Years of pay caps have pulled the long-standing pay system for blue-collar federal employees away from the structure’s original intent.

The Federal Wage System (FWS), covering about 192,000 federal employees, was initially created to try to keep wages aligned with “prevailing,” or market rates in localized areas. But for the last 45 years, since fiscal 1979, many blue-collar feds have seen limits on their annual pay raises.

The intention of the pay caps is to ensure annual raises don’t exceed the raises that General Schedule (GS) employees get, and to address budgetary concerns, the Office of Personnel Management, which manages the pay system, has said.

But as a result, wages for blue-collar feds in 75% of FWS localities no longer align with local pay rates for similar jobs, according to a March 5 report from the Government Accountability Office.

There are also two different locality maps for GS and FWS employees. While the GS locality pay map contains 58 different areas, the FWS map has 248. The number is much higher for FWS because the map is connected to more targeted concentrations of federal employees working at, for instance, specific military bases, or Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers, GAO said.

“Employees in different FWS wage areas might find themselves with different annual pay increases. That has resulted in some, I think, confusion,” GAO Director of Strategic Issues Yvonne Jones, the report’s author, said in an interview. “[There have been] questions over the years for why the pay schedules for the two different sets of employees would be different, when the employees are working in what may look like the same place.”

Currently, out of the 248 Federal Wage System localities, 117 FWS localities are above prevailing rates, while 69 are below the market, GAO said.

The Biden administration said it’s “pursuing structural reforms” to some of the government’s largest pay systems — including the Federal Wage System for blue-collar feds, according to the 2025 budget request.

The Office of Management and Budget specifically pointed to what it said are long-standing “pay limitations” for blue-collar federal employees, as a result of aligning the pay ceilings and floors with those on the General Schedule.

One possible response to the issue may be “removing current ceilings in the FWS wage schedules and establishing a statutory minimum for annual pay rate adjustments,” OMB said in a budget request document.

Although the budget request alluded to some possible fixes, there is not yet a specific legislative proposal addressing the topic.

A proposal to merge FWS, GS maps

The Federal Prevailing Rate Advisory Committee is looking into another way to resolve some pay challenges for FWS employees.

In December 2023, the council, composed of members of OPM, the Defense Department and other stakeholders, voted 9-1 in favor of a draft proposal to merge the FWS locality map with the locality pay map for GS employees.

FPRAC has been considering possible reforms to the FWS map for 15 years. But the current draft proposal comes from a more recent 2022 request from Congress, which asked OPM to consider ways to merge the two locality pay maps.

Even though the council approved the proposal, some members said they still have “substantive” concerns about the cost and implementation of the changes.

A map-merger could lead to recruitment and retention issues for the Federal Wage System workforce in areas where the pay rates might decrease — possibly opening the door to federal positions moving to contract employees to save money, Nancy Speight, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for civilian personnel policy, said in December.

GAO’s Jones also said there are a number of complicated issues that need to be considered and assessed, if OPM were to merge the two maps.

For instance, aligning the maps would affect the wage survey DoD uses to help calculate wage rates in different FWS localities each year. DoD’s annual survey for FWS looks at data like job descriptions and numbers of employees in local areas to help set the pay rates each year.

“If you change the definition of the area, you will change the wage rates,” Jones said. “The point of the FWS system is to provide a wage rate which is close to the market rate in a particular geographic area. So, if you redefine the boundaries of that area, then of course you will change the data inputs into the survey.”

Those changes could lead to more Federal Wage System areas having either a lower or higher pay rate than the prevailing rate, Jones said, adding that “it’s hard to know without actually doing the exercise.”

Currently, OPM Director Kiran Ahuja and other agency officials are reviewing FPRAC’s recommendations. OPM is expected to issue a decision on the recommendations in April.

“We will be waiting with the interest, as others wait with interest, to see what that decision is,” Jones said.

GAO plans to publish another report in the near future on FWS. But right now, it’s in the very early stages of the process. Eventually, the report will look at wage rates for a range of military facilities across the country, and some of the issues associated with setting the priorities.

The post Federal Wage System for blue-collar feds puts some above, others below, local rates first appeared on Federal News Network.

Ahead of the planned federal pay raise for 2024, more than 33,000 federal employees are now set to get even larger pay checks.

By the end of December, President Joe Biden plans to sign off on a 5.2% average pay raise for most federal employees on the General Schedule. The pay bump comprises a 4.7% across-the-board raise that everyone gets, plus a 0.5% average locality-based boost.

The pay raise — still pending final sign-off — will kick in starting in January. Military members are also expected to receive a 5.2% pay raise next year.

But in addition to the planned increase, the map that determines the average 0.5% of the raise that accounts for federal employees’ locations is changing next year.

Last month, the Office of Personnel Management finalized four new locality pay areas:

• Fresno-Madera-Hanford, California
• Reno-Fernley, Nevada
• Rochester-Batavia-Seneca Falls, New York
• Spokane-Spokane Valley-Coeur d’Alene, Washington-Idaho

Starting in 2024 and for each subsequent year, GS employees working in any of those four areas will receive a larger-than-before percentage for their locality-based raise.

The change will impact roughly 33,300 GS employees, a Nov. 16 final rule from OPM said. That accounts for a combined total of 17,100 GS employees being added to existing localities and another 16,200 GS employees in the new localities.

The final rule from OPM came after the President’s Pay Agent approved the four new locality pay areas last December, upon the recommendation of the Federal Salary Council earlier in 2022.

Previously, these feds were part of the “rest of U.S.” locality pay area, the catch-all group for any employees outside the other distinct pay localities. The rest of U.S. category is typically on the lower end of the locality-based raise amounts.

OPM occasionally implements new locality pay areas when it’s determined that the pay disparities significantly exceed those for the rest of U.S. locality pay area over an extended period of time.

Although the vast majority of the 405 commenters on the proposed regulations supported the changes, there was some misunderstanding and confusion about the details.

Specifically, OPM said some commenters held “a mistaken belief” that certain counties were being inadvertently excluded from the locality pay areas.

The confusion likely stemmed from disparity between the language of the proposed regulations and the final rule. Some counties that were written out in the proposed regulations were then left off of the final regulations.

For instance, in the Spokane-Spokane Valley-Coeur d’Alene locality pay area, Kootenai and Stevens counties were written in the proposed regulations, but were not listed in OPM’s final regulations.

But OPM clarified that these counties, as well as other counties in the four new localities that weren’t expressly stated, will still be included in the final list. OPM noted that it didn’t list out every single county in the regulations because they are implicitly included as part of the definitions of the four new areas.

The mapping of locality pay areas has changed relatively recently. Locality pay areas are measured by definitions from the Office of Management and Budget called metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and combined statistical areas (CSAs). MSAs, according to OMB’s definition, have at least one urban area with a population of 50,000 or more and include adjacent areas. CSAs are larger regions that can be a combination of multiple MSAs.

OMB’s MSA and CSA maps often change, but last year, the President’s Pay Agent determined that counties currently included in a locality pay area will remain on that locality — even if OMB removes them from an MSA or CSA in the future.

Aside from the new locality pay areas, OPM’s Nov. 16 regulations also added Clallam and Jefferson counties to the Seattle-Tacoma, Washington locality pay area.

OPM said it plans to soon post the definitions of the new locality pay areas — down to the county level — on its website.

The changes will then take effect for employees in the first full pay period after Jan. 1, 2024.

The post Dispelling some confusion around the new locality pay areas first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Office of Personnel Management first published proposed regulations in July to offer a different method for narrowing down federal job applicants. That method, called the “rule of many,” aims to give hiring managers more flexibility.

Specifically, the “rule of many” will eventually let hiring managers, prior to posting a job announcement, determine from several different options how they’ll score and rank applicants for an open position. That includes specifying how many of those applicants will end up on their final list of qualified candidates.

The proposal from OPM, at least to some extent, combines two previous systems — the “rule of three” and “category rating” — that agencies have used over the years to determine lists of qualified candidates.

The first system, the now-defunct “rule of three,” was first established back in 1871. Many agencies used it for much of the 20th — and partly into the 21st — century.

Under the “rule of three,” agencies would evaluate, score and rank candidates based on criteria that were determined to make applicants qualified for a given job opening. By the end of the process, agencies would produce a list of candidates based on those rankings. But the catch was that agencies could only select one of the top three candidates to actually make an offer to.

The “rule of three” was limiting in many cases, said Jenny Mattingley, vice president of government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service. The system could exclude potentially qualified candidates if they weren’t one of the top three options. And it often led to agencies having to restart the whole recruitment process, if none of the top three candidates fit the desired qualifications or ultimately accepted a job offer.

“That doesn’t give you a lot of flexibility, especially if you’re hiring for multiple positions,” Mattingley said in an interview.

Back in 1995, the Merit Systems Protection Board said the “rule of three” was outdated and called for its elimination.

