Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry wins praise for his honesty and openness about his agency’s failure to develop a well-functioning retirement system for federal employees. But he shouldn’t count on that lasting long. Read full article > >

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Retired federal workers wait for system fix

If acknowledgment of a problem is the first step toward fixing it, the Office of Personnel Management took that step Tuesday when it sent a Strategic Plan for Retirement Services to Congress. OPM’s current retirement services operation is not known for providing service, at least good service, to federal retirees. Tales of long waits for full annuity checks and unanswered calls to OPM have become legendary. The first line of the strategic plan makes the fundamental problem clear: Read full article > >

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OPM sends Congress its plan to fix retirement services

The Post asked John Palguta , vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service , to weigh in on the year for federal workers and what 2012 may bring. Palguta had a 34-year career in the federal government as a human resources and policy specialist, as a senior official with the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Office of Personnel Management , among other agencies. Read full article > >

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Federal workers: 2012 could be as tough as 2011

The Post asked John Palguta , vice president for policy at the Partnership for Public Service , to weigh in on the year for federal workers and what 2012 may bring. Palguta had a 34-year career in the federal government as a human resources and policy specialist, as a senior official with the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Office of Personnel Management , among other agencies. Read full article > >

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Federal workers: 2012 could be as tough as 2011

One thing about raising cattle — cows do what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it. Unfortunately, John W. Wendt, who works with his herd every day, can’t say the same thing about the Office of Personnel Management . Until almost a year ago, Wendt also labored for Uncle Sam. The retired federal employee now works on his cattle and grain farm in Ledger, Mont., a sparsely populated place about 50 miles south of the Canadian border. He put in 16 years with the government before retiring as a heavy equipment operator from Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation last December. Read full article > >

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Federal retirees wait months for payments, as OPM backlog drags on

Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry did his best Tuesday to reassure a probing congressional panel that his agency is competent to run the government’s computerized jobs board, despite early evidence to the contrary. Although Republican jabs at OPM during the House federal workforce subcommittee hearing dripped with a partisan, ideological tone, the session revealed systemic problems in agency IT operations that extend beyond servicing job applicants and include retirement programs. Read full article > >

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USAJobs missteps prompt House panel to take a closer look at OPM

One way to look at the confusing mess that developed when the Office of Personnel Management replaced a private company operating the government’s computerized jobs board is as an isolated situation that OPM moved quickly to fix. That’s the way OPM Director John Berry views the government’s bungled takeover last month of USAJobs.gov , the Web site that lists federal job openings. Read full article > >

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Are recent problems with Web site signs of deeper woes at OPM?

There will be no hot chocolate and no coffee. Definitely no marshmallows or doughnuts. There also won’t be cots for you to sleep on , but maybe the secondary subcommittee’s working group on cot policy and procedures will revisit that issue down the road. Or maybe not. The Office of Personnel Management spent seven months — yes, seven — puzzling over how to avoid another commuting disaster like the one in January, when much of Washington’s 300,000-person federal workforce tried to leave the city all at once but got stuck in their cars instead. Read full article > >

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In snow, federal government should look at telecommuting, not sheltering

During a period when federal pay is frozen for two years, the average increase in employees’ health insurance premiums for 2012 will be the lowest since 2008. The 3.8 percent hike is less than half of the 7.3 percent increase in premiums for 2011, the Office of Personnel Management announced Tuesday. Read full article > >

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Federal health insurance rates lowest since ’08

The head of the federal agency responsible for doling out benefits to retired federal workers says it isn’t paying dead retirees anymore and is chasing down the money it improperly paid out. Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry said his staff is putting a stop to $487 million of the $601 million improperly paid in the past five years to dead federal annuitants, and he is pledging to quickly chase down the rest of the money. Read full article > >

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Payments to dead federal retirees over, agency says

The Pentagon on Thursday released details of 30 men who died in Saturday’s helicopter crash in Afghanistan, providing the fullest picture yet of those lost to the deadliest day for U.S. forces in the Afghan war. The group included 17 Navy SEALs and five other personnel from a Navy Special Warfare unit, as well as five Army and three Air Force personnel. Military officials had previously said 22 SEALs were among the dead. Three of the men were Army reservists based near Gardner, Kan., where dozens gathered for a vigil last weekend. They had been working in a dangerous, high-octane environment, said a fellow soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Kirk Kuykendall. Read full article > >

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Pentagon releases names of Afghan crash dead

It looks like Blackwater guards won’t get their day in court after all. Efforts to prosecute the personnel of Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, of murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan are falling apart, apparently due to legal…

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Blackwater Cases Collapse