Female federal employees earn on average 87 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts, according to a new review from the Office of Personnel Management. Still, the pay gap between men and women in the white-collar federal workforce has dropped significantly over the past 20 years. And across many individual occupations and grades, men and women now earn comparable levels of pay, according to OPM's new report. OPM's review found much of the continued pay disparity between male and female feds can be explained by their presence in different occupational categories.
Thanks to better than expected progress in processing federal retirement claims last month, the Office of Personnel Management's backlog of pending claims is shrinking for the first time this year. By the end of March, the number of backlogged claims shrank from more than 23,500 claims to about 18,500.
Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta says she wants to keep premium increases for federal employees' health coverage "in check." In a keynote speech at the annual FEHB Program Carrier Conference in Arlington, Va., Thursday Archuleta also called on insurance carriers to make prescription drugs more affordable and urged more federal employees to sign up for wellness programs.
The Office of Personnel Management is making tweaks to how agencies report time-to-hire data. But experts who spoke to Federal News Radio say they don't think OPM is giving up on the idea of improving the federal hiring process. Instead, they say, it appears OPM may be shifting its focus to measuring the quality of new federal hires.
Two Republican members of the House want to know how many hours federal employees are spending on union-related business while on the job. Reps. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) and Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) wrote to Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta urging the agency to release updated data on employees' use of "official time." The most recent year for which data is available is from 2011.
The National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations is getting ready to launch new tools to help partnerships between agency management and federal-employee unions better measure their effectiveness. A handful of agencies are months late in compiling metrics on the use and effectiveness of the forums, according to a report presented at a meeting of the labor-management council Wednesday. Unions are frustrated with the haphazard data collection.
Six months after 34-year-old IT contractor Aaron Alexis opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard killing 12 people, concerns about missed red flags in his background and gaps in the security clearance process are now turning into action. The Obama administration released the findings of a interagency review of the federal security clearance process Tuesday. Among the 13 recommendations for shoring up the system are continuously evaluating clearance holders rather than relying on infrequent check-ups and improving investigators' access to state and local police records.
How will OPM transform to become a customer service agency?
More changes coming to OPM's IT organization.
OPM Director Katherine Archuleta stays true to her word when it comes to IT.
The Office of Personnel Management will focus its efforts around six pillars and a series of initiatives to improve how it uses and delivers technology services. OPM Director Katherine Archuleta said the plan helps reinforce the collaborative approach needed to implement IT systems.
On the In Depth show blog, you can listen to our interviews, find more information about the guests on the show each day, as well as links to other stories and resources we discuss.
For far too long federal agencies have looked to the training budget as one of the first places to cut (after travel) when budgets are tight. Training cuts are among the most shortsighted of the budget-cutting options, says former Homeland Security CHCO Jeff Neal.
OPM Director Katherine Archuleta didn't have details on the proposals, but she said agencies need to learn from each other and build on their successes.
The Preventing Conflicts of Interest with Contractors Act would block the Office of Personnel Management from contracting with companies to perform final quality reviews if those same companies are also responsible for conducting initial investigations. OPM Director Katherine Archuleta announced in early February that, going forward, only federal employees would conduct final quality reviews. The new bill writes Archuleta's decision into law. Otherwise it could be reversed by a future OPM director.