The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act last week showed support for a 2% raise for DoD civilian workers and a 4.5% raise for military members. In a vote of 22-3 on June 13, committee lawmakers advanced the 2025 NDAA to the full Senate for consideration. The House passed its version of the NDAA last week.

Although the NDAA’s provisions only apply to Defense Department employees, both civilian DoD workers and the rest of the civilian federal workforce on the General Schedule would see the same percentage added to their paychecks, if the raise is enacted.

In House appropriations legislation, committee lawmakers remained silent on the topic of the federal pay raise, indicating a likely alignment with the president’s raise proposal. The GOP-led committee advanced legislation for a fiscal 2025 spending package last week along party lines. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet released its versions of fiscal 2025 spending legislation.

President Joe Biden’s request of a 2% pay raise for most civilian federal employees on the General Schedule, if enacted, would be the smallest annual raise for feds since Biden took office. The 2% proposal comes in contrast to the 5.2% federal pay raise for 2024, which was the largest raise for feds since the Carter administration.

Biden’s initial raise proposal in March, contained in the fiscal 2025 budget request, did not indicate a breakdown between base pay and locality pay. But in most years, presidents typically set aside 0.5% for locality pay and leave the remainder for the across-the-board raise.

For the federal pay raise, nothing is set in stone until Biden signs an executive order to enact it, which usually happens in December. Ahead of that finalization, federal unions and other employee organizations have spoken out in favor of a larger pay raise for feds in 2025, calling for a 7.4% boost rather than the 2% proposal.

Legislation titled the FAIR Act, if enacted, would offer that large of a raise to feds next year. Unions including the National Treasury Employees Union have endorsed the bill, which lawmakers first introduced in January.

“NTEU continues the fight to pass the FAIR Act,” NTEU wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “Such an investment in the federal workforce would help close the significant pay gap between federal employee and private sector pay and help the federal government compete with the private sector for talented employees.”

But many agencies are already trying to figure out how to incorporate the larger 5.2% raise into their budgets for 2024. Some agencies’ budgets this fiscal year remained relatively stagnant, while other costs, such as federal employees’ paychecks, have continued to rise.

The next step in the process toward finalizing the federal pay raise will likely come later this summer. To avoid defaulting to the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA), Biden will have to issue an alternative pay plan by the end of August.

Federal employees currently earn about 27.54% less in wages than those in the private sector with similar occupations, according to the Federal Salary Council. Although FEPCA allows for a large enough annual federal pay raise to bring the federal-private sector wage gap down to 5%, no president since 1994 has incorporated the fully authorized amount.

Decades of deviation from FEPCA have caused distortion of federal pay in multiple ways. It would now cost an estimated $22 billion to bring General Schedule salaries in line with the private sector.

Any potential changes in Congress that might break away from the current pay plans could still take place this fall ahead of an executive order in December.

The post Proposed 2% federal pay raise gets support in 2025 defense authorization bill first appeared on Federal News Network.

OPM’s initiatives over the last couple years, such as banning the consideration of salary history, creating a job portal for internship openings, and broadening eligibility for paid internships through the Pathways Program, all aim to open the doors to more candidates and make the hiring process more equitable.

Even though the larger impacts of those changes are likely still further down the road, OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver said signs are pointing in the right direction, especially for OPM’s efforts centered on improving recruitment and retention of younger employees.

“I do think what we’re seeing is a renewed and increased interest in federal job opportunities by early-career talent,” Shriver told Federal News Network Tuesday during an event for federal interns hosted at OPM’s headquarters office.

Tuesday’s event was part of OPM’s intern experience program, now in its second year, which offers resources and hosts events for federal interns interested in pursuing a career in public service. The program aims to support early-career federal recruitment and retention overall. It’s also a step toward revitalizing the federal internship program, which has struggled for years.

Early-career numbers appear to be trending in a positive direction. Data from the Office of Management and Budget shows that between fiscal 2022 and 2023, the number of federal interns increased by 33%. There’s also been a recent uptick in the number of federal employees under age 30.

As part of the intern experience program, OPM hosted a panel Tuesday with senior leaders from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Department of Health and Human Services and Small Business Administration. Dozens of federal interns attended the event in person, with many more joining virtually to listen to the conversation.

“Events like these I think really help foster that engagement, that cohort spirit,” Shriver said after the panel.

Altering the Pathways Program

In another push toward better early-career recruitment, OPM is also now focused on helping agencies update their internal use of the Pathways Program, after finalizing new regulations in April. The recent updates to Pathways aim open the doors to more diverse applicants and alleviate some challenges agencies have historically had with the program.

The Pathways Program changes will still take a while to fully get off the ground, but Shriver said OPM is already working with agency HR offices as they iron out some of the early wrinkles to adjust their agency-specific programs and align with the new regulations.

“There’s a lot of stuff in there that is new for them to figure out, including the types of programs that now qualify — not only community colleges, but technical skills programs,” Shriver said. “Also the fact that now there’s a streamlined pathway to entry for registered apprentices, for people who participated in Job Corps, or [AmeriCorps] VISTA volunteers. [We are] making sure that not only central HR, but HR out in the field, are understanding these new flexibilities.”

That work to help HR offices and other Pathways Program leaders at agencies also involves collaborating with chief human capital officers, hosting informational webinars and educating colleges about the opportunities now possible for a broader swath of candidates, Shriver said. Additionally, OPM is working with agency HR departments to participate in job fairs, reach out to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and meet face to face with potential federal talent.

Just this week, OPM also met with other agencies to discuss its program, “Level Up to Public Service,” which focuses on expanding awareness around public service careers through partnerships with K-12 institutions and universities. The program particularly targets recruitment of individuals with disabilities who may be interested in pursuing federal employment.

“We’re getting a lot of really engaged people that are considering the federal government for a career. They’re asking smart questions, they’re navigating the hiring process, and so I think that our efforts to reach out and engage early-career talent are paying off,” Shriver said. “It’s just a matter of time, with these new tools that we put in place, before we’re going to start seeing that impact.”

Agency-specific targets for early-career talent

Senior leaders like Sara Bronin, chairwoman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, said early-career employees and interns often bring new and different ideas to her agency.

“The nature of people in preservation is that we always want to keep things the way they are — that’s in some ways the definition of preservation,” Bronin told Federal News Network at OPM’s event Tuesday. “But a field like ours needs fresh perspectives.”

Because of the desire for those broader perspectives, Bronin said her office focuses significantly on early-career talent in both recruitment and development.

“I really try to help interns and early-career professionals understand the big picture, why we are doing something and what their specific contributions can add to that effort,” she said. “For managers, it’s really important to provide the context to arm interns and early-career professionals with information and to connect them with others in the field who can help enhance their understanding of what they’re doing — not just in the internship, but in how they might approach work beyond just their specific internship.”

Additionally, the Environmental Protection Agency is aiming to double their number of federal interns by the end of this summer, according to Performance.gov.

Kimberly Patrick, EPA’s principal deputy assistant administrator for mission support, said while the agency is expanding its onboarding process to offer a full year of resources to new employees, that onboarding will also extend to all of the agency’s interns.

“We want to make this place as attractive as possible for our interns, so caring for them as well, as a part of that umbrella, is something that we’re looking to do, especially as we increased considerably the number of paid interns we’re having at the agency this year,” Patrick said at a June 6 GovExec event.

Alongside managing the intern experience program and other early-career talent efforts, OPM is also planning to create a governmentwide mentoring program for interns in the coming months.

“We talk about it a whole lot — how can we make the government a more attractive employer? What are the obstacles to bringing in early-career talent? And how can we be more competitive as agencies with the other opportunities that you all have?” Shriver said to the interns who attended OPM’s panel Tuesday. “We want to make sure you hear that message from us loud and clear.”

The post Early-career federal job openings seeing ‘renewed and increased’ interest, OPM’s Shriver says first appeared on Federal News Network.

Beginning in 2025, OPM is adding stricter eligibility requirements to try to root out ineligible enrollees in the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program — something that’s been high on GAO’s radar for at least the last few years. A 2022 GAO report showed that OPM spends up to $1 billion each year on ineligible participants erroneously enrolled in FEHB.

“One of the biggest benefit systems in the country, and for decades, nobody checked these things,” Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told lawmakers on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee during a June 13 hearing.

