October 2009 Archives
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/30/09 01:49 pm ET
A new report by the Merit Systems Protection Board touts the use of job simulations in helping certain agencies select the best candidates for federal jobs. The report also notes that such simulations are being used by agencies to identify top candidates for information technology positions and/or to pinpoint specific technical skills. In these simulations, agencies present applicants with realistic, job-related situations and document their behaviors to help determine their qualifications for the job. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/30/09 01:18 pm ET
The annual open season for making decisions on your federal health plan begins Nov. 9, and Tammy Flanagan's Retirement Planning column has some useful tips to consider when selecting a plan for next year. With employee premium contributions rising an average of 8.8 percent this year, it might be wise to weigh alternatives to your current plan. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/29/09 01:31 pm ET
The Homeland Security Department is expanding the Transportation Security Administration's interactive IdeaFactory across the entire department, an agency spokesman said Thursday. Larry Orluskie, a DHS spokesman and project manager for the departmentwide rollout of the IdeaFactory, told Wired Workplace that the new Web 2.0 platform will enable DHS' large and dispersed workforce to submit and collaborate on innovative ideas to improve the agency. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/28/09 01:50 pm ET
President Obama on Wednesday signed into law the fiscal 2010 Defense Authorization Act, a bill that includes several federal workforce provisions. One provision fully repeals the Defense's Department's controversial National Security Personnel System, meaning the thousands of employees who are currently hired, evaluated and paid based on the system will move back to the decades-old General Schedule by 2012. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/28/09 10:32 am ET
Younger employees are leading the way when it comes to adopting social media and other technologies at companies, The Wall Street Journal reports. Twenty-something staffers, for example, are mentoring their bosses on how to import e-mail contacts into a LinkedIn account, creating fan pages on Facebook, or finding applications that can be used to market a company, the article states.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/27/09 11:00 am ET
The 2009 Executive Leadership Conference is currently taking place in Williamsburg, Va., and this year, it's focusing on a new era of innovation in government. Wired Workplace tuned in this morning to a Webinar from the event that focused on generational issues, social media and leadership in government. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/27/09 10:26 am ET
Adriel Hampton, a San Francisco public servant and host of Gov 2.0 Radio, tackles an interesting question on his blog: in the new "reputation economy," will the government still require a résumé to fill a job? "Potential business partners will find you on Google or a networking site, read your great bio, do a little independent noodling around into your background and decide to give you that killer contract," he writes.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/26/09 11:59 am ET
Twitter usage is increasing among teenagers and young adults, according to a new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The survey found that 37 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds now use the microblogging Web site, compared with just 19 percent in December 2008. Still, the median age of a Twitter user is 31, a figure that has remained stable over the past year, the survey found. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/23/09 12:02 pm ET
The Office of Personnel Management in coordination with the Harvard Kennedy School and the Maryland School of Public Policy will hold a roundtable meeting on Oct. 28 to discuss the future of the federal workforce, The Washington Post reports. The event, which will be off-the-record and closed to the press, will include administration leaders, unions, congress and members of the private and nonprofit sector. Participants in the meeting plan to tackle issues including: the vision for the federal workforce in five to 10 years, filling mission-critical jobs, transforming the broken federal recruiting and hiring process, and reforming the federal pay system.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/23/09 10:21 am ET
Legislation that includes several key retirement provisions for federal employees is heading to the president's desk. The Senate on Thursday approved the final version of the fiscal 2010 Defense Authorization bill (H.R. 2647), which includes a provision that would allow employees in the Federal Employees Retirement System to credit their unused, accumulated sick leave toward retirement. The bill also would allow CSRS workers to shift to part-time status at the end of their careers without reducing their final annuities, and would enable FERS employees who decide to return to civil service from the private sector the ability to recoup their full retirement annuity without losing credit for previous years of federal service. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/22/09 02:01 pm ET
Hiring federal IT workers could become slightly more competitive with the private sector in 2010, a new poll suggests. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/22/09 01:25 pm ET
The Office of Personnel Management is encouraging federal workers to step away from their computers on Oct. 27 to participate in a noontime rally and fitness walk to launch the new Feds Get Fit wellness awareness campaign.>>
By Allan Holmes
10/21/09 05:31 pm ET
The Office of Personnel Management announced on Wednesday that they had successfully consolidated 26 payroll systems into four. At the pres conference about the consolidation, Linda Pena, associate deputy assistant secretary at Veterans Affairs Department, where employees had to replace a 1960s era payroll system, said most VA employees didn't realize the system had changed until they saw a different name on their paychecks.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/20/09 10:27 am ET
Navy Department Chief Information Officer Robert Carey writes at the Navy CIO Blog about the future of the federal cybersecurity and IT workforce. Carey offers some perspective on how to move the workforce into the information age and deliver more effective IT in support of mission needs.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/20/09 01:01 pm ET
Alyssa Rosenberg reports at Government Executive that the gap between average pay for federal and private sector workers rose 1.25 percent in 2009, according to the Federal Salary Council. The pay gap increased from 25.71 percent in 2008 to 26.42 percent in 2009, with the largest gaps occurring in Cincinatti (4.52 percent); Sacramento, Calif., (2.82 percent); Washington (2.8 percent); Hartford, Conn., (2.63 percent); and New York City (2.61 percent). >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/19/09 11:12 am ET
