Office of Personnel Management
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The Office of Personnel Management recently filed two proposals to change how feds enroll in the Federal Employee Dental and Vision Insurance Program and to expand the regulations of the Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance.
January 02, 2014 -
Under federal "use it or lose it" rules, any unspent money employees set aside last year to pay for out-of-pocket health costs, such as prescriptions or co-pays, is forfeited at the end of the year. But a group of senators from states surrounding the Washington, D.C., area, wants to change that. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) along with Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) wrote to Katherine Archuleta, the head of the Office of Personnel Management, requesting the agency implement new regulations that would allow federal employees to roll over as much as $500 in unused funds from year to year.
December 30, 2013 -
SBA, OPM have new CIOs as the carousel in government IT spins once again.
December 20, 2013 -
The federal government now employs a record number of people with a disability. The Office of Personnel Management says agencies are making progress toward the President's 2010 hiring goals.
December 19, 2013 -
A little more than a month into Katherine Archuleta's tenure at the Office of Personnel Management, the agency is staffing up and reshuffling a handful of leadership positions. Archuleta, who most recently worked as the national political director for President Barack Obama's 2012 reelection effort, is bringing on board two fellow campaign staffers to serve as top advisers. The agency is also getting a new chief operating officer from within the ranks of the agency. Angela Bailey, the former associate director of employee services, has been named the agency's new COO.
December 19, 2013 -
Thanks to the bipartisan budget deal passed by Congress and on its way to the President's desk, though, federal employees will soon have a new health-insurance coverage option: "self plus one." Federal employees have long clamored for the couples-only option, but the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the FEHBP, has always demurred, citing concerns it would disrupt the risk-sharing inherent in large group plans. Now, with the self-plus-one option enshrined in law, at least one federal-employee union finds OPM's recent change of heart "problematic."
December 19, 2013 -
The number of federal employees deemed eligible to telework nearly doubled last year. All told, nearly half of the entire federal workforce - more than 1 million employees - has been determined to be eligible to telework, according to an annual report to Congress from the Office of Personnel Management. OPM's report, the second since President Barack Obama signed the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, also noted sizable gains in the number of agencies with telework policies in place, in the number employees who signed telework agreements governing their work outside the office and in the frequency with which they telework.
December 18, 2013 -
The gap in pay between federal employees and private-sector workers widened slightly this year, according to data presented at the annual meeting of the Federal Salary Council. On average, federal employees earn 35.37 percent less than their private-sector counterpart, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management and the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
December 17, 2013 -
Medina's last day at the Office of Personnel Management will be Jan. 3. She is leaving to join public relations firm APCO Worldwide as a senior human resources executive.
December 17, 2013 -
When you approach a swimming pool for the first time, do you dive straight in or dip your toe first to test the waters? Before you retire, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says, wouldn't it be nice to have the toe-dipping option?
December 11, 2013 -
When the Office of Personnel Management makes the decision to close federal offices in the Washington, D.C. region because of snow, federal employees outside the area often deride inside-the-Beltway feds for their weather wimpiness. But with hundreds of thousands of federal employees spread across the country, Federal News Radio wants to know: Does a D.C. snow day impact the work that you do — wherever you are?
December 10, 2013 -
Due to inclement weather, federal offices in the Washington, D.C., area are closed today. Emergency and telework-ready employees must follow their agency's policies.
December 10, 2013 -
The number of federal employees filing for retirement is on a downward swing. For the fifth month in a row, fewer federal employees than expected filed for retirement, according to new data from the Office of Personnel Management. However, OPM's efforts at processing federal-employee retirement applications also took a nosedive last month. OPM processed just 5,700 claims in November, less than half of what it predicted it would and nearly half the number of cases the agency cleared last month.
December 05, 2013 -
With the official start of winter just two weeks away, the Office of Personnel Management is tweaking its closure and dismissal guidelines. The updated policy changes the way OPM will communicate delayed arrivals and continues to call on agencies to ensure all federal employees who are telework-ready actually do so when OPM gives the say-so during inclement weather.
December 05, 2013 -
Federal employees wanting to schedule "use it or lose it" annual leave only have a few days left before their excess vacation days are forfeited. The deadline to schedule excess annual leave is this Saturday, Nov. 30, Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta reiterated in a Nov. 26 memo to agency chief human capital officers. The leave must be used by Jan. 11, the end of the leave year.
November 27, 2013