“The rule of three in federal hiring is even older than the U.S. Civil Service,” MSPB said in a December 1995 report. “Given the limitations of current examining processes, the rule of three remains valuable only as a ‘floor’ to ensure that managers have choices — which was its original purpose. As a curb on the number of candidates referred to managers, it does not represent good hiring policy.”

Although agencies largely stopped using the “rule of three” around the turn of the 21st century, the hiring method was only completely eliminated from law with the passage of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

By 2010, agencies were already largely shifting to a different selection method, called the “category rating” system. It places job applicants into three categories of qualifications, such as good, better and best fit for the job.

Under the “category rating” system, for example, candidates who have many — but not all — of the desired attributes for a job opening could be labeled as “qualified,” while candidates who have all of the desired traits could be considered “highly qualified.” Agencies can then select a chosen applicant, incorporating veterans’ preference, from the highest category of candidates.

“You might have 10 candidates, 20 candidates or more, depending on the criteria in your best qualified category,” Mattingley said. “It gives agencies an opportunity to consider a lot more applicants at one time.”

But the “category rating” process doesn’t fully encompass how federal hiring functions currently, and at times it can produce a list of candidates that’s almost too big to manage, some federal hiring experts have said.

Now, OPM’s goal of the “rule of many” is to let hiring managers look at a larger list of qualified candidates than the “rule of three” allowed for, but at the same time, tailor the process more specifically than what may be possible in “category rating.”

OPM’s proposal is somewhat of an in-between of the two older systems, Mattingley said.

“With the ‘rule of many,’ it’s not three, and it’s not the bigger pool that you see in category rating,” Mattingley said. “OPM has a couple of different options to cut it, but you’re picking some smaller number of candidates that you’re going to consider as your top-ranked candidates for whatever that hiring action is.”

The new system also aims to reflect evolving challenges in the broader hiring landscape, said Mike Mahoney, a hiring policy manager at OPM.

“The challenges [in recruitment] are immensely different, more varied and more complex,” Mahoney said in an interview. “A lot of different positions are evolving in ways that have never really been seen before. So, we started to look into, ‘maybe we need to get back to that [rule of three] somehow, but not be constrained by having only three people to pick from.’”

The “rule of many” is the result of a provision of the 2019 NDAA, which required OPM to set up a new system for scoring and ranking federal job applicants.

Specifically, the 2019 NDAA authorized agencies to certify a ‘sufficient number’ of at least three — but probably more — names from a list of eligible candidates to be considered for selection.

Based on that language, in its proposed regulations, OPM opted to create four new choices for hiring managers when selecting their method to create a list of qualified job candidates.

The four options under the “rule of many” are:

• Set a cut-off score, where any applicant who scores above it can be considered for a job offer
• Set a cut-off score, where any applicant who scores above it can be considered for an interview
• Set a specific number of higher-ranked candidates who can be considered for a job
• Set a specific percentage of higher-ranked candidates who can be considered for a job

Generally, agencies can determine applicants’ scores based on the criteria they feel are necessary for the given position. That process can involve other more recent hiring practices in government, such as the use of subject-matter experts (SMEs) or technical assessments.

“Agencies will probably need experts involved in some of that to determine, ‘what are the skills and qualifications? And what are the types of assessments that would help you identify those skills?’” Mattingley said.

Ultimately, the goal of the “rule of many” is all about giving hiring managers more flexibility.

“The ‘rule of many’ combines the best aspects of the ‘rule of three’ process, with the best aspects of ‘category rating,’” Mahoney said. “It accounts for the meaningful numerical distinctions among applicants, but it gives managers more choices to pick from.”

Of course, veterans’ preference still applies, and agencies are still bound to merit system principles throughout the recruitment process.

OPM closed the comment period for the “rule of many” proposed regulations on Sept. 19. The agency is now working through comments and plans to issue final regulations in the coming months.

The post How will OPM’s ‘rule of many’ function in federal hiring? first appeared on Federal News Network.

A Federal News Network analysis of agencies’ publicly-available plans for appropriations lapses shows that out of a total workforce of just over 2.3 million, more than 1.5 million would be either “exempt” or “excepted” from shutdown furloughs.

Those two categories are very different. “Exempt” employees work in positions that are financed through some funding source other than annual appropriations. Because of that, they would be unaffected by a lapse in appropriations — at least until those alternative funding sources run out. There are just over 860,000 employees in that group, making up 37% of the total federal workforce. Assuming a shutdown is relatively short, they would generally work and be paid as usual.

“Excepted” employees, on the other hand, are paid through annual appropriations, but their agency has determined they must stay on the job even with no funds available to pay them. There can be many reasons for that determination: in some cases, for example, they’re needed to protect life and property; in others, there are specific federal laws applying to those positions that dictate their work must go on even without appropriations. There are nearly 659,000 positions in the “excepted” category.

The numbers, of course, vary widely by agency. The General Services Administration, for example, is funded largely by fee revenue — so out of a total workforce of 12,362, GSA has determined 11,616 positions are exempt. An even bigger example is the Veterans Health Administration. VHA is funded through advance appropriations, and its workforce of 367,741 makes up a massive share of the total government’s “exempt” workforce all by itself.

But agencies like the Department of Education that rely mostly on appropriations face a far different picture: Education would end up furloughing 3,683 of its 4,091 employees, according to the department’s latest shutdown contingency plan.

One major caveat: these governmentwide totals are somewhat inexact, mostly because many agencies haven’t updated their shutdown plans recently. We’ll continue to update the table below as more agencies release revised figures.

The post Here’s how many feds would stay on the job – both with and without pay – during an upcoming shutdown first appeared on Federal News Network.

Up to 2.2 million civilian federal employees face the possibility of either a furlough or work without pay, as Congress has just days to reach an agreement on federal spending before a government shutdown kicks in.

During a government shutdown, agencies that don’t yet have their funding determined by Congress are legally required to shutter all activities that are financed by appropriations.

That means many federal employees are placed on a “shutdown furlough,” and have to cease work and temporarily go without pay. During the last government shutdown, roughly 800,000 of the 2.1 million civilian federal employees at the time were furloughed. Employees who agencies determine are needed to conduct excepted activities continue to work during a shutdown without pay. Agencies are responsible for notifying employees of a furlough as soon as possible.

“Typically, an agency will have very little to no lead time to plan and implement a shutdown furlough,” the Office of Personnel Management states on its website.

Agencies are required to create contingency plans in the case of a government shutdown. The Office of Management and Budget regularly updates a running list of these plans.

But many of the plans aren’t up to date. Several are from 2019, and a few date back as far as 2015. Some agencies, including the departments of Defense, Energy and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), as well as NASA and the Social Security Administration, updated their plans earlier this year, though.

How pay works during a shutdown

Among these contingency plans, there are also near-countless questions on how exactly a shutdown impacts furloughed employees. Top of mind, of course, is pay. During a shutdown, furloughed employees do not work and do not receive pay — but they will receive backpay after a shutdown ends.

In past government shutdowns, federal employees have always eventually received backpay. But backpay was not fully guaranteed until 2019. If there is a shutdown this year, it would be the first time all federal employees are firmly guaranteed backpay.

The Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, which former President Donald Trump signed into law, covers both furloughed and excepted federal employees. It ensures they’ll receive retroactive pay during lapses in appropriations once a shutdown ends.

Employees who are excepted and continue to work through a government shutdown are entitled to their standard pay and are eligible for premium pay if they work overtime, once the shutdown ends.

Additionally, if a shutdown occurs in the middle of a pay period, furloughed employees should still receive paychecks on time for work they did prior to the start of the shutdown, OPM said in 2021 shutdown guidance.

For the tens of thousands of federal contractors who may get furloughed during a government shutdown, backpay is not guaranteed. In these instances, it’s up to the individual company to determine whether the employees will be reimbursed after a shutdown ends.

Paid leave and federal health insurance

When it comes to paid leave, agencies are required to cancel paid time off that furloughed employees may have scheduled during a shutdown. A furloughed employee may not use previously approved paid time off during a lapse in appropriations. But shutdowns don’t affect the accrual of paid leave or sick leave, which can be used after the end of a shutdown.

Excepted employees who continue to work and who want to use paid leave during a shutdown will receive pay for that leave under the normal leave rules once the lapse ends, OPM said.

Health insurance coverage also continues during a shutdown for both furloughed and excepted employees. Agencies continue to process transactions for the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program, the Federal Employee, Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program (FEDVIP), the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program (FLTCIP) and the Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance (FEGLI) during a lapse in appropriations, OPM said in its shutdown guidance.

But furloughed employees generally have to wait until the end of a shutdown before they can adjust their benefits. As an exception, feds will still be able to make changes to their enrollments during Open Season or if they experience a qualifying life event during a shutdown.

Health premium payments are also typically paused during a shutdown. After a shutdown ends, previously furloughed employees will begin repaying FEHB premiums that accumulated during the shutdown through payroll withholding.

Retirement services and the Thrift Savings Plan

Federal retirement services also continue during a government shutdown. Federal retirees will still receive their scheduled annuity payments, OPM said.

