Tuesday federal headlines – December 1, 2015

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on the Federal Drive.

• The Office of Personnel Management wants to know what you think of your benefits. OPM is conducting its biannual Federal Employee Benefits Survey.  OPM says it wants to measure the importance, adequacy and value of employee benefits. The goal is to make sure those benefits align with best practices and employee needs. Among the data the survey will collect includes employee wellness such as tobacco usage and other health demographics. OPM expects to survey about 40,000 federal employees over a four-week period. The previous Federal Employee Benefits Survey took place in 2013. (CHCOC)

• The House of Representatives passed legislation Monday formally authorizing a Department of Homeland Security institute to train and equip law enforcement and prosecutors to investigate and prevent fraud, intellectual property theft and other cybercrimes. The bill amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to authorize The National Computer Forensics Institute. It is to be operated by the Secret Service, to educate, train, and equip law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges against cyber crimes. (GovTrack)

• USAID has a new leader. The Senate confirmed Gayle Smith as the next administrator of the U.S. agency for international development. She formerly served as senior director at the White House’s National Security Council. Her nomination was approved back in July but was held up for months by Republicans controlling the chamber. (Yahoo)

• Four Republicans asked the Government Accountability Office to look into political appointees who convert to career civil servants. The practice is known as burrowing. It’s legal but not all that popular among regular employees. The lawmakers say they’re worried burrowing at the end of an administration can undermine the integrity of the federal workforce. (House Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee)

• Two teams of up-in-coming federal technology experts won the first ever IT solutions challenge. The CIO Council chose one new approach to develop, standardize, and implement IT policies. The FedIT solution is a  social network and communications platform fosters real-time collaboration. The second team identified the need for a collaborative space for agencies to test, customize, and share technology solutions. Project GEMMAA would let federal IT experts collaborate, share,  leverage expertise and contribute to cross-agency IT initiatives. (CIO.gov)

• President Barack Obama is backing locality pay increased for civilian federal employees in 2016. An executive order says the increase was introduced in his alternative plan for locality pay because the changes that would have gone into effect in January could not be sustained by agency budgets. Union advocated say the boost is a step in the right direction, but some say it’s still too low. (Federal News Radio)

• A draft executive order to improve the Senior Executive Service is drawing concerns from good-government groups. The Senior Executives Association wrote six-pages of comments to OPM and OMB, detailing the good, the bad and the ugly of the draft order. SEA and other groups say the draft EO doesn’t address the underlying challenges for the Senior Executive Service of finding the right balance between risk and reward. About 30 stakeholders offered comments to OMB and OPM at a recent briefing. Observers say the White House would like to issue the final EO in December. (Federal News Radio)

• A new “wastebook” from Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) has 100 examples of fraudulent and duplicative federal programs and processes. Lankford is picking up a longstanding tradition his predecessor, former Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), started. Underused and empty federal buildings, mismanaged Federal Protective Service vehicles and the OPM cyber breach are some of the examples Lankford described. A $375,000 dollar study on senior dating habits and a $280,000 Defense Department study on a small bird are some of the “nonsensical” cases of waste, Lankford found. (Federal News Radio)

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