Patty Murray

In today’s Federal Newscast, the Agriculture Department’s progress under the Centers of Excellence initiative can now be tracked through a new website.

Battles over priorities in a huge government-wide spending bill are essentially settled

Longer probationary periods for employees in the competitive service and Senior Executive Service are among the many topics the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will consider this week.

Financial literacy, parental leave and contracting issues are all being addressed by amendments to the 2018 defense authorization bill.

The new report includes 22 recommendations, including the creation of a National Secure Data Service, and asking Congress to lift certain bans on data use and collection.

Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin offered the first glimpse of his plan to redesign the current Veterans Choice Program. He’s calling it the Veterans’ Coordinated Access Rewarding Experience (CARE) Program, and under the new initiative, veterans would no longer access community providers based on a set of arbitrary, administrative rules.

Leaders at the Veterans Affairs Department pledge to Congress that the money and time they’ve been given to help overhaul the agency’s IT systems will not be in vain.

The two employee unions say lawmakers shouldn’t make up for sequestration cuts by forcing federal employees to contribute more to their retirement. House and Senate legislators are working on a small-scale budget deal that reportedly includes a provision to alter federal retirement benefits.

When House and Senate lawmakers kicked off formal budget negotiations this week for the first time since the government shutdown ended, both Republicans and Democrats said replacing sequestration, the blunt across-the-board budget cuts, with an alternative plan would be a top priority. The sticking point remains how to pay for it. Federal-employee unions and advocacy groups fear federal pay and benefits will once again be on the table.

When it comes to the federal workforce, the competing House and Senate budget plans differ greatly in tone and style. But when it comes to making the federal government run more efficiently and finding cost-savings in federal operations, the two plans are more alike than you might think.