For those looking to retire from the government, services proceed as normal during a shutdown, although they may slow down. OPM’s Retirement Services staff continue work during a shutdown. Retiring feds will begin receiving interim annuity payments while their applications are processed, OPM said.

Operations for the Thrift Savings Plan and the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board are also largely unaffected by a government shutdown. That’s because the TSP is not funded through congressional appropriations.

TSP participants can still make contributions and withdrawals, apply for loans and take other actions as normal.

Lawmakers call shutdowns “unacceptable”

Despite the continuity of some federal operations, many lawmakers have said there are major deleterious effects of government shutdowns. Agencies cannot plan ahead and many services to the public are delayed or suspended. Some lawmakers are particularly concerned for the hundreds of thousands of potentially furloughed feds.

In response, a few lawmakers are trying to end government shutdowns once and for all. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) reintroduced the bicameral End Shutdowns Act earlier this month. The bill would automatically kick in a continuing resolution on Oct. 1 if Congress can’t reach an agreement on appropriations, in effect preventing either a full or partial shutdown of the government.

“Government shutdowns have disastrous consequences for federal employees and government contractors and slow down critical government services,” Kaine said in a press statement. “This is unacceptable.”

A couple lawmakers are also raising concerns about excepted feds who would continue to work during a shutdown. Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.) urged the Biden administration to work with agencies and ensure the continuity of federal child care options in the case of a shutdown.

“A government shutdown should not create a double burden for these employees, forcing them to choose between fulfilling their professional obligations and meeting the needs of their families,” Connolly and Kilmer said in a letter to OMB Tuesday. “The strain that this choice places on federal employees can have detrimental effects on their mental well-being, job performance and overall morale.”

Joining calls from several lawmakers, federal unions are also pushing Congress to pass a continuing resolution and avoid a government shutdown.

“During the last partial government shutdown, 800,000 federal employees went five weeks without a paycheck, with half forced to work without pay and another half locked out of their jobs,” American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley said in a statement Tuesday. “These costly outcomes are completely avoidable. Congress needs to do its job and pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded at current levels while continuing to negotiate a final budget. Nothing less is acceptable.”

The post What happens to furloughed employees during a government shutdown? first appeared on Federal News Network.

The perils of climate change are impacting many federal missions, and government agencies are busy mapping out their roles for a whole-of-government approach to the many problems we see emerging.

In our last article, we discussed the critical importance that climate intelligence — deriving actionable insights from multiple climate-mission relevant data sources and translating for specific stakeholders — will play in that effort. Climate intelligence is the keystone for collaboration that must occur across a wide spectrum of stakeholders to produce meaningful, effective responses to current and future climate challenges.

As discussed in our article, many agencies are struggling to embrace and incorporate climate intelligence due to siloed datasets, multitude of technologies and a proliferation of data products. However, many of these challenges are avoidable or surmountable.

As agencies collaborate and develop a roadmap for building a robust climate intelligence foundation, there are three guideposts that will help them avoid or overcome these challenges:

First, fully understand the problem space and bring the right multi-disciplinary experts

so your discovery and strategies are efficient, comprehensive and properly aimed to solve the problems. Take enough time to fully develop the core problem statements, do so efficiently by leveraging patterns from other domains, and be willing to iterate as new information is gathered. Part of this discovery is understanding and defining the stakeholders, their as-is environments, and barriers to effect change. This is done by employing various discovery methodologies, such as customer journey mapping, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, surveys and structured observations to immerse yourself in a stakeholder’s experience.

Second, establish a clear sense of the enablers you will need

to achieve the climate mission outcomes you are targeting. These include technologies, processes, capabilities and partners, and are especially relevant within the climate space given its all-encompassing, multi-sectoral nature. When smartly integrated, these enablers serve as the primary foundation of an effective climate intelligence solution that goes beyond an enterprise to an ‘ecosystem’ approach.

There are some common traits and design principles that should be designed into any climate intelligence solution to promote the greatest degree of success. These include:

Hyper-localized analysis The impact of climate change varies substantially by locality, and climate intelligence solutions should be equipped to deliver the necessary data and analyses to inform locally relevant resilience and response planning decisions.

Open architecture/Open science Delivering full-picture insights across programs and agencies — flexibly and at scale — requires an architecture that integrates across multiple IT environments. This means that climate intelligence solutions must rely on best of breed of cloud-native and open-source services and capabilities assembled through an open architecture.

The ability to empower communities of data providers. Climate challenges are multi-sectoral and time-sensitive, which means multiple data sets from federal, state, local and commercial data sources must be brought together and analyzed rapidly to deliver actionable insights. This requires data exchanges that allow for rapid collection, ingestion and data fusion.

Data democratization. The global and existential nature of the climate crisis warrants putting as many minds as possible to work on discovery and solutions. Climate intelligence solutions — equipped with a range of visualizations and other self-service decision-support analytics — can empower citizen scientists, professional scientists, researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders.

Ease of access. Without easy access to and understanding of data, data democratization means little. With an eye toward fostering a climate innovation ecosystem, climate intelligence solutions should use scalable, open APIs so that curated datasets and analytic-ready data products are easily discoverable and accessible.

Single source of truth. For any data to carry impact, it must be authoritative and verifiable, and transparency must be infused throughout. Any climate intelligence solution must offer users access to authoritative data sources across climate threat domains, including flood, drought, extreme temperatures, wildfire and others.

With these design principles in place, agencies can construct a climate intelligence solution that, over time, increases in value as it progresses from serving a single mission to multiple missions and, eventually, an entire community (such as with a public sector-wide initiative) and an ecosystem (a broad-based national or international community of stakeholders).

Third, keep your ultimate stakeholders in mind and identify how you can achieve the last-mile delivery of solutions to affect actual climate mitigation or adaptation benefits.

Understanding your ultimate stakeholders (e.g., communities impacted by climate change) is a fundamental but often missed step. Understand what questions your stakeholders are asking so you can co-create the solutions. Identify the optimal solution pathways that will produce the actual outcomes around climate mitigation, resilience and adaptation. Working with stakeholders, develop target metrics to define success and then map out processes and workflows to achieve them using an iterative discover-build-validate model.

There is an urgency for federal agencies to develop climate intelligence solutions that will advance the mission goals around combatting impacts of climate change in a scalable, timely and equitable way. These best practices will help ensure that the solutions developed address these goals effectively. Knowing your stakeholders, fully understanding the problem space, and leveraging all enablers effectively will accelerate the pathways to building a resilient nation.

Prachi Sukhatankar is a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton who leads climate and infrastructure transformation for Booz Allen’s clients.

Read Part 1 here.

The post Federal agencies need to build an effective foundation for climate intelligence. Here’s how first appeared on Federal News Network.

Many government planners are already thinking about how their agencies fit into a broader, whole-of-government approach to the problem. Along with that, a more scalable response to the problem will require a greater collaboration of talent, resources and perspectives; federal agencies will also need to partner with state, local and foreign governments, as well as with academic institutions, business communities, the scientific community, entrepreneurs, the first responder community, the public and others, showcasing a whole-of-America approach.

In other words, everyone has a role to play in this, and collaboration among all stakeholders will be vital in mitigating and adapting to the problems to come. At the foundation of this collaboration will be what we call climate intelligence. In essence, climate intelligence is data, derived from as many sources as needed, that has been translated into actionable information for specific stakeholders.

Climate intelligence can be used to better understand how the climate is affecting us or will affect us, as well as its cascading multi-sectoral impacts. It can help influence and change how people behave in ways that could lessen the impacts of climate change. And it can better inform decisions, research, deployments, behaviors and policies needed to improve society’s readiness and resiliency.

A modern-day example of climate intelligence is an effort we see underway among several federal agencies that aims to better understand the degree of water scarcity in the western United States. As we have seen in recent news, a severe drought has brought water levels of major western reserves — Lake Mead, Lake Powell and the Colorado River — to historically low levels, threatening the livelihoods, agriculture and health of regional populations.

The U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Bureau of Reclamation, Agriculture Department, and other agencies are partnering to collect and share a wide variety of data with each other as well as with key stakeholder communities. One data stream, for example, is generated by high-precision radar instruments and other sources and informs agencies of precipitation amounts in the western Rockies. Another data stream — derived mostly from manual sampling of snowpacks throughout the mountains — informs scientists how much water is in the snow. A third data stream, generated from satellites and ground-based microwave radiometers, tells us the level of water in the soil.

When combined, analyzed and properly packaged and presented, these data streams — all from highly disparate types, formats and sources of data — can offer valuable insights into what will happen in the near- and medium-term future in terms of water availability for key populations and stakeholders in that part of the country. This data-driven approach to assessing our climate-related circumstances and making decisions and policies is at the core of climate intelligence.

