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- Significant Changes Coming to TSP and IRAs from SECURE Act - January 22, 2020
- Edward A. Zurndorfer, My Federal RetirementBefore adjourning in late December, Congress enacted a $1.4 trillion year-end spending bill that keeps the federal government running through Sept. 30, 2020. President Trump signed the legislation. Tucked away inside this spending legislation is the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act which includes significant changes to individual retirement arrangements (IRAs) and retirement plans including the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP).
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- Recent Paychecks Are Smaller For Some Feds Due To National Finance Center Error - January 17, 2020
- By Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News NetworkRecent paychecks for some federal employees may look smaller — or even larger in other cases — than usual, as the National Finance Center is attempting to resolve a processing error that has incorrectly withheld federal taxes.The error, the National Finance Center told its customers, has led to incorrect tax withholding amounts on paychecks covering pay period 26, which ran from Dec. 22, 2019 through Jan. 4, 2020.
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- White House Tasks Agencies With Getting Injured Feds Back on the Job Faster - January 16, 2020
- Erick Katz, Government Executivehe White House is calling on federal agencies to develop new strategies to reduce injuries in the federal workplace and to help those who are hurt to get back to work more quickly, creating a new, governmentwide push to help accomplish the goal.The Protecting Employees, Enabling Reemployment (PEER) Initiative will task each agency with developing specific strategies and goals to slash injuries on the job and time off of work due to injuries, Office of Management and Budget acting Director Russ Vought said in a memorandum dated Thursday. He noted that 107,000 federal employees filed new workers’ compensation claims in 2018 and received $3 billion in payments.
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- Amazon Will Seek To Halt Work On DoD’s JEDI Cloud - January 15, 2020
- By Andrew Eversden, FederalTimesAmazon Web Services will ask a federal court to block the Pentagon and Microsoft from beginning work on the Department of Defense’s controversial enterprise cloud, according to a Jan. 13 court filing.The joint status report — filed by the DoD, Microsoft and AWS in the Court of Federal Claims — lays out a timeline for the next few weeks of Amazon’s court challenge of the DoD’s award of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud to Microsoft.
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- Trump Administration to Expand Hiring Pilot Programs in 2020 - January 15, 2020
- By Erich Wagner, Government ExecutiveThe Trump administration signaled last month that it will expand a pilot program aimed at improving the federal hiring process later this year.Last year, officials at the U.S. Digital Service touted the results of a six-month pilot program to hire IT specialists at the Health and Human Services Department and National Park Service. The effort made two major changes to how federal agencies assess job applicants: require job seekers to submit a standard two-page resume, rather than the traditional “federal resume” that can range from five to 60 pages, and design a multi-step interview and assessment process with agencies’ subject matter experts to better assess applicants’ qualifications.
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- How The Government Wants Agencies To Regulate AI - January 14, 2020
- Andrew Eversden , Federal TimesThe Office of Management and Budget released a draft memorandum Jan. 13 providing guidance to agencies on how they should approach regulation of industry’s artificial intelligence applications.The guidance emphasizes that agencies should consider how any regulatory action would potentially hinder expansion of AI use. The draft memo “calls on agencies, when considering regulations or policies related to AI applications, to promote advancements in technology and innovation."
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- Federal Raise Takes Effect, Reflected Next Pay Cycle - January 13, 2020
- By FEDweekThe raise affecting most federal employees—averaging 3.1 percent but ranging by locality from about 2.9-3.5 percent—has taken effect but it will be awhile yet before employees see the actual impact.The first pay period of the year started January 5 for most employees, which as in past years is the effective date of the raise (not January 1, contrary to what some media outlets reported). That two-week period will end on the 18th, and the pay distribution for that period in most cases is made about a week later—a few days faster in some cases, a few days slower in others.
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- Fix Apparently Needed for Paid Parental Leave Authority - January 10, 2020
- By FEDweekLegislation (S-3104) has been introduced in the Senate to address what sponsors call technical problems that would make some categories of federal employees ineligible for the paid parental leave authority that was enacted in late December.The bill would make clear that the authority is meant to apply to employees outside “Title 5,” which is the body of law covering federal employment policies in general.
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- OPM Abandons Effort to Make It Easier for Feds to Transfer and Re-Enter Government - January 9, 2020
- By Eric Katz, Gov ExecutiveThe Office of Personnel Management is no longer pursuing electronic personnel records for all federal employees, an initiative the agency had touted as transformative in helping employees more easily move from one agency to another or return to government following retirement or stints in the private sector.
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- Trump Budget Coming Feb. 10 — Here’s What You Can Expect - January 7, 2020
- By: Aaron Mehta and Joe Gould, FederalTimesThe Trump administration plans to submit its fiscal 2021 budget request to Congress Feb. 10, with defense spending expected to be essentially flat compared to the previous year.A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget confirmed to Defense News that the date for the budget submission has been locked in. The date was first reported by Politico.