Each year, GAO releases a report of the programs and spending areas across the federal government that could lead to significant cost savings for agencies. The changes that GAO recommends aren’t always complex, but to be able to implement the measures, agencies need resources, Dodaro said.

“This isn’t rocket science — I mean, it’s basically looking at those things and doing some good auditing,” Dodaro said. “It could be tackled as soon as the resources could be marshaled to do it.”

Agencies often ‘slow to act’

By putting more controls in place and creating stricter measures on who can actually enroll — and stay enrolled — in FEHB, OPM should be able to more effectively address the cost issues, GAO said. Identifying ineligible dependents has remained a top challenge for FEHB since 2018, according to OPM’s inspector general office.

“[OPM] recognized the significance of the issue, but like in a lot of cases, people are slow to act on a recommendation,” Dodaro told committee lawmakers. “That’s why we keep following up.”

Addressing the FEHB spending challenges will involve a multi-pronged approach from OPM. It’s a matter of finding and removing currently enrolled ineligible FEHB members and preventing new members from enrolling in error, while also making long-term data updates to more easily root out ineligible enrollees in the future.

OPM is already gearing up to take some of these steps beginning in 2025. Starting next year, federal employees will be required to provide eligibility documentation for any family members they want to add to their insurance coverage during Open Season. But on top of that, Dodaro said an audit of current FEHB enrollees is necessary.

“[OPM] has not yet gone back and looked at all the people that are already in the system as to whether they have legitimate numbers of … people who are eligible for services,” Dodaro said. “They could sample across federal agencies, they could get some participation. But there has to be a thorough audit done of existing people that are on the federal employee’s health benefit systems.”

OPM is planning to start on this path as well. During this year’s Open Season, agencies will be required to validate the eligibility of a random sample of FEHB participants. That sample must comprise at least 10% of elections for both Self-Plus-One and Self-and-Family enrollments. Where possible, OPM is also encouraging agencies to validate larger portions of enrollees. If agencies find ineligible members through that data collection, they’ll have to follow OPM’s instructions for removing them.

A centralized FEHB database

But another major barrier for OPM to make improvements, Dodaro said, is the agency’s lack of a central database of FEHB enrollees. Without a centralized system, it’s much more difficult to identify and remove erroneously enrolled FEHB participants.

“Current FEHB eligibility determination and enrollment is highly decentralized and requires cooperation between nearly 100 employing offices responsible for determining eligibility and enrolling more than 8 million members,” OPM said in April. “If funded, OPM could extend this same central enrollment system to all FEHB enrollments, which would allow OPM to manage and make consistent all FEHB enrollments and remove individuals who cease to be eligible for the program.”

OPM, as part of its fiscal 2025 budget request, is proposing legislation to build a centralized enrollment system for FEHB. With a central database, OPM would be able to more quickly address the problem and avoid the spending errors. That system, if it’s implemented, would be modeled after the centralized system OPM just recently built for the upcoming Postal Service Health Benefits program.

During the oversight committee hearing, Dodaro said OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver’s background in insurance should help OPM make headway and get the changes underway — as would asking the Office of Management and Budget for additional support.

“He knows what the shortcomings are,” Dodaro, speaking about Shriver, told House committee members last week. “The question he’s wrestling with is how can he implement all these things that need to be implemented as soon as possible, like getting a central repository in place.”

The post Centralized FEHB database key to OPM cost savings, GAO says first appeared on Federal News Network.

For federal employees, a bill pending in the Senate would bring expanded coverage of fertility treatments through the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program.

But the Right to IVF Act, which Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) introduced last week, did not garner the 60 votes needed to move forward with a floor vote Thursday afternoon. Almost all Republicans voted against the measure to advance the legislation, resulting in a 48-47 tally.

The legislation rolls together three previous bills all aiming to improve access and insurance coverage for in-vitro fertilization (IVF). In part, the bill would have impacts specifically on FEHB enrollees. One component of the Right to IVF Act aims to set higher requirements for FEHB carriers to offer IVF coverage.

The Office of Personnel Management increased FEHB carrier requirements for IVF treatments for plan year 2024. But the legislation looks to further extend the requirements of IVF to cover both treatments and medications, as well as expanding to more types of assisted reproductive technology (ART).

The Democrat-led bill currently has 48 cosponsors. Generally, it focuses on establishing broader access to IVF and ART and lowering treatment costs, which without insurance can add up to tens of thousands of dollars in costs.

“Federal workers — myself included — know how expensive paying for IVF out of pocket can be, and the cost has put it out of reach for far too many,” Stacey Young, president of the Department of Justice Gender Equality Network (DOJ GEN), a federal employee advocacy group, told Federal News Network.

The push for a vote on the IVF bill represents a mindset shift toward the presidential campaign now just five months away, the Associated Press reported. Duckworth and other co-sponsors of the bill have said the legislation is also a response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, and other more recent efforts to limit access to fertility treatments and medications.

“Today, women and families … are worried about what comes next, including the erosion of reproductive freedoms nobody thought were at risk. This includes access to services like IVF,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “The Right to IVF Act establishes a nationwide right to IVF and eliminates barriers for the millions of families looking to use IVF to start and grow a family.”

The Biden administration also came out in support of the legislation and called for its passage.

“The administration looks forward to working with Congress … in order to protect access to fertility services, eliminate barriers for families in need of high-quality, affordable fertility services, and ensure that federal agencies have the resources to implement these benefits,” the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a statement of administrative policy Wednesday.

DOJ GEN has continually called for better federal health care coverage of infertility treatments. The group is one of many stakeholders that pushed for the advancement of the Right to IVF Act in the Senate.

“Supporting this bill should be a no-brainer,” Young told Federal News Network. “Our nation’s public servants should have affordable access to the full range of reproductive health care, including IVF and other forms of assisted reproductive technology.”

But some lawmakers, along with DOJ GEN, have said even without the legislation, OPM should still work to add more coverage for FEHB enrollees. For plan year 2024, OPM already expanded IVF coverage requirements for FEHB carriers to provide, at a minimum, coverage of the cost of drugs related to an IVF procedure for three cycles annually. OPM has also encouraged FEHB carriers to go beyond the minimum requirements — and so far, 24 carriers have done so.

DOJ GEN leaders said they’re grateful for the efforts OPM has made so far in the FEHB requirements. But the advocacy group wants OPM now to take things a step further. DOJ GEN is asking OPM to expand health carrier requirements to cover IVF treatments, on top of medications, for plan year 2025.

“OPM has the opportunity to break new ground again in 2025 by mandating not only coverage of IVF medications, but also medical treatments,” DOJ GEN wrote in a letter to OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver in May. “Medical treatments comprise the lion’s share of the cost of IVF. Many of our members can attest first-hand to the financial strains that paying out of pocket for IVF placed on them. Some had to drain their savings; borrow money from family members; or forgo treatments entirely. Others left DOJ for private-sector jobs that offered full IVF coverage, taking their invaluable skills and institutional knowledge with them.”

OPM declined to comment on whether there were any plans underway to further expand coverage requirements for IVF in the health insurance program. But some federal health experts have said with just a few months before Open Season, it’s likely too late to expand the coverage as early as plan year 2025 — though it would be possible in future health plan years.

Betsy Campbell, chief engagement officer at national infertility association RESOLVE, said the calls for better insurance coverage of fertility treatments have been growing.

“We know that hundreds of federal employees have been reaching out to OPM to request this coverage, and we’ve started to see some progress with OPM,” Campbell said in an interview with Federal News Network. “The next step is actually adding the medical procedure of IVF. So we’re hopeful that OPM will listen to their employees and add this highly desired benefit.”

RESOLVE has also been encouraging the adoption of a more inclusive definition of infertility that would help LGBTQ+ employees as well as unpartnered individuals access IVF and other fertility benefits through FEHB — but she said the efforts should go beyond simply updating the definition.

“There appears to still be some work, because donor sperm and donor eggs aren’t necessarily covered by all the plans,” Campbell said. “And that, of course, is needed by same-sex couples and non-partnered people when building their families. It’s one thing to have an inclusive definition, but you also have to cover the elements that are needed for these communities to build their families as well.”

A 2021 survey from Mercer, in partnership with RESOLVE, found that a vast majority of employers that increased fertility treatment coverage and benefits did not see a significant increase in medical plan costs.

Additionally, Campbell said, these types of benefit adjustments can significantly impact recruitment and retention of employees.