First and foremost, climate intelligence is about bringing multi-source data together in a way that makes it highly actionable for its intended consumers, whomever they might be. But to achieve the greatest positive impact, we believe climate intelligence also should be:

• Highly shareable for improved collaboration across the global community of data providers
• Delivered in customized, locally relevant ways (e.g., visualizations and curated data products) for specific stakeholders and purposes
• Augmented by partnerships and communities of data that span public, commercial and government datasets
• Shared so that it is discoverable and easily accessible and understood by all, including citizen scientists, underserved and marginalized communities, and the broader public
• Rapidly produced, acquired and delivered to keep pace with fast-evolving threats
• Responsive to self-service queries for many stakeholders and localities

Taken together, these characteristics will help federal agencies achieve the full scope of climate intelligence capability to help them elevate from an enterprise approach to data to what is truly needed: an ecosystem approach where data can come from any source and be translated into value for any consumer, inside or outside of government.

More importantly, if designed well, climate intelligence at the federal level can lead to greater resiliency in the near-term and better sustainability planning in the long-term, across the nation and beyond.

There are, of course, challenges for all organizations — federal agencies included — in being able to routinely produce and incorporate climate intelligence for day-to-day decision-making. After all, climate change is probably the ultimate big data challenge, simply because the data sets involved are so disparate, voluminous, fast-evolving and complex to work with.

One of the biggest barriers is making needed data accessible. Countless silos — imposed by organizational jurisdictions, regulations, technology infrastructure, organizational cultures and information classifications — make it hard to bring needed data sets together where they can produce greater value or any value at all.

Another challenge is the exponential proliferation of data products derived from that data. Stakeholders and data consumers — other than those who created and first used these products — have difficulty reusing or gaining value from them because the underlying assumptions, processes and algorithms are largely unknown.

Similarly, different organizations across the climate ecosystem employ a multitude of technology approaches for data access, shared access, analytics, visualization and dissemination. These disparate technologies and approaches can create barriers to reliable, verifiable and accessible climate data that can be used by various climate stakeholders.

These challenges are daunting, but not insurmountable. Moving forward, federal agencies must be empowered to address these challenges to outline a roadmap for building a robust climate intelligence foundation as well as improve collaboration to reflect a whole-of-America framework.

Prachi Sukhatankar is a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton who leads climate and infrastructure transformation for Booz Allen’s clients. Dr. Jim Reilly, a former astronaut and former director of the U.S. Geological Survey, is an executive advisor in Booz Allen’s aerospace business.

In part 2 of this commentary, Sukhatankar will discuss practical ways to overcome the challenges to building a climate intelligence foundation.

The post For their many climate-related missions, federal agencies need robust climate intelligence first appeared on Federal News Network.

Federal employment is anything but simple. In fact, each year, thousands of federal workplace cases end up in the courts, federal district, appellate, and administrative forums. Joining the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with a quick look at some of the most important cases of 2022, Shaw Bransford and Roth senior counsel James Heelan.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin
So cases happen in a lot of different venues. And I want to start with the Merit Systems Protection Board, which of course, is not a judicial court, but an administrative court. But I think it’s noteworthy that there’s decisions coming out of there, if only because, for the first time in years they’ve had a quorum.

James Heelan
Right. If I could pick the top news story and federal employment for 2022, not just an individual case, I would say the MSPB is back. The board has been hearing cases through its administrative judges that you what you can think of as the trial level of the agency for the last several years. But in 2022, the three-member presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed panel is back. They got a quorum in March, and the chairman was confirmed and appointed, put in her position in June of 2022. So now we’ve got three members, and they are issuing decisions on a multiyear backlog.

Tom Temin
Right. Are there any decisions from the board itself, the actual appellate if you will, of the administrative judges that is significant?

James Heelan
Yes. It’s incredibly significant. So the board lost its quorum, right before the Trump administration began in January of 2016. And then lost all members altogether in the middle of that year. And so a backlog of appellate cases or appeals from those administrative judge decisions, had accumulated for many years. And now the board, as it’s reconstituted, is going through those cases. And it seems to be prioritizing big decisions. Decisions that change the status quo of federal employment law, or really evolve it in some interesting way or address new laws that have been enacted in the last several years.

Tom Temin
Any that come to mind? You’re talking about Thomas v. Department of the Army. This went to the board level itself.

James Heelan
Yes, Tom, I see you’re looking at number 10 on my law firms list of the top 10 cases from last year. And it’s really two cases, Thomas v. Department of the Army and Chin v. Department of Defense. These are two cases that go to the facts at issue occurred in 2015 or 2016. And seven years later, the MSPB board three-member panel is reversing penalty decisions, for their administrative judges and changing penalties. So for example, in Thomas v. the Army, it involved a manager who was making female employees uncomfortable in the workplace. And the agency removed that individual for conduct unbecoming a federal employee. the AJ or administrative judge mitigated that penalty to a demotion and a 14 day suspension. The agency appealed, and the three-member board said no. They’re not going to mess around with that kind of conduct in the workplace. It is a removal action. So we have an employee and an agency, who we’re really in limbo for many years, waiting to learn what the final outcome was going to be. And the board said its removal. On the flip side of that coin, Chin v. Defense. This is an employee who took an extra five bucks worth of food at the agency cafeteria, the agency fired the employee for it, it went through appeals. And finally at the board level, again, I think seven years later. The board said no. There’s so many mitigating factors here, look at the Douglas factors, look at the other reasons to give this employee some benefit of the doubt. And they mitigated the penalty and put that person back to work, after seven years.

Tom Temin
Yeah, for $5 worth of food. I guess it’s better to steal 500 million as a contractor, than $5 for a piece of pie. You’re not saying that.

James Heelan
Right. We’re beyond my practice area.

Tom Temin
And I’m gonna get into a lot of hot water for that one. Another case that caught my eye is number seven, who is a government actor under the Fourth Amendment. And I don’t think they mean the SAG union that I’m in, someone who’s engaging on behalf of the government.

James Heelan
At our number seven case, this is United States v. John Lewis. And it’s an interesting one in our top 10 list. And that it came out of a circuit court, that wasn’t the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, not the MSPB. This came out of the Fifth Circuit. And it deals with the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unlawful or warrantless search and seizure. Now, when someone, a member of the public, has law enforcement uncover evidence against them in violation of the Fourth Amendment, that person’s remedy, if the criminal court level is to move to suppress that evidence. And the trial courts will suppress evidence that was unlawfully obtained. Now, it can only be unlawfully obtained if it was by a government actor. A private citizen finds drug evidence or weapons or something and turns it over the police. That’s not an unlawful search or seizure. So U.S. v. John Lewis addresses what kind of government employee can violate the Fourth Amendment rights of a member of the public. And this case, it was a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier, who defects a little interesting, found a hole in a box, open the box and found a bunch of methamphetamines. The defendant in that subsequent criminal prosecution moved to suppress. And worked its way through the Fifth Circuit, and the Fifth Circuit said no, that letter carrier, while a federal employee, was not performing law enforcement duties, was not conducting a search for Fourth Amendment purposes. And so that evidence was admissible in that criminal prosecution. So great news, because, evidence pops up everywhere, including in the federal workplace.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with James Heelan. He is senior counsel at the law firm, Shaw Bransford & Roth. And there were a couple of whistleblower cases, defining significant change in duties for [Whistle Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA)] purposes and defining abuse of authority. Tell us briefly about those two cases.

James Heelan
Right, some big cases coming out of the board and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, defining statutory terms. The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act is just over a decade old. And there is still some statutory vagaries that had not been defined by the courts or by the board. And in this case of Skarada v. Department of Veterans Affairs, we had the board defining what it means to be a significant change in duties. For the purposes of whistleblower retaliation claims. Whistleblowers are protected, by statute against retaliation in the form of a significant change in their duties. For over 10 years, no one really knew what that meant. So administrative judges had to sort of suss it out for themselves. The Office of Special Counsel had its own individual take on it. Well, the board said, a significant change in duties for these purposes means, a significant change in duties, responsibilities, or working conditions. So responsibilities and working conditions gives us a little more meat on the bone. It tells us that, in this specific case, the board said that a generally unpleasant and unsupportive work environment failed to meet that statutory definition. So we got a little more to work with, than we have for the last decade.

Tom Temin
Right. So that means people that are moved to basements and into locker rooms and storage rooms, as kind of I’ll get even with you type of thing, that is or is not part of this allowable.

James Heelan
I would I feel more comfortable today, saying that is a significant change and duties. For the purposes of the WPEA retaliation protections. My managers stop saying hello to me in the hallway, my supervisor was more formal with me than they are with the other employees in the workplace. I think under the Skarada decision, that kind of treatment does not rise to whistleblower retaliation.

Tom Temin
Ok, gosh, we could go on for hours. But the number one case was that went to the Supreme Court, having to do with the landmark Egbert ruling, called Narrowing Bivens. What’s going on? What did the Supreme Court have to say about federal employment last year?