The White House on Monday announced a new online program that challenges federal and military personnel to submit their own clean energy ideas and suggestions and vote on others. The new GreenGov challenge is running in coordination with National Energy Awareness Month, and any federal employee or military member can submit a clean energy idea from Oct. 19 through Oct. 31.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/16/09 12:07 pm ET
rganizations that deploy collaborative technologies achieve more than double the return on their investment and perform better than their less-collaborative peers, new research has shown.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/15/09 09:59 am ET
Telework Exchange conducted a Webinar on Wednesday that looked at some telework best practices at federal agencies. Representatives from the Patent and Trademark Office, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Virginia state government and Cisco each provided advice on the keys to a successful telework program, including how to measure its effectiveness>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/15/09 10:03 am ET
Federal retirees will receive no cost-of-living adjustment in their pension checks in 2010, the government announced Thursday. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/14/09 02:37 pm ET
The Partnership for Public Service is launching a new program designed to recruit, hire and retain entry-level information technology workers in the federal government. The program, called FedRecruit: IT Pilot Program, is designed to help agencies meet the need to fill what the Partnership estimates will be about 11,000 technology job openings during the next three years.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/13/09 11:56 am ET
The Labor Department has released a list of the top 50 in-demand occupations, and it's no surprise that several IT-specific fields made the list. The list includes the projected need for employees in each of the 50 categories from 2006 to 2016. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/09/09 01:09 pm ET
Four federal information security workers were honored on Wednesday with Government Information Security Leadership Awards. The annual awards program, which is run by consulting firm (ISC)2, recognize individuals who have significantly enhanced the information security workforce by demonstrating a leadership role in any information security workforce improvement initiative, program or project on either a government-wide or agency-specific basis. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/08/09 09:27 am ET
Several key federal employee provisions are included in an agreement between the House-Senate conference committee working on the fiscal 2010 Defense authorization bill. The committee's report of the final legislation, released on Wednesday, includes a provision that would allow employees in the Federal Employees Retirement System to credit their unused, accumulated sick leave toward retirement. Currently, FERS employees receive 13 use-or-lose sick days per year. The provision puts FERS employees on par with those in the Civil Service Retirement System, which generally includes those hired prior to 1984. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/07/09 12:56 pm ET
Computerworld reports that the Homeland Security Department's efforts to hire some 1,000 new cybersecurity experts could be stalled due to a lack of specialized skills as well as competition with other agencies and the private sector. DHS has a critical need for security professionals to handle tasks like intrusion analysis, malware reverse engineering, security auditing, secure code analysis, penetration testing and forensics, but the problem is there aren't enough security professionals to meet those needs, the article states. Experts also say that DHS must first address the relatively high rates of turnover within its mid- and upper-level cyber workforce, particularly at its National Cyber Security Division. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/06/09 04:03 pm ET
Wired Workplace spoke with Jeffrey Neal, chief human capital officer at the Homeland Security Department, on Monday about the agency's new IT platform that simplifies and accelerates its recruiting and hiring activities. The tool, called TalentLink, uses electronic routing and approvals, automates the rating and ranking process, standardizes vacancy announcements using plain language, and facilitates communication with applicants. The tool also eliminates the knowledge, skills and abilities questions traditionally found on federal applications, allowing DHS applicants to simply submit a resume, Neal said.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/06/09 03:12 pm ET
A new survey by Robert Half Technology shows that the government is not alone in its concerns about employee access to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter while on the job. The survey of more than 1,400 chief information officers found that more than half (54 percent) of companies do not allow employees to visit social networking sites for any reason at work. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/05/09 02:31 pm ET
The Homeland Security Department plans to hold a major job fair that will focus on staffing up its cybersecurity workforce, the agency's chief human capital officer told Wired Workplace on Monday. The news comes just days after DHS announced a new hiring flexibility that authorizes it to hire up to 1,000 additional cyber experts.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/05/09 01:43 pm ET
A new report by Accenture notes that leading governments are moving beyond using traditional technologies to strengthen their relationships with citizens and modifying conventional models of service delivery in innovative new ways.
The report, called "From e-Government to e-Governance," stressed the importance of spurring innovation within the government workforce, largely by encouraging employees to take greater responsibility for the efficiency and effectiveness of information workflows, business processes, programs and delivery channels. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/02/09 09:57 am ET
A guest post on Wired.com by Heather West of the Center for Democracy and Technology tackles whether online privacy is a generational issue. Recent studies, including one on behavioral advertising, show that those in younger age groups care most about how their information is used, and many teens and young adults have now come to expect a high level of control over their personal information.>>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/02/09 10:54 am ET
The Obama administration on Thursday issued an executive order that bans federal employees from text messaging while driving on official government business. The order was announced on Thursday by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood at the end of a two-day summit in Washington on distracted driving. The order also encouraged federal contractors to ban text messaging while driving in connection with government business. >>
By Brittany Ballenstedt
10/01/09 12:34 pm ET
The Homeland Security Department on Thursday announced a new authority to recruit and hire cybersecurity professionals across the agency over the next three years. The new authority comes as the department declares October as National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. >>
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