• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is having trouble retaining employees who inspect drug manufacturers. The vacancy rate for these FDA investigators nearly doubled between November 2021 and June 2024. The agency tells the Government Accountability Office that travel pay and work-life balance are contributing factors to turnover. Investigators can spend up to 75% of their work hours on travel. The FDA paused many inspections of drug manufacturing facilities height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  (FDA should implement strategies to retain its inspection workforce - Government Accountability Office)
• Federal retirement claims in the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) inventory are holding about steady. As of October, OPM has just under 15,000 pending applications from retiring feds. It’s an uptick of about 400 claims since September. It’s also almost 2,000 claims above OPM’s general goal for its inventory. At the same time, OPM received a higher number of retirement applications from feds in October than it did in September. Currently, it’s taking an average of 62 days for OPM to process an employee’s retirement claim.
  (Retirement claims inventory - Office of Personnel Management)
• Federal employees are putting mission over politics in the aftermath of the election. With the threat of the return of Schedule F and other potential changes outlined in Project 2025 hanging over the heads, a Federal News Network “Pulse Poll” found 42% of the more than 1,000 federal employee respondents say they plan on staying in their jobs and another 41% say they are taking a “wait and see” approach before jumping ship. Federal News Network conducted the online survey of its audience from Nov. 6-7. At the same time, 40% of the respondents are not as confident in their coworkers, saying they expect “many” or “some” to leave their office because of the election.
  (Pulse Poll: Majority of feds putting mission over politics - Federal News Network)
• Customer satisfaction with the federal government is at a seven-year high according to one major scorecard. The Office of Personnel Management earned the highest customer service score of any agency tracked by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. The Department of Homeland Security the Agriculture Department and the Commerce Department also received top scores. Respondents generally gave higher satisfaction scores to agency websites than call centers. Agencies are also seeing higher scores year over year on the efficiency and ease of government processes and the clarity of information presented.
  (Customer satisfaction with the federal government is at a 7-year high - American Customer Service Index)

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• Paragon Systems of Herndon, Virginia, will pay $52 million to settle allegations that it violated the Anti-Kickback Act and the False Claims Act. The Justice Department says Paragon Systems, which is one of the largest federal providers of specialized security, fire and emergency response and mission support services, including security guards at federal buildings, knowingly engaged in a fraudulent scheme to use purported small businesses that it controlled to obtain Department of Homeland Security set-aside contracts. Additionally, the settlement resolves allegations that those same small businesses paid more than 11 million dollars to Paragon Systems executives for purported "consulting payments." As part of the settlement with Paragon, the whistleblower, Todd Pattison, will receive more than $9 million.
  (Paragon Systems agrees to pay $52M to resolve False Claims Act allegations - Justice Department)
• The Biden administration is removing degree requirements for cyber and IT positions on multiple major federal contracts. The General Services Administration will eliminate unnecessary degree and experience requirements for cybersecurity positions on GSA’s Polaris and Alliant 3 governmentwide acquisition contracts. The White House says that move will bring skills-based hiring to contracts that represent an estimated $100 billion in agency task orders. The Energy Department is also modifying its enterprise IT contract to remove degree requirements for cyber and IT jobs. The shift is expected to impact more than 1,000 full-time equivalent positions by December.
  (Fact Sheet: White House hosts “Classroom to Career” summit - White House)
• Federal employees will continue to be barred from signing up for long term care insurance. The Office of Personnel Management extended its suspension of new enrollments in the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program. The suspension will last for another two years. Current enrollees in the long-term care insurance program can keep getting coverage in the meantime, but cannot apply for increased coverage. OPM first suspended new program enrollments in 2022 after what the agency said was “volatility” in long term care costs. In 2023, FLTCIP enrollees saw their premiums increase by a broad range, up to as much as 86%.
  (Extension of suspension of applications for FLTCIP coverage - Office of Personnel Management)
• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is moving to a new online training platform. CISA’s Learning Management System will replace the Federal Virtual Training Environment, Fed VTE, along with multiple other platforms. The new system will start rolling out to users on November 15th. The Department of Homeland Security had previously ordered components to decommission Fed VTE and other legacy learning platforms due to major cybersecurity deficiencies.
  ( CISA Learning - NICCS)

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