James Heelan
So this may not be new information for some of the Federal law enforcement personnel who are listening. But Bivens is a case that came out in 1971 or ’72 by the Supreme Court, that said that the Constitution itself, created these implied clauses of action. Meaning that the Fourth Amendment allowed lawsuits against individual federal employees for certain violations. In the Bivens case, it was narcotics agents who had unlawfully searched and detained an individual in his home. And so that person was now allowed to sue those agents, personally, and hold them individually, financially accountable. Well, the Supreme Court sort of expanded what Bivens meant and who had applied to, for another, I think, eight years. And for the last 43 years, has not expanded it any further. As in fact, begun walking it back. In this case, Egbert v. Boule is the latest in the court walking back Bivens. And really narrowing it saying, if your case doesn’t look exactly like Bivens, the original Bivens case. It’s probably not going to succeed, because the courts have overreached. This is what the Supreme Court says. The courts have been overreaching, they have been putting themselves in the place of Congress. And the correct question for courts to ask about whether to expand Bivens or apply Bivens to any set of facts, is really whether Congress is in the better place to allow that cause of action or not. And in most cases, the court said the answer is going to be Congress.

Tom Temin
So the effect was to narrow the range of officials that can be sued?

James Heelan
Exactly. And to narrow the kinds of things they can be sued for. Again, Bivens itself was about, these narcotics agents who went into someone’s home without a warrant. And, I think the word the court used was manacled, that individual to radiator and conducted a very invasive search of the person and of their home. So Egbert v. Boule says if you don’t look just like that, your case probably won’t succeed in the federal court, against a federal employee.

Tom Temin
Like if you have secret records parked behind your, nevermind, we won’t go there. So there has been some fundamental change then, in the contract between people in government and between government and itself then from these cases?

James Heelan
That sounds right. That sounds like an accurate characterization to me, Tom. We have the Federal Judiciary, trying to restrain itself. That message is coming from the Supreme Court. Federal Judiciary should stick to, what a lot of people would call like, original lists or conservatives. What the judiciary is laying really is, a big movement away or change from what people often call that activist court from the 1960s and 70s, where the court was being much more active in civil rights and other parts of American life.

 

The post Much of what affects your life comes from a courtroom first appeared on Federal News Network.

When working with remote or multi-state workers, government contractors may need to segment cost pool allocations differently to maintain equitability and avoid overbilling.

There is more to this change than new or separate cost pool allocations. Employing fully remote workers can affect payroll taxes and state licensing, budgeting and your culture.

Even with hybrid office arrangements in which workers are in the office part of the week, you will experience changes in some of these areas. If this is your situation, take a proactive approach to manage your costs, culture and audit risk.

Payroll recordkeeping

When an employee lives in or plans to relocate to another state, find out if you need to register in that state for payroll taxes or employer licensing. Create a tracking method to make sure you have the accounts and registration needed for newly hired and existing employees in other states.

If your employee lives just across the state border and still performs most or all work within your home state, your tracking may look a little different than for an employee who lives and works two states away. Check the requirements for each state or work with your trusted advisor in this area to identify each locality’s requirements.

Cost pool allocations

Fully remote employees can affect cost pools for government contracts. For one thing, you don’t incur the facilities, phone or utilities costs in the same way. You may still provide things like laptops and mobile phones, but costs can be much less overall. This can be somewhat like the situation you may already have where employees work on the government or contractor site. In a hybrid arrangement, however, costs could be higher because you are paying for remote equipment and supplies as well as your facilities costs.

Your considerations include forward-pricing budgets and equitable allocation. Tracking expenses for a fully remote portion of your workforce can help you develop more accurate forward-pricing budgets. This process can also bring up potential considerations of leasing needs and contract planning scenarios to calculate the best path forward. Remember, the guiding line with differentiating your facilities pool (or creating a segmentation in them) will be when it is no longer fair and equitable for the costs to be collected and allocated among the contracts.

If you anticipate employing or contracting a significant scale of remote employees, run some scenarios and do a cost projection to determine the point when cost allocation among your contracts could become inequitable.

Communication and culture

Although this consideration is not a cost element, remote employee communication and culture can affect contract performance and employee retention. Be proactive in this area to keep everyone on the same page, enjoying their work.

• Find out how your remote employees like to communicate (e.g., video, phone, text), or establish a policy for this communication.
• Schedule informal check-ins in addition to your regular contract meetings.
• Make opportunities for your remote employees to speak up during your team meetings.
• Keep employees informed about virtual events or team celebrations.
• Create an internal company newsletter or message board forum to communicate.
• Encourage employees to participate on committees and follow corporate social media.

Be intentional with communications because they won’t happen as organically as they do when teams are 100% in the office.

The great upside of the shift to remote work is that if employees have a significant life change that will take them out of state, remote work can help retain them. It can also broaden your hiring pool if you have been able to successfully navigate remote work.

Take this conversation seriously. You can retain great employees by providing a process for this conversation — what is possible and what is fair — for the company and the employee. It may not work in all circumstances but with it being a known potential, it allows the conversation to happen.

Michelle Jenkins, CPA, is a Partner and Department Head for the Solutions Services Department at Anglin Reichmann Armstrong and she has a special focus on women-owned and small government contractors in the areas of contractor technology solutions, accounting and growth guidance.

The post Cost pool considerations for remote and multi-state employees first appeared on Federal News Network.

A non-profit think tank known as the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology assembled the thinking of more than 50 thinkers in both cybersecurity and infrastructure. The result is a book that is intended to inform the thinking of both government officials and operators with responsibility for critical infrastructure. To hear how it all came together,  Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Joyce Hunter, the Institute’s Executive Director.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin
Oh, this is a Federal News Network podcast. A nonprofit Think Tank known as the Institute for Critical infrastructure technology. You know, I sit, assembled the thinking of more than 50 thinkers in both cybersecurity and infrastructure. The result is a book intended to inform the thinking of both government officials and operators with responsibility for critical infrastructure here in studio with how it all came together. The Institute’s Executive Director, Joyce, Hunter, Joyce, good to have you with us.

Joyce Hunter
Nice to be here, Tom. Long time no, see,

Tom Temin
yes, well, too long. Let’s put it that way.

And this is a pretty heavy tome, I would not call this beach reading, tell us the purpose behind this book. And then we’ll get to some of how it got put together?

Joyce Hunter
Well, we thought back in I guess it was 2020, right after the pandemic started. So what are we going to do in order to expand the knowledge of Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology in the workplace, because we weren’t getting together anymore. We weren’t having these executive roundtables and the breakfasts, and you know, those kinds of things. So I had worked on a book when I was still in the administration as the deputy CIO for Department of Agriculture. And we put together the same kind of book with American University. And that was produced by Routledge, who is also the owners of Taylor and Francis, the publishers of this particular book. So I brought the idea to Parham Eftekhari, who is the CEO and the board chair for ICIT. And I said, why don’t we do the same thing. And so he agreed, and thought it was a good idea. And off, we went to the races, we decided to start first with our fellows who are if you want to call them, they’re our advisors, people who come from some of the top cybersecurity organizations and academic organizations in the United States. So we decided to pull together a few of them, they gave us some recommendations. And then we started scouring the trade publications to see who were the thought leaders in this area.

Tom Temin
Yeah. So this is really the authors of the various chapters are a who’s who in cyber and critical infrastructure.

Joyce Hunter
Yes, that is correct.

Tom Temin
And isn’t only about cybersecurity of the infrastructure, or does it also get into physical security?

Joyce Hunter
It actually gets into the crossroads of cybersecurity, national security and critical infrastructure.

Tom Temin
So does that mean?

Joyce Hunter
Anything that has to do with security, including physical , yes.

Tom Temin
Because just recently, we saw someone firing gunshots at a plant, I think, in North Carolina, and nobody ever dreamed that’s a way to bring down parts of the grid. But that’s what happened.

Joyce Hunter
That’s exactly what happened. And so we’re looking at everything in the infrastructure, everything within the environment, that the entire ecosystem.

Tom Temin
Right, and in a case like that, it’s probably cyber clues that will lead to the perpetrators.

Joyce Hunter
That’s right. And, you know, we find behavioral analytics is getting to be more prevalent in looking at behaviors of certain kinds of people so that you can make some kind of predictions.

Tom Temin
Sure. And this book, it says, a guide to the ’21 through ’25 administration, as you mentioned, it was conceived before we knew who that administration would be.

Joyce Hunter
That’s right. That’s right.

Tom Temin
46th presidency, I guess we’re up to now. But it’s not only aimed at administration and federal officials, but really also at the operators. And would you say the state and local level people?

Joyce Hunter
All stakeholders, all stakeholders have anything to do or have an interest in cybersecurity, national security or critical infrastructure.

Tom Temin
And would you say that this book doesn’t simply do what a lot of publications do, and that is to use the word of the late great, Alan Paler of the SANS Institute, admire the problem?

