Transportation Department

Could all of this have a chilling effect on the willingness of other agencies to issue unflattering reports?

A summary of agencies’ chief human capital challenges from the Office of Personnel Management points to the General Schedule as the “single greatest obstacle” to competing with the private sector for critical talent. It’s second report in as many weeks from the federal community that describes major challenges with decades-old civil service systems.

In today’s Federal Newscast, federal contractor associations wrote separate letters to the White House and lawmakers asking for more guidance for how industry should expect to work during the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19.

The Transportation Department has sent home its workforce at the Navy Yard headquarters in Washington, D.C., where an employee has tested positive for the coronavirus.

Federal agencies have requested an additional $45.8 billion in funding for 2020 alone, which the White House said is necessary for its governmentwide response to the coronavirus. Extra telework support is at the top of the list.

In today’s Federal Newscast, the departments of Commerce, Defense, Transportation and Homeland Security are on the clock to figure out how best to secure the systems that support global positioning satellites and related critical infrastructure.

Andre Mendes, who has been acting CIO at the Commerce Department since August, is now the permanent technology leader. Beth Angerman, the former GSA principal deputy associate administrator in the Office of Governmentwide Policy, found a new home in the private sector.

Congress had once anticipated as many as 1,000 federal employees would use phased retirement at any given time. But eight years after lawmakers signed off on the program, participation still falls well short of original expectations.

The departments of Transportation and Energy have turned to machine learning tools to get a better handle of their data, but officials say those tools will only get them so far.

Why do people feel a possible need to sleep at the office? GSA would like to remind workers they can’t.