“You don’t want to provide yet another reason for them to leave federal employment to go to a private employer that is providing fertility benefits,” Campbell said. “Often employers don’t realize there’s a gap in this coverage until it’s pointed out. I think we’re seeing OPM trying to fill this gap piece by piece … Now it’s time to also cover these medically necessary procedures to help their employees build their families.”

The post Senate GOP blocks bill to expand IVF access as advocates call for better FEHB coverage first appeared on Federal News Network.

But beyond hammering out agency budgets for next year, the GOP-led House Appropriations Committee has tacked on several policy riders that could impact federal employees and retirees in other ways as well.

One policy rider included in the committee’s report language, for instance, would bar any investments through the Thrift Savings Plan that are based on environmental, social or governance (ESG) criteria.

House Republicans also tried last budget cycle to include the “No ESG in the TSP” policy rider in the spending legislation, but it ultimately did not end up in the final appropriations package.

The launch of the voluntary TSP mutual fund window in June 2022 brought more than 5,000 new mutual fund options to TSP participants who choose to enroll in the window and pay a fee for the service. But the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board has said if an anti-ESG policy is enacted, it would bring the TSP’s new mutual fund window to an early demise.

Keeping track of 5,000 mutual funds would become too burdensome and open FRTIB to potential legal exposure, the board has said.

“There is no practical, cost-efficient way to monitor each of the roughly 5,000 individual mutual funds’ holdings,” FRTIB Director of External Affairs Kim Weaver said in 2023.

FRTIB has publicly opposed the provisions that aim to bar ESG investments. Weaver has also said there would be ripple effects from the provision, if it’s enacted. It would cost the TSP additional money to wind down the mutual fund window, and TSP participants may be exposed to potential financial losses if they had to transfer their investments back to the main TSP funds.

Appropriations committee members plan to mark up the financial services and general government 2025 spending bill, as well as several others, on Thursday afternoon. Here are some of the other policy riders federal employees should pay attention to:

Telework, office space in 2025 spending bill

In the report language, committee members also noted previous and upcoming requirements for the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration to report to Congress on federal telework and office space.

In the 2024 enacted appropriations package, lawmakers included a now-approaching deadline for OMB to share all agencies’ work environment plans with Congress. Those plans, which stem from the initial return-to-office memo in April 2023, detail agencies’ recent telework policy changes.

OMB’s deadline to submit all agencies’ return-to-office plans to Congress is coming up in late June.

“The committee looks forward to receiving the report from OMB on governmentwide telework,” House appropriators wrote in the committee’s report. “The committee [also] expects agencies under the jurisdiction of the subcommittee to reduce their office footprint if their average office space utilization rate is less than 60%, based on a benchmark of 150 usable square feet per person.”

At the same time, the committee said GSA has not yet provided its required report on how agencies can reduce office space requirements based on lessons learned from using telework during the COVID–19 pandemic.

The federal footprint has been steadily declining, but agencies still holding onto excess and underutilized office space is a main reason the Government Accountability Office has kept federal real property management on its High-Risk List for over 20 years.

In the 2024 spending package, Congress called on all agencies with an office space utilization rate of less than 60% to submit a description of their current efforts to reduce their physical footprint, the total office space costs, the average utilization rate and the estimated cost of underutilized space.

If enacted, the 2025 spending bill from House appropriators would also give GSA and OMB a new 180-day deadline to offer further data and recommendations on how to best consolidate federal office space, while disposing of unneeded federal real estate.

Continuing a few longstanding provisions

In addition to the slate of new policy riders, House appropriators are also looking to maintain numerous provisions that have been around for years, and in some cases decades. Many of those provisions have become practically standard in spending bills each fiscal year.

For example, one continued provision requires agencies to pay OPM a fee for processing retirement claims for employees who separate early from federal service.

Another would continue to direct agency employees to use official time — or time spent working on union-related activities while on the job — in “an honest effort to perform official duties,” the committee report language said.

Additionally, a provision often referred to as the Hyde amendment would maintain the current ban on any government funding from going toward abortions through the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program.

IRS pilot, FBI headquarters and more

The full appropriations committee also maintained several provisions from the subcommittee’s initial 2025 spending and policy proposals earlier this month.

Notably, the committee plans to implement steep spending cuts for the IRS, and aims to completely defund IRS’ free Direct File platform.

The lawmakers are also looking to decline a $3.5 billion request for construction on the new FBI headquarters building during 2025. The appropriations bill would also withhold all current funds allocated for the GSA construction project.

Democrat committee members, unsurprisingly, have come out in strong opposition to the spending cuts and many of the policy riders. Some lawmakers said they’re concerned about the ability of several relatively small agencies to handle large budget cuts. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) warned last week that the House GOP bill would force agencies to implement staff reductions to make ends meet.

The post Policy riders to watch as House appropriators mark up 2025 spending bills first appeared on Federal News Network.

Colleen Heller-Stein, formerly deputy CHCO at the Treasury Department, has stepped in as executive director of the CHCO Council, Federal News Network has learned. The senior-level position within the Office of Personnel Management leads agency CHCOs and other human capital leaders to innovate on best practices for managing the recruitment and retention of the federal workforce.

Heller-Stein is the first career federal executive to serve in the CHCO Council leadership role. She took over the position a few weeks ago from Latonia Page, who had been working as acting executive director of the CHCO Council since September 2023. Prior to Page’s time on the job, Margot Conrad — currently deputy chief of staff at OPM — served as the council’s executive director for about two and a half years.

Before taking on the role of leading the CHCO Council, Heller-Stein worked for 14 years at the Treasury Department. In addition to her experience as Treasury’s deputy CHCO, she previously served as the agency’s director of HR, as well as taking on a one-and-a-half-year stint as acting Treasury CHCO. Before moving to Treasury, Heller-Stein held various other roles in state and federal government, including working at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Government Publishing Office and Department of Veterans Affairs.

“As the former deputy CHCO and acting CHCO of a large, cabinet-level agency, I recognize the important role of the council as a collaborative resource and connective tissue for the largest and most complex workforce in the country,” Heller-Stein said in a statement to Federal News Network. “I look forward to working alongside human capital leaders across the federal government to support and strengthen the federal workforce.”

The CHCO Council, composed of federal human capital leaders from many major agencies, has been around now for more than 21 years. The council routinely convenes the senior leaders across government to discuss trends and strategies for improving the federal workforce through recruitment, retention and more. In May 2023, the council celebrated its 20th anniversary during a ceremony at OPM headquarters in Washington, D.C.

In recent years, the CHCO Council has focused on replicating and scaling up promising practices in agency recruitment and retention, including pooled hiring, shared certificates, skills-based recruitment and reducing time-to-hire for prospective job candidates.

The post Treasury’s Heller-Stein stepping in to lead the CHCO Council first appeared on Federal News Network.

A group of former senior officials is making a new and near last-ditch call to action aiming to prevent the possible resurrection of the controversial Schedule F executive order from the Trump administration.

The five former national security officials, who sent a letter to congressional committee leaders Thursday, are approaching the years-long Schedule F debate with what has been a steadily growing angle: They proposed a middle-ground answer to the question of federal workforce accountability.

Along with warning of what they said would be a dangerous return of Schedule F, the former officials are calling on Congress to enact specific reforms to modernize the civil service. One of their goals is to hold federal employees more accountable — the same goal the Trump administration said was the intent of Schedule F. But unlike Schedule F, the group’s recommendations would maintain merit system principles and long-standing job protections for federal workers.

“We contend that the Congress must forever preclude anything that has the potential to make partisan political loyalty the litmus test, whether express or implied, for any personnel action affecting a federal career civil servant, including senior career executives,” the former officials wrote in the letter to committee leaders. “However, at the same time, we believe that the Congress must also dramatically simplify the well-intentioned but too-cumbersome, too-attenuated and too-complicated processes that we are currently forced use to hold those same civil servants accountable.”

Former CIA Director Mike Hayden, former Homeland Security Deputy Secretary James Loy, former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, former Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and former Navy Secretary Sean O’Keefe — all senior officials during previous Republican administrations — signed the letter.

“We believe that our career federal civil servants must be accountable to the American people and those that are elected to represent them,” the group wrote. “But while that core principle is essential to the effective functioning of our democratic system of government, it is in desperate need of reform and modernization.”