Joyce Hunter
That’s right. This book gives them some practical, not instructions, but suggestions, things that practitioners have used, have seen, have done, like have been there, done that. So these people who have contributed to this book have been there, done that. And these are their recommendations in order to secure the nation’s infrastructure.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Joyce Hunter, she is executive director of the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. And this gets into some real deep detail. I mean, there’s chapters about networks segmentation, in the case of that type of infrastructure, designed to control blast radius. I mean, I looked through this and it’s very, very detailed. What kind of review process did this all have to go through?

Joyce Hunter
Oh, my goodness. I was only a chapter contributor before to the other book that I did with American University. I did not know what it took to put something like this together, including the review process. So we had an editor that edited the book, and it was painstaking, needless to say, for the book to be edited. It took a year and a half for it to go through the review process. We had some fellows review it. We had Suzette Kent review it. So we’ve had several people in the industry, current and former, public, private, to review the book before it actually came out.

Tom Temin
Yeah, luckily cybersecurity is one of those things left that’s non-partisan.

Joyce Hunter
That’s right. That’s absolutely right. And we’re so glad that.

Tom Temin
Now, in the time that you were preparing this book, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, sort of came of age, you might say, and is now richly funded, it can’t add people fast enough. And it has issued a lot of guidance and binding operational directives and so forth. Do you feel with this book coming out, it’s dated the first of this year 2023, publication date? Can you still have influence at this point?

Joyce Hunter
I think we can. Because we did constant reviews as we were going through. And as things changed, we had to go back to the authors and poor authors, we had to go back to the author’s and say, can you rewrite this so that it’s more current? And so that had to happen through the review process, as well, as we are hoping we’re really keeping our fingers, toes and eyes crossed, that this can be viewed as an instructional guide for staffers in Congress so that they can actually use this. And we can actually go in and provide some training and guidance on the critical infrastructures as they change, as they morph. And we plan on doing another one for the next election.

Tom Temin
Or my question is, is that also available as an online resource? Because you would seem to be able then to update it as needed? And then every so often sort of hit the print button, so to speak?

Joyce Hunter
Yeah, it is. But of course, we’ve got to get through the Taylor and Francis, they’re the publisher. So if we make any changes to the book, we have to go back to them, which can take a little while.

Tom Temin
Right. But that’s the general plan And what’s the reaction been so far?

Joyce Hunter
It’s been excellent. People absolutely love it. They think that it’s a long time coming. They wish somebody had done it before. I’m glad that we’re the first ones to actually do something like this as comprehensive like this, with chasing around 50 different cats like this.

Tom Temin
But you have had good administrators. Absolutely. Yeah. People like at CISA said, yeah, everybody, good job, everybody

Joyce Hunter
From CISA, to former Congressman Langevin. To get a lot of people in the industry, they really liked the book.

Tom Temin
And that’s a good point you bring up with Langevin who of course, has left Congress and left a big hole in the cybersecurity expertise of Congress, not just Jim himself, but also the staff. And so there’s always a need to get the new comers or the people freshly in the industry, regardless of the role, up to speed.

Joyce Hunter
And that’s what we plan on doing with this book. We’ve got clearance, saying that this book can be provided as a textbook for federal government employees, so they could get the book, we could give them the book. And there’s no problem with the gift regulation.

Tom Temin
Yeah, my question was, you do charge for the book, I just saw some academic tome that I would like to have in another domain of life, which I won’t mention here, a three volume set that just came out 10 years of work by a team lead at Harvard, I thought, good, I’m gonna buy this one. But $645 for the three volumes, I said, Well, maybe I’ll look at it. It’s at the library. This is less than $645.

Joyce Hunter
Yes. Oh, much, much, much less. It’s around $100 more or less. And if you get it before March 31, you get a 20% discount.

 

The post Everything you need to know about critical infrastructure protection, between two covers first appeared on Federal News Network.

Long controversial, the military vaccine mandate has been killed off by the just-enacted 2023 National Defense Authorization law. So now what? Can fired services members rejoin? To get some answers,  Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Anthony Kuhn, managing partner at the law firm Tully Rinckey.

Interview transcript:

Anthony Kuhn
So the law, once enacted, gave the military branches 30 days to strike down their vaccine mandate policies for the time being, what those military branches have done is essentially just froze those individuals where they are. So if they were being processed for separation, they are discontinuing the processing. And for anybody who has a pending religious or medical accommodation, most of those individuals, they will just discontinue the processing of those accommodation requests and just keep those individuals in the military. But the question now becomes what are they going to do with all the individuals who have been separated, or who have gotten out of the military? And the answer is, well, it depends on how they got out or the reason for the separation.

Tom Temin
Before we get there. I just want to ask people that are in process now that are still in the service, basically, then they the applications for exceptions that they were mostly turning down, the deciders can really put those in the shredder. correct?

Anthony Kuhn
That’s correct. So we have quite a few individuals who were had exemption requests pending. And you’re, you’re right on most of them were turned down. In fact, nearly all of them just received a blanket letter and their exemption requests weren’t even considered. They would get a blanket denial, everybody got the same form. And they have been kind of dragging on. So now that this policy is stricken, those individuals will no longer have to pursue those exemption requests.

Tom Temin
And for those that were denied earlier, and now are out of the military, was there a period of time between the denial you can almost imagine someone sitting there stamping denied, next sheet denied, next sheet denied, next week with a big huge stamp. Did those people have a few days to get ready to leave or were they summarily out the day the rubber hit the stamp?

Anthony Kuhn
Well, unfortunately, that’s that’s pretty much how it work, do they just process them and like I said, sent the same letter to just about everybody. So those individuals had some time, there are steps that the military branch is required to put them through before separating them. So not all of them have been separated. We believe the number is somewhere around 8,400 service members have been separated from the COVID vaccine, the individuals who refuse to get the vaccine. But what you don’t see there, what’s not being reported by the military branch, any of the military branches actually is the actual number. So you see the number of individuals who were separated and attributed directly to a refusal to get the vaccine. But what you don’t see is there’s probably four or five to one of every one of those individuals. It’s people who retired when they didn’t plan on retiring. Its people who were no longer allowed to reenlist. It’s people who refuse to reenlist because they refuse to get the vaccine. So while the number that’s being published is 8,400, I think the number is probably more around 30,000 have been separated or forced to get out because they refuse to get the vaccine. And that’s based on my experience, both as an attorney and a service member.

Tom Temin
So those people had an exit ramp, other than just kicked out. Here’s your duffle bag, there’s the gate, they, as you say retired or just didn’t reenlist.

Anthony Kuhn
Right. And in many of those situations, it’s individuals with 15 or more years combat veterans, people who spent a large portion of your life working towards a pension and towards retirement, they’ve been forced to get out and were no longer able to pursue that retirement. So we’re hoping now that those individuals, especially the ones who didn’t get punished for not getting the vaccine, we’re hoping that those individuals will have the easiest path back down.

Tom Temin
Right, in other words, stay where you are, don’t head to the gate, you’re still in.

Anthony Kuhn
Right. And there’s a lot of people in that situation.

Tom Temin
And before we get to the ones that are out. If you were forced out, say among that 8,400 that we know are simply kicked out, does that then not entitle them to Veterans Affairs benefits? Because they were would that have been less than honorable discharge?

Anthony Kuhn
No. So in order to qualify for most VA benefits, most of the Veterans Affairs benefits, you have to be considered a veteran, and all of those individuals would be considered veterans, and you have to have some type of honorable discharge. And there’s a couple types. So there’s the full honorable discharge that we all know that’s that’s the best discharge. That’s where you’re going to get all of your veterans benefits. There is also what’s called a general discharge, which is under honorable conditions, and I believe more than 80% of the people who were forced out received the general discharge. Individuals with a general discharge can collect service, connected compensation that monthly payment for injuries sustained while in the military, but they are not eligible for things like educational benefits, the GI Bill, things of that nature. So I expect that there will be a policy to correct what happened with those individuals in the future, I hope that the government does the right thing and upgrades the discharges for those individuals, certainly they can file with the Board for Correction of Military Records for a discharge upgrade as well. And I think that it would be granted, I expect a policy in the future that will fix those issues.

Tom Temin
We are speaking with Tony Kuhn. He’s managing partner at the law firm Tully Rinckey. And now let’s get to the issue of those that want to come back that might have been just recently thrown out, if you will, that could reenlist, or is there a mechanism for them to just return to duty as if nothing happened?

Anthony Kuhn
There isn’t yet. Again, I hope the government does the right thing and creates some type of fast track to get those individuals back into the military. But typically how an individual in that situation is handled as they will be treated like prior service, they will go and speak to a recruiter, the recruiter will look into their background, and depending on the discharge classification, so did they get an honorable, a general or an other than honorable depending on that classification, and what’s called an RE code, which is listed on their DD 214, that RE code will determine whether an individual can go back into the military without having to jump through any hurdles. And it could be a one, two, three, or four. One’s and two’s will get in pretty easily, they probably will also have an honorable discharge, individuals with the four aren’t going to be able to get back into the military without first going to a board to correct that number.

