Veterans Affairs
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Congress is beginning to get a clearer picture of the Veterans Affairs Department's new Choice Program, which lets veterans access private sector community care providers if they choose. But members on the House VA Committee question the department's continued involvement in scheduling appointments for veterans.
March 22, 2016 -
The House Veterans Affairs Committee is considering legislation to give the VA secretary the authority to set pay and performance appraisals for medical directors. It also includes several provisions that are designed to help the VA attract and hire more doctors and nurses.
March 17, 2016 -
A group of Republican senators criticized the Merit Systems Protection Board for overturning disciplinary actions taken against corrupt Veterans Affairs Department bureaucrats. The board and its array of administrative judges almost always uphold agency actions. Attorney Debra D'Agostino, partner at the Federal Practice Group, helps Federal Drive with Tom Temin sort things out.
March 14, 2016 -
The Senate is considering a series of new bills that would alter the Veterans Affairs Department's current Choice program, which lets veterans find a private care provider rather than a VA doctor. VA leaders and Congress both say the department's current program is not working.
March 11, 2016 -
More than half of current and former senior executives at the Veterans Affairs Department oppose the VA's proposal to reclassify some SES members under Title 38, according to the preliminary results of a recent survey from the Senior Executives Association.
March 10, 2016 -
The MSPB in 2015 upheld agency decisions or actions on initial appeal nearly every time. But not for the Veterans Affairs Department. So what are the senators asking?
March 10, 2016 -
Thanks to the flawed Choice Act Congress hastily passed in 2014, SESers exist in a sort of twilight of civil service protection.
March 03, 2016 -
More than a year after agencies first began embedding digital services teams into their organizations, IT leaders are seeing the benefits of adopting a more agile, incremental mentality -- rather than bending to old policies and standard protocols.
March 02, 2016 -
The Office of Special Counsel said two reports from the Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General are incomplete, because the IG didn't address the issues whistleblowers raised about problems with wait times at two VA medical centers.
February 29, 2016 -
LaVerne H. Council, assistant secretary for information and technology and chief information officer at the Veterans Affairs Department, talks to the Women of Washington.
February 26, 2016 -
Susan Tsui Grundmann, chairwoman of the Merit Systems Protection Board, talks to Federal Drive with Tom Temin about how new legislation requiring greater accountability from Veterans Affairs managers affects the MSPB.
February 24, 2016 -
When Congress voted to restrict appeal rights of Veterans Affairs Department managers, it never counted on what might happen. Namely, that the Merit Systems Protection Board would follow the law to the letter. That's why a series of reversals have hit VA's senior leadership when it tried to fire people for performance. Lynn Bernabei, a partner at the law firm Bernabei and Cabot, which specializes in employee grievance cases, says VA has become a battleground between MSPB and Congress. She joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin with more details.
February 18, 2016 -
Greg Giddens, the director of the Office of Acquisition, Logistics and Construction at the Veterans Affairs Department, is pushing five main acquisition principles that he says will put the VA in the right direction.
January 27, 2016 -
The Office of Special Counsel says it's been a "victim of its own success" in fiscal 2015, thanks to more VA whistleblowers coming forward.
January 20, 2016 -
Greg Garcia is taking over as the new chief information officer at the Army Corps of Engineers. He is one of several new CIOs agencies named over the last month.
January 18, 2016