Schedule F, a now-overturned Trump administration executive order that aimed to reclassify some federal employees to make them at-will workers and easier to fire, has recently gained more attention. Former Trump administration officials have been revisiting plans to revive a new policy akin to Schedule F, should the presidential election go in their favor.

The urgent call to action from the former officials is far from the only effort various stakeholders have made in the months leading up to the presidential election this fall. Separate from the letter, a new working group has recently stepped up on the topic of Schedule F as well. The group, composed mainly of academics and former public sector executives, outlined five areas — agility, accountability, collaboration, outcomes and capacity — that the next administration should focus on for creating lasting civil service reform.

“The ideas put out by Project 2025 and Schedule F are certainly worth considering. But we think that they’re the wrong solutions to the problems that we’ve got,” Don Kettl, former dean of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, and a leader of the working group, said in an interview. “What we wanted to do was to put together an alternative set of ideas from across the political spectrum as an alternative to think about what it is that we might be able to do to make government more efficient, more effective and ultimately more responsive.”

Moving away from a ‘status quo’

In the letter to Congress on Thursday, the former national security officials said while they don’t believe Schedule F is the answer, they also don’t want to continue what they said is the “status quo” for federal employee accountability. The group recommended striking a balance that takes action to fix the problems, while avoiding the reenactment Schedule F.

“The blueprints proffered by both sides of the political aisle are problematic,” the group wrote in the letter. “One side is firmly rooted in a status quo that inadvertently impedes accountability, while the other, if implemented, may end up politicizing the very civil servants we all want to be politically neutral.”

Ron Sanders, former chairman of the Federal Salary Council appointed by former President Donald Trump, resigned from his position in 2020 in direct response to the Schedule F executive order. For the last several months, Sanders has been working with former officials to create a plan of action to recommend to Congress. Although only five Republican former officials signed the letter to Congress this week, Sanders said the group is bipartisan and much larger.

“They’ve all had to deal with poorly performing or misbehaving employees, and they know how hard that is,” Sanders said in an interview. “They don’t think politicizing the civil service is the answer. They don’t think political loyalty should be the criterion. But they also think [the current system] is too hard.”

The letter comes just as House and Senate lawmakers are taking up the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The group said the NDAA is the best, most likely vehicle that can propel forward the proposals in the short-term.

“In part because that’s the only ‘must-pass’ bill likely to move this session — but also because, in theory, those are the committees that worry about national security, and the former officials have said this is a national security issue,” Sanders said.

Last week, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) introduced a bipartisan amendment to the 2025 NDAA that would in effect prevent a presidential administration from creating Schedule F or a similar type of excepted employee classification.

At this point in the process for the 2025 NDAA, any further changes to the legislation would have to come from a Congress member introducing a floor amendment. NARFE National President William Shackelford urged lawmakers to move Connolly’s amendment to a floor vote.

“It is clearly germane to the NDAA due to its application to DoD civilian employees, 700,000 of whom make up more than a third of the federal workforce,” Shackelford said in a June 4 letter. “Moreover, past NDAAs have routinely included governmentwide federal workforce provisions due to their impact on the DoD civilian workforce.”

A spokeswoman for House Oversight and Accountability Committee Democrats declined to comment on whether any committee members had plans to introduce an amendment on the floor related to the further civil service reform recommendations in the letter. But she expressed agreement with the intentions of the former officials.

“[We] agree with this impressive bipartisan group of public servants that public service must be based on qualifications and merit, not political fealty,” the spokeswoman said in a statement to Federal News Network. “Wholesale firing of federal experts who use data, science and law to improve federal government is not acceptable. We hope our Republican counterparts will join Democrats in discussions to revitalize and improve the federal workforce rather than blindly following Trump into causing irreparable harm to essential government services.”

The approach to civil service reform

In the letter sent Thursday, the former officials proposed to Congress a three-part approach to both block Schedule F and create a more efficient way to manage the accountability of federal employees.

The first part of the proposal recommended modernizing the performance management system of federal workers. Simplifying and expediting the adverse action process, the former officials said, would make it easier and faster to hold federal employees accountable, while still maintaining merit-based protections.

Part of the problem, Sanders said, is how long it can take to resolve employees’ cases with the often-lengthy appeals process.

“On taking an adverse action, on appealing it and on adjudicating it — everybody, I think, can agree there need to be time limits, so that the system moves along,” Sanders said.

Another component of the group’s proposal focuses specifically on keeping national security, intelligence and law enforcement positions free from what they said is partisan influence.

“For example, you may want to consider a statutory ban on any measure that potentially threatens to undermine those merit-based principles,” the former officials wrote.

And lastly, the group proposed instating periodic reviews of the balance between political appointees and career civil servants in the Defense Department, as well as other national security and intelligence agencies.

After President Joe Biden repealed the Schedule F executive order in early 2021, the Biden administration took further action to try to hedge against the policy’s return in a future administration. In April, the Office of Personnel Management finalized a rule aiming to reinforce worker protections for the classes of federal employees that Schedule F targeted.

It’s one of the strongest steps possible from an administration, but James Sherk, former special assistant to the President on the White House domestic policy council, and the policy lead on the original Schedule F executive order, said OPM’s final rule would not stop a future administration from reviving a similar policy down the road.

In May, Acting OPM Director Rob Shriver defended the agency’s final rule and warned Oversight committee lawmakers that the return of Schedule F would have a “chilling effect” on career federal employees.

The new recommendations from the former officials somewhat diverge from other views from some federal unions and advocacy groups that have said the government’s performance management system is not broken, and that instead focus more on maintaining the protections for employees that Schedule F sought to remove.

But strategically, Sanders said, the approach to preventing a return of Schedule F may be to take a “positive” action rather than simply trying to ban Schedule F from coming back. For instance, he said, even when Democrats held the majority in both the House and Senate, they were unable to pass legislation aiming to block Schedule F’s return in a future administration. Instead, a better path may be to try to enact legislation akin to OPM’s final rule.

“I’m not sure an outright, overt ban is going to prevail,” Sanders said. “But you could do something like the OPM rule, which in law would make it almost impossible to hire or fire somebody on the basis of their political ideology.”

With just months before the presidential election coming this fall, the clock is ticking for Congress to take action and find a possible compromise to civil service reform and on the topic of Schedule F.

“That’s the reason why we are rushing. If Biden wins, it’s status quo, they don’t have to change anything. If Trump wins, it’s Schedule F and Project 2025,” Sanders said. “Republicans are going to have to give on Schedule F. Democrats are going to have to give on accountability. But our main objective is to just get people talking publicly about this instead of hiding behind the two extremes.”

The post Former senior officials join rising calls for an alternative to Schedule F first appeared on Federal News Network.

On Capitol Hill, there are no signs of stopping for the debates over how and when to enforce federal return-to-office mandates. In some cases, arguments among lawmakers are slowing down legislative pushes to change telework policies governmentwide.

In an ongoing “return-to-office review” series, Federal News Network is highlighting what workplace changes happened over the last several weeks, keeping you up-to-date on the latest return-to-office news and conversations, and what it all means for federal employees.

Our top return-to-office stories this month

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for a long time has relied on remote work for large swaths of its workforce, using it as an effective way to retain public health workers. That was — up until just recently. The CDC is now reining in full-time remote work for many of its employees.
  (How the changes are impacting recruitment and retention, and who’s exempt - June 3)
• The Defense Logistics Agency’s new telework policy may be one of the most prescriptive in all of government. DLA is requiring all employees to work in the office every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The requirements have led to widespread employee dissatisfaction and two formal unfair labor practice allegations.
  (Here’s what DLA employees are saying about the telework policy changes - June 3)
• Employee engagement is on the rise, according to the latest Best Places to Work results. It’s hard to point to a single reason causing the tone shift, but one theme was the impact of returning to the office. Employees who telework full-time had the highest satisfaction scores, while employees working in the office scored lower.
  (Details on engagement scores and other employee findings from the last year - May 20)

By the numbers: Satisfaction in the workplace

In their words: Federal leaders

“We have directives from the Office of Management and Budget and from the White House. But we also need to do our due diligence to make sure that we are collecting the data and telling the story in a quantitative way. Our stakeholders — whether they be on the Hill, or whether they be down on 17th Street in the New Executive Office Building — they need to understand that these decisions are being made because we’re capitulating to the workforce, if this is the direction the workforce is going. And we really need to keep up because I don’t want to lose people.”