So anybody who was separated, there’ll be treated like prior service, they’ll have to clear through MEPS, most likely, I believe there’s a two year window on that. So if they get back in quickly enough, they may not have to go through the full Military Entrance Processing Station processing again, which is where they they do a full physical evaluation of the individual. Now obviously, many people who are combat veterans and who have put, you know, maybe 10-15 years of their life into the military have some injuries, that comes with the territory. So those individuals will have to clear medically if they don’t come back in quickly enough. So my recommendation to those individuals, is if you are considering getting back in and working towards your pension, especially if you’re someone who has 10 or 15 years and do it soon, and the quicker you get in, the easier it will be for you.

Tom Temin
And just to be clear the law, the National Defense Authorization Act specified that the DoD has to suspend the policy or in that policy of vaccine mandate, but it did not order DoD to create a mechanism for the people. They’re under discharge to be able to come back easily.

Anthony Kuhn
That’s correct. What happened here is that the DoD recognized that this was the big part of destroying readiness for the military. So we hit around 40% of our recruiting numbers this year. People refuse to reenlist, people refuse to join the military. And we lost I think tens of thousands of individuals and service members around this this mandate. So recognizing that error, they have gone back and they’re trying to correct this error to rebuild the strength and readiness of our military because we’re nowhere near as ready as we should be right now. My hope is that they will create a policy to get these individuals back into the military as quickly as possible.

 

The post The military vaccine mandate is dead. So now what? first appeared on Federal News Network.

By the end of the week, many federal employees will see a small bump in their next paychecks, the first signs of the president’s payroll tax deferral.

For active-duty military members, the president’s payroll tax deferral is already here, as mid-month paychecks arrived Tuesday for most.

Employees whose gross, biweekly wages are $3,999.99 or less are subject to the president’s payroll tax deferral.

Employees and servicemembers who meet this guideline will automatically have their Social Security taxes — 6.2% of their income — deferred from their upcoming paychecks. There is no option to opt-out of the president’s payroll tax deferral, nor is there an opportunity to opt in.

Federal employees and military members will be expected to pay deferred taxes back starting next January and through April, though neither the administration nor individual payroll providers have described in detail exactly how that will work.

Based on the messages that agencies and payroll providers have sent to their employees, which Federal News Network has reviewed, the expectation is that employees will pay deferred taxes back in installments from January through April 2021.

Previous IRS guidance mentioned employees may face interest and penalties if they fail to pay deferred taxes back by April, but there are few other details.

Calculate your total deferred payroll taxes

To help you estimate how much you’ll temporarily save over the course of the next eight paychecks — and how much you’ll have to pay back in 2021 — Federal News Network has created a simple calculator for your planning purposes.

This calculator is intended to give you an estimate of the Social Security taxes that will be deferred for each of the next eight upcoming paychecks, including the check due between Sept. 18 and Sept. 22, depending on the timing of direct deposit.

The calculator will also estimate the total amount of deferred Social Security taxes for those eight pay periods, from September through the end of December.

To use the calculator, enter your basic (taxable) income. You can choose to enter to your annual, monthly or biweekly salary.

For example, let’s say your annual salary is $80,000 a year. Click “calculate tax deferral.”

In this case, your biweekly wages are $3,076.93 (or $80,000 divided by 26 pay periods in the year). Under the president’s new policy, $190.77 ($3,076.93 multiplied by 6.2%) would be deferred from one of those upcoming paychecks.

If nothing changed about your salary, grade or rank between now and the end of the year, you would receive a total of $1,526.16 in deferred Social Security taxes over the course of the president’s payroll tax deferral policy, or eight pay periods.

Again, these are estimates — designed to help you plan your finances for the rest of the calendar year and give you a better sense of what you’ll have to pay back starting next January.

For the most accurate results, enter in your most recent monthly or biweekly wages when using the calculator. Using monthly or biweekly wages will give you the most accurate representation of your taxable wages at the current point in time.

Because your Social Security taxes will be deferred on a paycheck-by-paycheck basis, the total may change on a biweekly basis. You may, for example, work overtime or accrue hazardous duty or combat pay for one pay period this fall but not another.

Therefore, the amount of deferred taxes may differ from one paycheck to another. Depending on your circumstances, working overtime or accruing hazardous duty pay may make you ineligible for payroll tax deferral during one or several pay periods but not others.

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A promotion between now and the end of the year will also change your deferred taxes — or, depending on your new salary, make you ineligible for the payroll tax deferral altogether at any point between now and the end of the year.

In general, federal employees who make $104,000 a year or less will be impacted by the president’s payroll tax deferral policy.

Though federal employees’ annual salaries vary depending on their locality pay area, the payroll tax deferral seems to apply to a majority of the civilian workforce. In the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. locality pay area, most GS-12s and below fall under the $104,000 threshold.

In the rest of the United States, the $104,000 salary threshold falls at GS-13, step 5 and below.

Based on December 2019 salary data from the Office of Personnel Management, approximately 1.3 million civilian federal employees are impacted by the president’s payroll tax deferral policy.

A little more than 1.3 million active-duty military members are also subject to the payroll tax deferral, based on an analysis of Defense Department personnel and salary data from July.

The post What the payroll tax deferral means for your wallet — and what you’ll pay back in 2021 first appeared on Federal News Network.

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The Trump administration has called for a whole-of-government approach toward fighting the coronavirus.

For some agencies, that means calling on federal retirees with a deep sense of public service duty to return to government and join the fight.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, which already had some 40,000 vacancies during pre-virus times, was the first to put the call out to reemployed annuitants.

The agency is hiring doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other retired medical professionals on a full-time basis to return to VA. Many of them will likely join with a full salary and their annuities, thanks to a special authority from the Office of Personnel Management.

VA is treating more than 3,000 coronavirus cases among veterans, but the department also serves as the nation’s backup health system during a major health crisis. So far New York and New Jersey have turned to VA for help during the coronavirus pandemic.

Other agencies may soon join VA in calling for additional reemployed annuitants to help with the coronavirus fight.

Thinking of joining them?

James Marshall, a federal benefits expert with the National Active and Retired Federal Employees (NARFE) Association, said it doesn’t matter whether you’re filling out the application now — or you’re still employed at your agency.

Knowing the ins and outs of returning to government as a reemployed annuitant will help you better plan financially for retirement, he said.

“Before you retire… if you think there’s a small chance you might want to return to federal service later on in life, you want to learn all about the rules and regulations governing reemployed annuitants, because you may or may not want to be [one],” Marshall said Wednesday on Your Turn with Mike Causey.

Here’s what you need to know about returning to government as a reemployed annuitant.

What is a reemployed annuitant?

Reemployed annuitants are retired federal employees who have been rehired by their former agency or another agency in the federal government.

Under a typical arrangement, a reemployed annuitant will be paid by the agency for his or her work. The agency, however, will offset that salary by the amount of the retiree’s federal pension.

There are a few exceptions where pensions stop and former feds, perhaps those who initially retired with a disability, return to government and pick up their careers where they left off. But those situations are rare, Marshall said.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, retired federal employees have always had a chance to return to government as reemployed annuitants, depending on the opportunities available. The Census Bureau, for example, brought back reemployed annuitants for the decennial count, Jessica Klement, NARFE’s staff vice president for policy and programs, said.

The Agriculture Department brought back retired employees to temporarily fill vacancies created by the relocation of two of its research bureaus from Washington D.C., to Kansas City.

What is a dual compensation waiver?

Dual compensation waivers allow an agency to rehire a federal retiree and pay them a full salary, plus their usual annuity under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) and the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS).

“Even outside of an emergency, this is the most common situation that I encounter,” Marshall said. “A lot of it has to do with DoD and other agencies that are rehiring people a lot.”

Agencies already had the authority to offer these waivers, per a decades-old provision in the annual defense authorization bill. Under that authority, agencies can use these dual compensation waivers to hire reemployed annuitants on a part-time basis without OPM approval.

That authority has been renewed every five years or so, and Congress mostly recently included another extension in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. This authority for part-time annuitants now runs through 2024.

But agencies still need OPM permission to grant dual compensation waivers to reemployed annuitants for full-time work. That’s what VA asked for last month, and OPM quickly gave them the approval.

OPM has said it will quickly grant approval to other agencies, should they also seek full-time reemployed annuitants during the coronavirus pandemic.

I have a job offer as reemployed annuitant. What should I know first?

First, retirees should find out whether their potential position will allow for retirement coverage, Marshall said.

Every federal appointment is different, and your eligibility for retirement and health benefits under these positions may vary depending on a variety of factors.

Not all reemployed annuitant positions, especially those that are considered temporary in nature, will allow for retirement coverage, Marshall said. Annuitants who accept a position that doesn’t allow for retirement coverage, for example, won’t be able to contribute to the Thrift Savings Plan.

Many of the positions open to reemployed annuitants during the current coronavirus pandemic may be temporary positions, Marshall acknowledged.

