassle and I might go with another program," Allen said in an interview.

The Professional Services Council agrees that the set-aside requirements could limit opportunities for small businesses. If an agency carves out some work for veteran-owned companies or businesses in disadvantaged areas, then it may exclude other small businesses from competing, said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president.

"By further segmenting the marketplace . . . I'm not sure that that is the most advantageous way for increasing small-business participation," Chvotkin said.

Allen on Feb. 8 sent a letter outlining his concerns to the bill sponsors, Committee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu, D-La., and ranking member Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. He said he's scheduled to meet with committee staffers Thursday to discuss the bill.

The bill, S 2989, was scheduled to be voted on by the committee Thursday, but the vote was postponed because senators instead will be participating in President Obama's televised forum on the health care bill.

Chvotkin said he likes some aspects of the bill, including a provision that would make it harder for agencies to bundle contracts into a single procurement. Bundling often shuts small businesses out of government competitions because it makes projects too large for small businesses to handle.

The bill would prohibit agencies outside the Defense Department from combining requirements for contracts worth more than $2 million unless the chief acquisition officer can show that bundling would save the government money, improve the quality of what is purchased, and shorten delivery time. Savings on personnel and administrative costs alone would no longer justify bundling. A similar provision already applies to the Defense Department.

However, Allen said lawmakers could have a problem reconciling the anti-bundling provision with the Obama administration's push to combine contracts for small-ticket items such as office supplies and computers, under a method called strategic sourcing.

"It does seem that the Senate, through this bill, would be promoting a policy that's inherently at conflict with the one being promoted by the administration," Allen said.

Chopra: Get federal info online, then worry about perfecting it

The Office of Personnel Management stores millions of federal employees' paper personnel files at a massive facility in Pennsylvania, just one example of how the federal government has failed to digitize records and effectively use technology, said Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra.

Federal employees may carry iPhones and have Facebook accounts, but the government must do more to catch up with how other countries' governments already use technology, he said Feb. 23.

"You and I have embraced technology. It's unfortunate that our public policy hasn't caught up," he said in a speech at The Atlantic's State of the Union for Technology in Washington.

The government has been slow to embrace technology because agencies have be overwhelmed by the prospect of getting IT programs and Web sites perfect, Chopra said. The Obama administration is changing that precedent with its Open Government Directive, issued in December, which requires agencies to launch and update public Web sites quickly, he said.

If programmers and managers try to hold back releasing data and Web sites until they are 100 percent correct, citizens will never have access to data they want and deserve, Chopra said. Erroneous data can be corrected later, he said.

"We do not presume that when we launch, we are perfect. We are saying launch when we are good enough," Chopra said.

President Obama's Open Government Directive required each agency to post at least three high-value data sets online within 45 days after the directive was issued. Kundra hopes bloggers and journalists will analyze the data to provide useful information to consumers. He said he hopes people will use and share data in the ways they find most helpful.

"Have it your way — that's the administration's philosophy," he said.

AFGE calls for election at TSA to determine union representation

The American Federation of Government Employees today asked the government to hold an election to decide what union will represent about 40,000 Transportation Security Administration screeners.

TSA screeners now do not have collective bargaining rights, but the White House and leading lawmakers support extending those rights to screeners. AFGE National President John Gage said he wants to have the union-representation issue settled before collective bargaining rights are granted. AFGE said more than 13,000 of TSA's roughly 40,000 screeners are now dues-paying members, and said it has 36 locals at airports across the nation.

In filing its petition with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, AFGE has fired the first shot in what will likely be a war with the National Treasury Employees Union over which union will represent screeners. NTEU has also signed up thousands of screeners in its own bid to represent TSA.

"NTEU can do what they're going to do," Gage said. "We've been the union for these people since the beginning. We have stood up for them from Day One and I think the TSOs [transportation security officers] recognize that. We're not concerned with what NTEU will do or will not do."

NTEU released a statement that said it didn't see much point in holding an election before TSA has collective bargaining rights, but said it would join the election if FLRA grants the petition.

The two unions last squared off in 2006 over representing Customs and Border Protection officers. CBP officers chose NTEU over AFGE by a 2-to-1 margin. Before that election, NTEU counted 12,000 CBP officers as dues-paying members, and AFGE had about 6,000 CBP members.

Lawmakers such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., support giving screeners collective bargaining rights.

But other lawmakers, such as Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., object to extending collective bargaining rights to screeners. They worry that collective bargaining would hamper TSA's flexibility to reassign screeners when they're needed elsewhere.

Gage vehemently disagreed with that viewpoint, and said there's no evidence union membership has ever hindered security efforts.

"You just can't say that having a union threatens national security," Gage said. "We represent the Border Patrol, [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], law enforcement, [Defense Department workers], all over the place. I think the burden has to be on that particular senator, and let him demonstrate why being in a union affects national security."

GSA elevates green building office

In one of her first official acts as head of the General Services Administration, Martha Johnson announced today that she's elevating the status of a GSA office that promotes green building practices.

The Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings has been transferred from the Public Buildings Service to GSA's Office of Governmentwide Policy. By moving to GSA's central policymaking shop, the office will be better positioned to develop environmentally sustainable building strategies that will help all agencies meet President Obama's energy and greenhouse gas reduction goals, Johnson said.

"As part of Governmentwide Policy, the Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings will broaden its reach to provide federal agencies with the necessary measurement tools and policies they need to meet their own sustainability mandates," Johnson said in a Feb. 22 statement.

Johnson also named Kevin Kampschroer as permanent director of the office; the veteran GSA employee has served as acting head since the office was created by Congress through the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

GSA's Public Buildings Service won't be left in the lurch, however, when it comes to greening federal facilities. GSA has created a chief greening officer position to oversee sustainable building practices across GSA's inventory of more than 9,000 owned and leased facilities. The position will report directly to PBS Commissioner Bob Peck.

GSA is actively recruiting for the fulltime career position. Scott Conner, director of the Denver Federal Center, will serve in the position on an interim basis until a permanent hire is named, Johnson said.