— Traci DiMartini, human capital officer, IRS

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“For many, many years prior to the pandemic, the federal government was able to have people that could spend some of their time working in an alternative location … These are the issues that we are all wrestling with today — is how the intersection of the work arrangements that are in place now measure up to our footprint.”

— Rob Shriver, acting director, Office of Personnel Management

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“When people feel connected to other people in the workplace, that actually positively impacts their creativity, their productivity, and ultimately contributes to their engagement and retention. Creating opportunities for people to come back in person periodically, creating more intentional opportunities for people to be able to connect and learn about one another virtually, those become increasingly important when you’re in a hybrid work environment.”

— Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General

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Returning to the office: Federal vs. private sector

The post Return-to-office review: Employees call for flexibility, while legislation lags first appeared on Federal News Network.

As House appropriators outline plans to make steep government spending cuts for fiscal 2025, Democrats are warning that reduced agency budgets would lead to federal employee layoffs, and by extension, worsening federal services.

The fiscal 2025 financial services and general government appropriations bill is now heading to the full appropriations committee for consideration. Members of the GOP-led House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee advanced the legislation — along party lines and without amendments — during a markup Wednesday morning.

But Democrat subcommittee members opposed to the spending cuts said they’re concerned about the ability of the relatively small agencies included in that specific appropriations bill to handle large budget cuts.

“Our agencies often have smaller budgets, and thus less flexibility to deal with the cuts,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday during the subcommittee’s markup of the legislation. “Larger agencies under the jurisdiction of other subcommittees can scale back grant programs and shift funding around to make ends meet. It’s tough, and perhaps may not be appropriate, but it is easier than this bill.”

Hoyer warned that the House GOP bill, as is, would leave many agencies with no choice but to implement staff reductions to make ends meet.

“Our agencies have to lay off staff, severely undermining their ability to function at the most basic levels,” Hoyer said. “That has direct consequences on the American people.”

Under the 2024 enacted budget, which included significant spending cuts, some agencies are already limiting new hires and in some cases considering plans to reduce their workforces. The State Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, are looking to make staffing cuts in the Foreign Service and the VA health care workforce.

The House appropriations legislation comes in stark contrast to the White House budget request proposed in March. House Republicans proposed a discretionary spending allocation totaling $23.6 billion, which is close to 20% below the Biden administration’s request. The bill would cut spending to 10% below the enacted level for 2024.

Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) called the spending levels and several GOP policy riders “unacceptable.”

That steep of a budget cut, Hoyer added, “belies the importance of the agencies for which we appropriate money.”

For the government’s lead agency on all things workforce, House Republicans’ spending plans would give the Office of Personnel Management a budget of $477 million for 2025. It’s an increase of $29.1 million over the enacted 2024 level — but the number still falls $31.4 million short of the White House’s request for the coming fiscal year.

At the same time, House Republicans, in the bill are calling for OPM to specifically aim to modernize IT and strengthen the government’s acquisition workforce.

The bill doesn’t include any language related to the federal pay raise for 2025, appearing to align with Biden’s 2% raise proposal for most General Schedule employees next year.

The draft bill also includes IRS spending cuts and proposes completely defunding IRS’ free Direct File platform. The legislation would cut the budget for IRS for 2025 to $10.1 billion, which is $2.2 billion below the enacted level for fiscal 2024.

The cuts would be most severe for IRS enforcement, which would see a $2 billion reduction in funding, House appropriators explained in a summary of the draft 2025 spending bill. Hoyer took particular issue with that component of House Republicans’ plans for IRS.

“The authority to transfer funds are not provided for in this bill,” Hoyer said. “In other words, we’re cutting our collection department by $2 billion. That’s the very essence of trying to be able to afford that which we’re buying and not paying for.”

The General Services Administration would see spending cuts for its use of the Federal Buildings Fund in 2025, according to the draft legislation. Lawmakers are calling for a cap of $8.9 billion to come out of that fund, which is nearly $1.8 billion below the 2025 budget request.

In one policy rider on the appropriations bill, House Republicans rejected the Biden administration’s request of $3.5 billion to build a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland. The draft bill would also withhold current funds allocated for the massive construction project.

Already, GSA has said construction on the new building will take more than a decade. Construction on the new FBI headquarters is not expected to begin until 2029, and FBI employees would not be working out of the new space until 2036. But in the spending bill, House Republicans said GSA should either continue operating out of the current building, or choose an existing, federally owned building in Washington, D.C., as a new headquarters.

The Executive Office of the President would receive $815.5 million for 2025, according to the spending bill. That’s $105.6 million below the budget request. As part of that appropriation, the Office of Management and Budget would get $126 million.

Several of the bill’s other policy riders specifically target Biden administration policies that Republicans have opposed for years. The legislation in its current form would ban the implementation of President Joe Biden’s executive orders on climate change, as well as diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA).

Additionally, the Small Business Administration would not be able to fund any climate change initiatives under the bill. In total, the House subcommittee proposed about $854.1 million for SBA, a cut of $117.1 million from the White House’s request, and $187.6 million below the enacted level for 2024.

Once the Senate subcommittee releases and votes on its version of the draft appropriations bill, House and Senate lawmakers will have to reconcile any differences between the two versions of the bill before voting on it, or sending it to the president’s desk for a signature.

The post Democrats warn layoffs ahead as House GOP proposes agency spending cuts first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Office of Special Counsel is looking to close what it says is a loophole in the Hatch Act, a law that limits federal employees’ political activity while on duty.

Among several updates to how OSC — an independent agency that investigates and brings cases before the Merit Systems Protection Board — will enforce and interpret the Hatch Act, one notable change looks at how OSC will handle violations from senior White House officials.

Most Senate-confirmed officials are excepted from MSPB enforcement, but White House staffers are not. As such, non-Senate-confirmed White House officials will now be held to the same standards as all other career federal employees, OSC said in a May 20 advisory opinion.

In practice, that means OSC will defer White House staff members who are in violation of the Hatch Act to MSPB, instead of deferring to the president as the officials were previously. OSC Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger said the decision behind the change is a result of the disparity between what the majority of career federal employees are subject to, and different rules specifically for White House staff.

“White House employees should be treated like every other government worker,” Dellinger said in a May 20 statement on OSC’s website. “My focus is balancing robust Hatch Act enforcement with careful consideration of government employee speech rights.”

The Hatch Act, which has been around since 1939, limits the political activities that federal employees are allowed to take part in while on the clock, at work, or otherwise acting in an official capacity. The rules for the Hatch Act depend on the type of position an employee holds, and what level of restrictions that position falls under.

But the inconsistency of the Hatch Act’s application between most federal employees, and White House staffers, has been a concern for a long time. While federal employees typically face a range of repercussions, some have said that there’s a double standard, as political appointees often don’t face the same level of punishment. Others have gone further to say that the Hatch Act should be reformed, or even replaced.

“This distinction creates separate and not automatically equal systems of accountability for violators, one where an independent adjudicator (the MSPB) can impose sanctions and another where it is left to the president to dole out — or not — any consequences,” Dellinger wrote in a May 20 op-ed in Politico.

At least 13 White House officials during the Trump administration were found to be in violation of the Hatch Act, but didn’t receive any repercussions. More recently, during the Biden administration, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain also violated the Hatch Act by retweeting a post from a political group using an official social media account, but OSC did not pursue any disciplinary action.

Over the years, different OSC special counsels have had various approaches to how the Hatch Act should be enforced. The recent changes appear to be a different interpretation of the same language of the law that’s been around for decades.

The timing of OSC’s changes also lines up perfectly ahead of the presidential election this fall, noted Jim Eisenmann, a partner at Alden Law Group, which specializes in representing federal employees.

“It is no coincidence,” Eisenmann, who’s former MSPB executive director and general counsel during the Obama administration, said in an interview. “We’re in an election year — and there’s a brand-new special counsel. I think that’s all related to the timing.”

OSC previously exempted White House personnel from full enforcement of the Hatch Act in part because of the lack of a quorum at the MSPB during the Trump administration. Without quorum, OSC was unable to take action on Hatch Act violations that White House officials made.

“The MSPB’s return to a quorum allows OSC to utilize the agency as the adjudicator for all Hatch Act enforcement actions against individuals who are not presidentially appointed and confirmed by the Senate, instead of relying solely on the president to take action if White House commissioned officers violate the law,” OSC said.