That’s why it’s a good idea to ask your agency the following questions before accepting a job offer as a reemployed annuitant:

• Will my annuity continue?
• Will my salary be affected?
• Will I have retirement coverage or not?
• How will any of my federal benefits, such as coverage under the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), be affected? What are my options?

I have a dual compensation waiver. What are the benefits?

Under a dual compensation waiver, reemployed annuitants will receive a full salary. These retirees will not contribute to their pensions in the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) or Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), and their annuities stay the same.

CSRS-offset and FERS retirees will pay a Social Security tax, but regular CSRS retirees will not, Marshall said.

Reemployed annuitants with dual compensation waivers are not allowed to contribute to the Thrift Savings Plan, but there are other benefits of taking a full salary, Marshall added.

Reemployed annuitants who, for example, take a position that would typically allow them to have federal health insurance can ask their agencies to transfer that insurance from OPM to their current new jobs, Marshall said.

“Pre-taxed health insurance cost is a lot better while you’re working as a reemployed annuitant than having it on a post-taxed basis in retirement with OPM,” he said.

Reemployed annuitants who were paying for Medicare Part B can save some money as well.

“I can cancel paying for Part B, because my employment health insurance becomes my primariy provider,” Marshall said. “That can save me some money as well while I’m working as a reemployed annuitant. But again, that’s only if the position is one that can pay retirement coverage.”

But again, there’s a catch. Reemployed annuitants who take positions that last a year or less may not be eligible to transfer their federal health insurance, Marshall added.

He suggested retirees ask about the length and insurance opportunities associated with each reemployed annuitant position during the interview process.

Are there any benefits to not taking a dual compensation waiver?

Yes, there may be some benefits — again, depending on whether the position allows retirement coverage or not.

Some agencies may allow their reemployed annuitants to choose whether they want to accept a full salary under a dual compensation waiver or take the salary offset instead.

Accepting a salary offset would allow reemployed annuitants to accrue more savings toward their retirement, Marshall said.

“You could also be allowed to contribute to the TSP again, which means if you already passed the age of 72 or 70.5 years old, there wouldn’t be any required minimum distributions anymore while you’re working with a salary offset,” he said.

There may be other benefits. You could, depending on the position, transfer your federal health and dental insurance to your agency for a premium conversion.

In addition, new reemployed annuitants may be able to open flexible spending accounts again or have an easier time applying to the Federal Long-Term Care Insurance Program, Marshall said.

I received a buyout before leaving government. Do I have to pay it back if I return as an reemployed annuitant?

It depends.

Typically, employees who take a Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP)  but later return to government within five years of separation must pay the full amount back.

But agencies may have the authority to waive the typical payback requirement. Marshall suggested annuitants who have taken a VSIP in the past should ask about that authority during the interview process.

“Certainly ask the hiring [agency] if they have the authority to waive that payback, he said.  “If they don’t, you have to pay that back before you can land your first day on the job.”

Federal employees who have been offered a buyout but think they may want to return to government later on can choose to deny the VSIP.

How do I find federal jobs for reemployed annuitants?

Your best bet is USAJOBS.gov, Marshall said.

It’s ultimately up to each agency to decide how they want to advertise their positions. Some may explicitly indicate a job is open to reemployed annuitants, but some may not.

Retirees applying to federal positions on USAJOBS will be asked whether they receive a military or civilian pension, Marshall said.

That’s the place to indicate your status as a federal retiree. From there, agencies will likely ask for more information.

“From there they’re going to let you whether or not there’s a waiver for that position, if it wasn’t advertised. A lot of times it’s not advertised,” Marshall said. “Because they’re really offering the job to anybody who’s qualified.”

Where can I find more information or advice on reemployed annuitants?

OPM has a variety of frequently asked questions on reeemployed annuitants here.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has a page on the career opportunities available during the coronavirus pandemic, with a special page for interested federal retirees here.

NARFE will offer a free webinar Tuesday, April 14 at noon on this subject. You can sign up to register here.

The post Returning to fight coronavirus as a reemployed annuitant? Here’s what you need to know first appeared on Federal News Network.

But it’s important to remember the 3.1% figure is an average. The raises feds will actually receive in 2020 will vary a fair amount depending on where they work. According to a Federal News Network analysis of data the Office of Personnel Management published on Thursday, pay increases for General Schedule employees will range from 2.85% to 3.52%.

Why?

Congress specified an across-the-board base pay increase of 2.6% in the 2020 funding bills, but lawmakers left it up to the executive branch to distribute the remaining 0.5% of the publicly-advertised “average” across the federal government’s more than 50 locality pay areas.

Locality pay was originally meant to ensure federal workers living in a given area of the country were paid salaries that are roughly competitive with what private sector employees could expect to make for the same type of work.

But presidents of both parties — since 1994 — have used their authority to deviate from the formulas meant to ensure pay comparability, and the system has become distorted over time.

This year’s dataset shows the largest raises will go to employees in the National Capital Region. The smallest ones will go to the “Rest of the United States” group that’s meant to cover federal employees who work outside any of the designated locality areas.

The table below shows the effective pay increases federal civilian employees will actually receive, based on their locality.

The post For feds, 2020 pay raise depends a lot on your location first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 raises defense and domestic spending limits for the next two years by about $100 billion. It also extends the debt ceiling through July 31, 2021 — sets aside additional funding veterans health care and other initiatives.

And like the previous two-year budget deal, the 2019 bill doesn’t tap federal employee retirement to offset significant spending increases in 2020 and 2021. Congress has used previous two-year, bipartisan budget deals to set higher federal employee contributions. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 required that new federal employees hired after 2013 contribute 4.4% toward their retirements.

The prospect of a similar offset was unlikely with a democratically-controlled House. But the Senate had briefly considered a proposal in its 2020 budget resolution, which suggested the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee could find $15 billion in savings over the next five years by raising federal employee contributions toward their retirement.

Congress never adopted the budget resolution. The offsets that were included in 2019 budget deal are relatively minimal and extend the authority to collect customs fees for 10 more years.

The recent budget deal also avoids the threat of automatic spending cuts through sequestration, which would have kicked in at the start of the new fiscal year under the Budget Control Act of 2011.

The budget deal is a start, but only that. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 reflects what agencies will spend over the course of the next two years — not how they’ll actually spend the agreed-upon funding set by these caps.

More specifically, the Bipartisan Budget Act doesn’t physically appropriate discretionary funding for individual agencies and programs over the next two years.

Instead, twelve separate appropriations bills will spell out exactly what priorities and programs agencies will devote discretionary funding toward in 2020. Congress must pass all 12 of these bills — or a package of some of them — to avoid a full or partial government shutdown by Oct. 1.

On this front, the outlook is much murkier.

The House passed 10 of 12 appropriations bills before leaving Capitol Hill for the August recess.

One of these bills, the financial services and general government appropriations bill, cleared the House in late June. The bill includes a 3.1% pay raise for federal employees in 2020, as well as several provisions aimed at blocking the Trump administration’s proposed merger of the Office of Personnel Management with the General Services Administration.

The story, however, is much different in Senate. Not one appropriations bill has cleared the Senate, or the chamber’s appropriations committee for that matter. Appropriations subcommittees have yet to publicly release a draft of a single bill, mostly because senators and staffers were waiting for congressional leadership to agree to topline spending numbers.

“Federal employees are counting on Congress and the administration to finish the job by passing appropriations bills into law, on time, and giving federal employees the fair pay they deserve,” National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon said Thursday in a statement.

When the Senate returns to Capitol Hill Sept 9, it will have about three legislative work weeks to come to some sort of funding agreement by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. The Senate could introduce and vote on its own version of these appropriations bills in regular order.

But given Congress’ deadline, that scenario is unlikely if lawmakers want to avoid a second government shutdown this year. Some sort of temporary continuing resolution that extends current funding levels is perhaps a more likely scenario, though congressional leadership could agree to an omnibus spending package for 2020.

Predicting the prospects of a federal pay raise at this point are also difficult, particularly without a Senate appropriations proposal. Both the House and Senate must agree to a number and pass some sort of measure to override the President’s proposed pay freeze — if implementing a federal pay raise is, in fact, a priority for Congress.

President Donald Trump indicated his plans to freeze federal pay in his 2020 budget request. The President has until Aug. 31 to officially submit to Congress his plans to freeze federal pay, otherwise, employees are owed a pay adjustment that’s based on a statutory formula.

According to that formula, which is based on the Employment Cost Index, federal employees are owed a 3.1% raise next year. It’s for this reason that federal employee unions and organizations have pushed Congress to make their own recommendation on a raise — and return federal pay itself — to the appropriations process.

It wasn’t until after the 35-day government shutdown this year that lawmakers cleared a 1.9% federal pay raise for civilian employees in 2019. Agencies didn’t begin implementing the 2019 raise, retroactive to Jan. 1, until April.

The post With the 2-year budget deal signed into law, what’s next for federal employees? first appeared on Federal News Network.