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- Service Members And Veterans Lost $405 Million To Scammers Since 2012 - January 6, 2020
- By Scott Maucione, Federal News NetworkIn the past eight years military service members, their families and veterans lost more than $405 million to scammers.Comparitech, a consumer-information organization, analyzed years of information from the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book to find out how service members and veterans are losing money to criminals.
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- More Top Career Employees Hit The Federal Pay Ceiling In 2020 - January 3, 2020
- By Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News NetworkA growing number of top-ranking federal employees will see their salaries compressed by an arbitrary pay cap in 2020.According to federal statute, salaries for career federal employees on the General Schedule can’t exceed the pay rates for political appointees and others at level IV on the Executive Schedule.
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- OPM Plans To Help Returning Feds Get Better Jobs - January 2, 2020
- By Jessie Bur, FederalTimesFederal employees that leave for the private sector or academia to gain more experience may have an easier time returning to government jobs, under a rule proposed by the Office of Personnel Management Dec. 26.The rule would enable returning employees to enter back into a government job without competition at a higher level than when they left, if they have gained the experience and skills to warrant such a higher position.
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- Fed Performance Reviews Will Get A Revamp - November 27, 2019
- By Jessie Bur, Federal TimesThe Office of Personnel Management has made changes to the tool agencies use to evaluate their employee assessment programs, as part of an administration-wide push to improve employee management and accountability.OPM Associate Director for Employee Services Mark Reinhold wrote in a memo to agencies Nov. 26 that his agency had made changes to the Performance Appraisal Assessment Tool to better reflect the objectives of the President’s Management Agenda.
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- OPM Tells Agencies To Get Moving On Workforce Executive Order Implementation - November 26, 2019
- By Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News NetworkAgencies with collective bargaining agreements whose terms have expired or rolled over must now reopen and implement all provisions of the president’s workforce executive orders, the Office of Personnel Management said Monday.“All relevant provisions of the EOs” are fair game and should be implemented at the end of the current term of a collective bargaining agreement, OPM said, even if agencies and unions don’t opt to reopen an agreement.
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- OMB’s Data Reskilling Pilot To Train Executives As Well As Front-line Employees - November 25, 2019
- By Jory Heckman, Federal News NetworkIn a spin-off from the Trump administration’s efforts to retrain federal employees for hard-to-fill cybersecurity jobs, the Office of Management and Budget will soon launch a reskilling pilot aimed at bringing the federal workforce up to speed on data science skills.In a departure from the cyber reskilling academy, which so far has trained two cohorts of employees from across the government, the upcoming data reskilling academy will not only train front-line federal employees for data-centric jobs. It’ll also give managers and executives a primer in how data science can help them carry out their agency’s mission.
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- Federal Retirement Applications, Processing Both Down in October - November 12, 2019
- By Erich Wagner, Government Executive,The Office of Personnel Management announced last week that the backlog of pending federal retirement claims nearly reached 18,000 last month. Although the number of requests has decreased in recent months, so too has the pace by which the federal government’s HR agency has processed them.According to agency statistics, only 7,044 federal employees filed for retirement in October. That represents about 400 fewer claims than OPM received in September, and a decrease of nearly 2,000 requests compared with the 9,012 that were filed in October 2018.
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- BOTH STAFF CUTS AND BUDGET INCREASES FOR FY 2019 - July 13, 2017
Staff Cuts and Budget Increases Are Both on Tap for 2019
By Eric Katz, Government Executive
The Trump administration has provided federal agencies with the latitude to request up to a 5 percent funding boost in fiscal 2019, saying the White House may accommodate a “limited number” of programmatic increases in its final blueprint.
Generally, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said in a memorandum to department and agency heads, agencies should keep their 2019 spending requests in line with what the White House spelled out in the fiscal 2018 budget submission. They should also, however, “identify additional investments in effective programs that further support their mission and fill a clear federal role.”
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- Agencies Could Rehire, Promote Former Employees With New OPM Regulatory Fix - December 24, 2019
- By Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News NetworkThe Office of Personnel Management wants to help agencies rehire former employees who have left government — and offer a non-competitive promotion to a higher grade level to sweeten the deal.In a proposed rule, which is scheduled for publication later this week, OPM will recommend new regulations that will allow agencies to non-competitively reappoint former employees to other positions at a higher grade level than when they left government.
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- How The Government Wants Agencies To Regulate AI - January 14, 2020
- By Andrew Eversden, Federal TimesThe Office of Management and Budget released a draft memorandum Jan. 13 providing guidance to agencies on how they should approach regulation of industry’s artificial intelligence applications.The guidance emphasizes that agencies should consider how any regulatory action would potentially hinder expansion of AI use. The draft memo “calls on agencies, when considering regulations or policies related to AI applications, to promote advancements in technology and innovation."
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