Former employees and political candidate signs

The change for White House staff is just one of several updates OSC made in its recent advisory opinion. In another adjustment, OSC said that former federal employees can now face charges from Hatch Act violations that they may have committed while previously working for the government.

Generally, federal employees who violate the Hatch Act may face a suspension, firing, grade reduction or a debarment for up to five years. They may also have to a pay a $1,000 fine. In many cases, though, OSC attempts to settle with the employee or negotiate an informal resolution.

In light of OSC’s update, one question that may arise is what types of penalties could occur for former employees. If an individual has left government, it’s possible now that they also wouldn’t be able to take another federal job in government for several years to come.

“What they’re saying is just because someone has left government, it doesn’t mean they’re not going to go after them,” Eisenmann said.

In addition to the changes for former feds, OSC is revising the rules about when federal employees can wear or display political candidate signs while at work. During presidential election years, OSC had previously distinguished how that rule operated before and after Election Day.

“This distinction is being withdrawn in favor of a year-round prohibition on political candidate displays in the government workplace, which will now be consistent with the prohibition on party and partisan group items,” OSC said in the advisory opinion.

OSC said presidential candidates’ increasing association with specific political parties is one key reason behind the update. Not to mention, OSC said it should make it easier for federal employees to follow the rules, since it’s now more straightforward with the consistent, across-the-board ban.

But the switch to a year-round ban on candidate items may raise additional questions about what’s allowed and not allowed for federal employees, for example, when it comes to displaying signs from former or historical political candidates.

In the advisory opinion, OSC said the year-round ban on candidate items applies specifically to “current or contemporaneous” candidates or parties — meaning there are exceptions for any historic campaign memorabilia.

OSC said it plans to soon provide federal employees with more clarifications and guidelines on the new advisory opinion to help answer any questions. OSC has also created a list of “dos and don’ts” for feds about the Hatch Act’s rules and parameters.

The post What OSC’s Hatch Act updates mean for federal employees first appeared on Federal News Network.

After negotiating for more than two years, the Environmental Protection Agency has finally ironed out a new collective bargaining agreement with its union, the American Federation of Government Employees.

AFGE Council 238, which represents over 8,000 EPA employees, unanimously ratified the new contract on May 16. The agreement is now in a final review process with agency leaders. By late June, the changes in the contract will become official for the next four years, replacing an interim labor-management agreement.

The contract locks in a couple new articles for bargaining unit employees, one related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA), and another on scientific integrity. Although the contract is a positive milestone for the labor-management relationship, AFGE said it’s still wary of what the future holds for the agency’s telework policy.

For the time being, the new collective bargaining agreement secures EPA’s current policies on remote work, telework and flexible work schedules. It was one of the earliest articles AFGE and EPA negotiated for the contract. Currently, telework-eligible bargaining unit employees have to work in the office two days per pay period at a minimum.

But Marie Owens Powell, president of AFGE Council 238, said AFGE is already thinking ahead to the possibility of a “mid-term reopening” of the contract in two years. At that time, agency and union officials will have the opportunity to renegotiate some of the agreement’s provisions.

“The agency has made it clear they intend to open remote work and telework, so the fight is far from over,” Powell said in an interview. “We continue to remain open to discussing with the agency the successes of remote work and telework, but what we’re not willing to do is enter into negotiations right now that are not required. That seems to be what the agency would like to do, [but] the midterm negotiations are not required for two years. We will wait until then.”

An EPA spokesperson said the agency is exploring potential changes to its telework and remote policies to achieve the administration’s current goal to increase meaningful in-person work, while still abiding by all collective bargaining agreements.

In the meantime, Powell said AFGE will focus on firming up its position on telework at EPA, and figuring out how it plans to defend the current, relatively flexible policies in place at the agency.

Overall, both EPA and AFGE view the new collective bargaining agreement largely as a success — especially after many long, tense months of negotiations, and after running into several sticking points. The new agreement, among many standard collective bargaining provisions, adds a handful of new articles for the agency.

EPA Press Secretary Remmington Belford said EPA is “pleased” about arriving at the new collective bargaining agreement, particularly for the articles relating to scientific integrity and DEIA.

“These articles clarify EPA’s commitment to a culture of scientific integrity and affirm the importance of integrating DEIA principles across the agency,” Belford said in an email statement.

EPA to launch DEIA pilot to assess hiring practices

Adding a DEIA article to the union contract is new for EPA, and relatively unique for a federal collective bargaining agreement. AFGE’s initial proposal in June 2022 to add the article led to many back-and-forth discussions between agency and union officials. AFGE proposed multiple DEIA initiatives, like installing gender-neutral bathrooms, implementing DEIA training for EPA employees, diversifying hiring panels and much more.

During negotiations, after being unable to initially reach an agreement, EPA and AFGE considered moving a handful of articles to an impasse, including the provision on DEIA. In August 2023, in reaction to the possibility of an impasse, House lawmakers called on both EPA and AFGE to negotiate in good faith, specifically on the DEIA article.

Ultimately, EPA and AFGE used a third-party mediator to reach an agreement on the provision. The final contract article includes DEIA training for employees, as well as plans to launch several pilot projects to assess the presence of implicit bias in the agency’s hiring and promotion processes.

“We’re really excited that we actually have action items, and we’re excited just to have this article for the first time,” Powell said. “The agency is committing to equal and fair treatment of all employees, and no tolerance for any harassment.”

Even seemingly small items in the DEIA contract article, like installing gender-neutral bathrooms, can make a significant difference in advancing DEIA in the workplace. Even so, Powell said those changes may come slowly, and be somewhat limited.

“We do have to realize that there are a lot of big, historic buildings that our folks are occupying. To do any type of new construction in those buildings is next to impossible — we get that,” Powell said. “So, only where space allows, the agency agreed to provide for gender-neutral bathrooms. Even where there weren’t commitments that we could get in the actual article, we are seeing things change. We put the spotlight on it. And I think that in and of itself has been successful.”

Whistleblower protections for employees

In addition to the DEIA article, another new contract provision mirrors EPA’s scientific integrity policy, aiming to firm up a workplace culture that promotes strong scientific and ethical standards.

In any cases where employees suspect a violation of EPA’s integrity policy, the collective bargaining agreement confirms whistleblower protections for any employee who reports an allegation of scientific misconduct at work.

“Because it’s a contract article, if the agency doesn’t act on it, [that would] kick us into our grievance procedure,” Powell said. “And once you go through step one, step two [of the grievance procedure], the final step is an independent arbitrator. So, in those most serious, grave situations, we’re going to have a third party be able to step in and weigh in on the allegations.”

Powell said adding the new “scientific integrity” provision in the contract is specifically important for EPA. Part of the reason AFGE wanted to include that article in the new collective bargaining agreement was to hedge against a future possibility of what she said were previous agency setbacks during the Trump administration.

“This was the opportunity to provide that layer of protection for our staff,” Powell said. “It’s not just the scientists, it’s anyone who is using that data for decision-making. It could be your engineer; it could be your inspector who happens to be an environmental protection specialist. Everyone enjoys the protection under that article.”

After first agreeing to restore collective bargaining, office space and official time back in 2021, AFGE and EPA worked for years to reach the now final, four-year contract. If there is mutual agreement between the two parties, the contract can then continually be extended in one year increments after the initial four years.

Both parties, each in their own way, described the new agreement as a success for the agency’s workforce. For Powell, the tensions during negotiations and the long hours of work to reach the agreement were well worth it.

“If that means we get one more gender-neutral bathroom, or if we get one more employee who feels safe coming to the workplace expressing their gender the way they choose, then that’s a win for us,” Powell said. “[Agency leaders are] not only getting the pressure from the union — they’re hearing it from their own, from within. And I think we’re going to see tremendous change.”

The post EPA finalizes union contract, but AFGE wary of telework’s future first appeared on Federal News Network.

After a governmentwide update to the Pathways Program, the Department of Health and Human Services is already looking at how to start implementing the new flexibilities into its program.

But many of those flexibilities, which the Office of Personnel Management finalized in April, are optional, rather than required. That means it depends on an agency’s resources to make them a reality, and in many cases, requires agencies to think creatively.

