Federal Newscast

FDA having trouble retaining supervisors and managers

In today's Federal Newscast, according to an assessment of its own workforce, nearly have of senior leaders at the Food and Drug Administration are eligible to ...

Eric White@FEDERALNEWSCAST

July 6, 2018 8:20 am

4 min read

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Nearly half of senior leaders at the Food and Drug Administration are eligible to retire in the next two years. A recent FDA assessment of its own workforce said it is struggling to retain some supervisors and managers, who go through nearly two years of training and leave for private sector companies with higher pay and better benefits packages. FDA has received direct hire authorities in recent years. But its current patchwork of authorities mean some managers make less than the employees they supervise. (Food and Drug Administration)

New guidance from the Office of Personnel Management looks to help agencies carry out the president’s three executive orders on the federal workforce. OPM said agencies who have union contracts that have expired or rolled over, should start to implement the orders’ provisions by telling federal unions to vacate federal property and update official time limits by July 9. Other agencies cannot implement the majority of the orders’ provisions until current collective bargaining agreements expire. (Federal News Radio)

A Republican lawmaker introduces a bill to ban unions at the IRS. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.)’s bill excludes the agency from parts of Title 5 of the U.S. code that address collective bargaining. Gosar said if some agencies like the National Security Agency and FBI can’t unionize, then neither should the IRS. The bill would largely affect the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents most IRS employees. (Rep. Paul Gosar)

The departure of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is unlikely to change the policy directions he was pursuing, at least not with Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler taking over as acting. Wheeler, formerly a lobbyist with the law firm Faergre Baker Daniels, represented a coal company in fighting Obama era environmental rules. He was also staff director for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a proponent of the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks. Wheeler worked at EPA during the Clinton administration. (Associated Press)

The U.S. Postal Service needs to upgrade its vehicle fleet and mail processing equipment, but lacks the funds to do so. The Government Accountability Office found USPS would need to increase its spending by 70 percent to cover its infrastructure upgrades. The agency has curtailed its spending since 2009 to cover a decline in first-class mail revenue. The Postal Service posted a $1.3 billion net loss last quarter, and has ended the last 11 fiscal years in the red. (Government Accountability Office)

As the 2020 count draws closer, the Census Bureau seeks software support for online responses. For the first time ever, households will be able to respond to the census through the internet in 2020. Now the Census Bureau is looking for ways to support that capability. The agency released a sources sought notice Tuesday, seeking software support for the design of its online questionnaire. The agency asks vendors for their responses by July 17. This comes as the Census Bureau wraps up its end-to-end field test in August. (FedBizOpps)

President Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is heading back to school. McMaster will serve as a visiting fellow at Stanford University focusing on international studies. McMaster will also lecture at the Stanford Graduate School of business in management and at the Hoover Institution.

An investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general found a Marine Corps general abused his position by treating his aide as a personal assistant. The IG substantiated allegations that Brig. Gen. Rick Uribe used his aide — another Marine Corps officer — to handle his laundry and other personal tasks during a one-year tour in Iraq. Witnesses said the aide was put in a condition of “personal servitude.” Uribe acknowledges making mistakes, but chalked them up to the “fog of war” while he was serving in Baghdad and inadequate ethics training. The DoD IG was especially suspicious of the latter claim. Just before deploying to Iraq, Uribe served as the Marine Corps’ own inspector general. (Federal News Radio)

Airmen from the three hundred and first Air Force rescue squadron help with the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon nine resupply rocket. The rocket, which took off last week, is the 15th SpaceX mission to bring more than 4,000 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station. (Air Force)