“It really is being strategic in how we do outreach for recruitment to make sure that we are maximizing our resources,” Kimberly Steide, associate deputy assistant secretary for human capital at HHS, said in an interview with Federal News Network. “The interest is there, the passion is there, it’s really just finding the time and the resources to do as much as we want to do … and thinking about where we can get the most impact for the resources that we have available.”

Higher starting salaries, for instance, are now a possibility for employees that agencies hire through Pathways. Under OPM’s new regulations, agencies can offer a starting salary up to a GS-11 rate, rather than being capped at GS-9 rates as they were previously. Though offering a higher starting salary isn’t a requirement, Steide said she expects HHS will use the flexibility as much as possible.

“Salary is a big draw for many people early in their career,” Steide said. “A lot of that will be driven by budget, of course, but at the end of the day, we have a huge interest in ensuring that we have a solid pipeline of talent. And we have to start that with early-career talent.”

Governmentwide, the Pathways Program lets early-career employees take a temporary position at an agency, with the potential to later convert into a full-time position in the career civil service. OPM’s final regulations changed many different aspects of Pathways, intending to open the doors to more diverse applicants and alleviate the challenges agencies have historically had with the program.

For HHS, like many agencies, the program is central to early-career recruitment overall.

“Early-career talent is really important, and we’ve been strategically trying to do much more to engage and advance recruitment using many of these flexibilities,” HHS Chief Human Capital Officer Bob Leavitt said in an interview. “We have to be extraordinarily creative and innovative in how we share practices across the department to help us all move forward collectively. There’s so much that the human capital side is responsible for across the board. And one way of being efficient with those resources is really building up those communities of stakeholders, communities of practice.”

OPM’s recent updates to Pathways also reduced the requirements to complete the program, offered part-time options, and made candidates who have completed career or technical education programs, in place of a college degree, eligible for the program.

“I think that flexibility will be attractive for a lot of people,” Steide said.

HHS has used Pathways for over a decade, which is as long as the program has been around. Departmentwide, HHS hires roughly 600 employees annually through Pathways in a combination of the three programs: recent graduates, interns and Presidential Management Fellows. HHS’ main human capital office works with each agency subcomponent to determine their staffing projections and help them monitor the program.

“Many of our subcomponents are very well-branded and known. Some are not as well-known,” Steide said. “So it’s just ensuring that when people interact with HHS, they understand everything that we have to offer in terms of all of the different missions, and how they can build a really successful career with HHS.”

Leavitt and Steide said it’s also important to make sure Pathways is a good experience for anyone involved — starting from the recruitment aspect, but also extending to the entire time employees are involved in the program at HHS.

“We really try to bring them in in a cohort style, where we provide programming for them,” Steide said. “We try to have activities where we bring them together, so that they have a sense of community.”

But keeping Pathways participants within the agency full time isn’t always the end goal. In some cases, OPM’s final regulations now let Pathways employees, when converting to a full-time position, move to a different agency than the one with which they completed the program.

OPM added that flexibility, in part, because Pathways participants nearing the end of the program may not always find a full-time opening at their agency that’s a good fit. In those cases, the agency can then place that employee on OPM’s applicant talent portal. The online platform lets other agencies review available candidates and, if they’re a good fit and the employee is interested, hire them.

“That gives them some sense of security, in the sense of being able to be converted anywhere across government, as opposed to the agency that picked them up,” Steide said. “I think one of the best things that OPM did was to develop this portal because it demonstrates for the government that while we might not be able to place you where you were originally picked up, we do want to retain you.”

In general, Leavitt and Steide said OPM’s support of early-career hiring is “palpable.” OPM also has a governmentwide community of practice specifically focused on early-career talent recruitment.

“We have significant support through those communities of practice, through the technical tools that OPM helps provide us all,” Leavitt said. “There are a lot of opportunities to collaborate — collaborate with OPM, across government and within the departments to advance these areas.”

“I personally have seen a lot of synergy with OPM in the sense of trying to help governmentwide, bring resources together and strategically look at ways to approach recruitment and how best to reach early-career talent,” Steide added. “And it goes further than just recruiting them. It is really about [what] you provide them once they come on board.”

The post HHS thinking creatively to implement new Pathways flexibilities first appeared on Federal News Network.

OPM’s inspector general office shared more information about the pause on Thursday, saying it comes “out of an abundance of caution,” and to try to prevent further fraud, the OIG said in a special fraud alert.

In addition to new enrollments, the enrollment pause also applies to any current enrollee in FSAFEDS who experiences a qualifying life event (QLE), such as a marriage or the birth of a child.

During the pause, current FSAFEDS enrollees are still able to make reimbursement claims. Once OPM chooses to resume the enrollment functionality, FSAFEDS will retroactively adjust any elections based on QLEs. But currently, OPM has not set a date for when the functionality will resume.

The pause comes after several hundred federal employees currently enrolled in FSAFEDS experienced recent fraudulent activity on their accounts. Scammers have used the employees’ personal information to either create new, fraudulent FSAs, or otherwise make fraudulent reimbursement claims on existing FSAs.

HealthEquity, the vendor that administers FSAFEDS, previously notified OPM of the recent rise in fraudulent activity.

“OPM is working with the vendor to secure impacted accounts, compensate impacted individuals and implement additional anti-fraud controls,” an OPM spokesperson said in an email statement.

The fraudulent activity in FSAFEDS is relatively limited in scope, since it’s affecting just a few hundred federal employees’ accounts. In total, the scammers have managed to shore up a couple hundred thousand dollars, Politico first reported last week.

Since becoming aware of the fraud, HealthEquity has already taken additional security measures by implementing Login.gov requirements and setting up dual-factor authentication for federal employees to be able to log in to their FSAFEDS accounts.

A HealthEquity spokesperson declined to comment with any additional details on the current status of the affected FSAFEDS accounts, or if there would be further changes to security protocols.

There’s currently no evidence that the fraudulent activity is coming from a compromise in either OPM’s or HealthEquity’s online systems, but the investigation into the source of the fraud is ongoing.

In the meantime, the accounts of any affected individuals have been secured, and OPM is in the process of reimbursing all impacted enrollees in full.

Agency benefits officers and payroll providers are advising federal employees who use FSAFEDS to review and verify their leave, earnings and FSA account statements. If employees notice any suspicious charges or activity, they can call FSAFEDS at 877-372-3337.

Each year during Open Season, federal employees have the option to enroll in FSAFEDS, but as of last plan year, less than 20% of eligible feds actually have an account set up in the health program.

FSAFEDS lets current federal employees set aside pre-tax dollars from their paychecks to go toward covering eligible health care, prescription, dental, vision and child and adult day care expenses. Enrollees will usually pay for the medical costs out of pocket and are then reimbursed using funds from an FSA.

For 2024, employees who are enrolled in an FSA can contribute up to $3,200 for the entire year. The funding has to be used within a given plan year, but there is an option to roll over up to $640 to the following year. Many federal health experts highly recommend opening and contributing to an FSA, as it lets participants save money by contributing to health expenses pre-tax.

The overall eligibility pool for FSAFEDS has also recently expanded. Beginning in January, for plan year 2024, OPM made active-duty service members as well as members of the Active Guard Reserve eligible to start a Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account (DCFSA). The program expansion made about 400,000 active-duty service members newly eligible for the benefits of FSAs.

The post OPM pauses new FSAFEDS enrollments after fraud surge first appeared on Federal News Network.

The latest Best Places to Work results from the Partnership for Public Service are pretty promising — employee engagement is ticking upward for the first time in years, with many familiar agencies still topping the rankings.

But there are other pockets of success at agencies that don’t always see the spotlight. During a Best Places to Work event celebrating many of this year’s winners, some federal leaders were looking for what’s driving consistency at agencies, and how to make sure that keeps going.

It might not come as much of a surprise, for example, that the Government Accountability Office took the top spot this year for midsize agencies. GAO has remained the number one midsize agency in Best Places to Work now for four years in a row. For 2023, GAO’s engagement and satisfaction score was 87.2 out of 100.

The high score might come, at least in part, from the agency’s relatively new and more flexible telework program, said U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro. During 2023, GAO worked alongside its union to expand workplace flexibilities for employees. The program now lets agency staff work fully remotely, with supervisor approval. Other employees can telework up to four days a week.

“That’s introducing a lot of administrative changes in the agency — it’s a big change,” Dodaro told Federal News Network at last week’s Best Places to Work event. “Since we were so successful at maintaining our quality of our work and productivity during the pandemic, I felt this was a good step.”

Data from the Partnership echoes that same telework-to-satisfaction trend at GAO. During 2023, across government, employees who teleworked full-time had the highest engagement, scoring about 75 out of 100 on how satisfied they feel in their jobs. By comparison, employees who work in headquarters offices and at field offices scored 69.2 and 61.7 on the same satisfaction scale, respectively.

There are plenty of other factors, though, that also influence employees’ engagement and satisfaction at work. For Dodaro, maintaining good communication between senior leaders and employees is another key component.

“We have monthly townhall meetings — I meet every year with each team and office and answer questions,” Dodaro said. “You need to maintain it because you constantly have new employees coming in. But once you have that institutional commitment and culture at the agency, things will pretty much take care of themselves.”

The importance of survey participation

For some agencies, improving engagement can be a little more complicated, and sometimes take years. In the Partnership’s 2023 Best Places to Work results, about two-thirds of agencies overall either maintained or increased their employee satisfaction scores. That means there’s another third of agencies whose scores decreased.

The National Transportation Safety Board, as an example, dropped down a couple spots in the 2023 rankings, going from 13th place to 18th place for small agencies. The board’s engagement and satisfaction score also dipped by 2.2 points, decreasing from 70.9 to 68.7 in one year. But for Veronica Marshall, chief human capital officer at NTSB, there’s still an upside this year.

“One of the things I’m most proud of is we had our highest participation rate in the last 12 years — almost 89% of the agency,” Marshall told Federal News Network at the Partnership event. “Our plan is really to just look at the results, focus on those key areas we think are most important to our workforce.”

Marshall said improving the participation rate for the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) started at the top, with senior leadership. Since much of Best Places to Work comes from FEVS, Marshall turned her focus to educating leadership about the importance of the survey and making it clear to staff that senior leaders see a lot of value in employee feedback.

“They could, in turn, talk to the workforce about the importance of [FEVS] and how we really want to hear their opinions,” Marshall said.

That dynamic between senior leaders and employees gets a lot of credit for NTSB’s higher participation rates, but a little healthy competition didn’t hurt either. When the 2023 FEVS was out in the field, Marshall said she launched a competition among the board’s 13 different offices to see who could get the most employees to fill out the survey.

“At the end of that competition, the winner received a pizza party hosted and paid for by our chair,” Marshall said. “That healthy competition really helped to get our participation rates up.”

For Marshall, the next steps will be taking the feedback and data from employees and using it to try to improve the agency’s engagement and satisfaction score — and ideally, moving up in the Best Places to Work rankings.

“Again, really just listening to those opinions of the workforce and where we can pull those levers to help increase our scores,” Marshall said.

How workload can be a positive

Going down to an even smaller scale, agency subcomponents are also seeing some consistency in the rankings this year. The Office of Negotiations and Restructuring, an arm of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, once again placed first this year out of 459 agency subcomponents.

The office’s workload has increased in the last couple years, with more work stemming from a financial assistance program created as part of the American Rescue Plan Act. But for John Hanley, PBGC’s chief of negotiations and restructuring, that hasn’t been a detriment.

“My team has really risen to the occasion of meeting this demand to review these applications,” Hanley told Federal News Network at the Partnership’s event. “My team has just greatly enjoyed the challenge of keeping up with all of this, which I think has in turn led to an improvement in morale [and] energy. People are just dedicated to this role. [The work] is nonstop, but it’s been a real motivator.”

Like many other agency leaders, Hanley said employee feedback from FEVS, and high participation rates in the survey, are crucial.

“It is just a process of reminding people of the importance of being allowed to air their views via FEVS,” Hanley said. “There’s really just a component of making certain that people feel comfortable about that. I just avail people of the opportunity, make them aware of it, and then they follow through on their own volition.”

Getting higher participation often comes from whether employees actually think their input will be used to make changes. Employees are more likely to fill out a survey, like FEVS, if they see its results being taken seriously by leadership.

And governmentwide, that factor has been improving for the federal workforce. In the 2023 FEVS, on the question of whether employees believed the results of the survey would be used to make their agency a better place to work, results showed a 5-point increase.

The 2024 FEVS is currently out in the field for most agencies. At the Best Places to Work event, Office of Personnel Management Acting Director Rob Shriver urged agency leaders to work to keep those rates on an upward climb.

“This is really critical — really, really critical,” Shriver said. “I’m glad to see that the participation numbers have increased. So I would ask, once again, for a continued emphasis on making sure that we have strong participation in the survey. And as you all know, one of the things that’s really key to that is demonstrating to workers that their voice makes a difference.”

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VA maintained its fifth-place spot for large agencies in the 2023 Best Places to Work rankings, which the Partnership for Public Service published earlier this week. At the same time, VA raised its engagement and satisfaction score by 3.4 points, going from 68.4, up to 71.8 out of 100. It’s the largest year-over-year increase of the top five agencies in the rankings.

At a Best Places to Work event on Monday, VA Chief of Staff Kimberly Jackson said a lot of the score-improving efforts revolve around transparency — both in the work VA does, as well as transparency between employees and agency leaders.

“VA hasn’t historically had a reputation for being the most innovative and doing a lot of the coolest new things,” Jackson said in an interview with Federal News Network at the May 20 event. “We actually are. We do some really, really interesting research, for example, the work that we’re doing in psychedelics research. [We are trying to] leverage that and say, ‘Hey, you want to do really cool work that has immediate impact for a massive population of people? Come to VA.’”

VA’s engagement and satisfaction score has remained above the governmentwide average since 2020, the Partnership’s data showed. While VA ranked fifth overall for large agencies, Chief Human Capital Officer Tracey Therit said she was also particularly excited about VA ranking third for employees’ views of senior agency leadership. In the 2023 results, VA’s senior leadership score increased from 59.9 to 65.3 — a 5.4-point increase in just one year.

“Employees feel like they are more satisfied, more engaged when they know that senior leadership is asking for their input, and when they’re using that input in decision-making,” Therit told Federal News Network at the Best Places to Work event.

Smaller efforts can often make a big difference in views of senior leadership. For example, Therit said, VA’s “I CARE” awards, which Secretary Denis McDonough hands out each year, play a role in demonstrating senior leadership’s attention to the workforce.

“We always want to make sure that we’re recognizing employees for those values and core characteristics they demonstrate every day,” Therit said.

The Partnership’s findings, more broadly, showed many employees’ views of senior leaders are on an upward climb as well. In the 2023 Best Places to Work rankings, the governmentwide score for senior leaders was 57.3 out of 100, representing a 2-point increase since last year’s results.

The Best Places to Work rankings are largely based on data from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS). But in addition to FEVS, Therit said VA uses several other data sources to understand, and respond to, employees’ concerns. Internal quarterly pulse surveys on employee trust, as well as an annual “all employee” survey, which the VA’s National Center for Organization Development runs, provide more specifics.

Last year’s “all employee” survey received over an 80% response rate, and this year’s version of the VA survey is currently out in the field.

“We want to make sure we continue to get a good response rate so that that data comes in,” Therit said. “We can use that data to make improvements and to know what our employees’ sentiments are.”

But on average, there are specific sectors of the federal workforce who are struggling more than others. The Partnership’s Best Places to Work data analysis showed that feds ages 30 to 39 scored the lowest of any age group for their views on senior leadership, workplace recognition, work-life balance and professional development. On diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, employees with disabilities and LGBTQ employees scored their agencies the lowest.

In reaction to the Partnership’s data, Therit said she plans to take a microscope to those cross-sections of employees.

“We’re really going to look at those demographic populations to make sure what we’re doing with our policies and our programs meets their needs and continues to engage those segments of our workforce,” Therit said.

One area of the workforce where VA is already focusing is on military spouses. The group of workers maintains one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, around 22%. Therit said right now, VA is partnering with the Office of Personnel Management to collect and analyze workforce data specifically on VA employees who are military spouses.

In the coming months, Therit said she hopes the collaboration with OPM will help her team better understand the recruitment and retention challenges specific to that segment of the workforce.

“We’re really excited,” Therit said. “Our survey data is expected to come out in July, so we’ll be able to use it between now and the end of the year to both make sure employees know their voices were heard, and to make some meaningful improvements.”

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