It’s budget week at the White House? Plus the DorobekINSIDER’s 7 stories

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER:

• Federal employees are losing faith in their agency leaders. So how do leaders combat the trend? Recommendations from Deloitte’s Dan Helfrich. Click here for the full recap.
• Telework is great in theory. No commute, focused work time, better work/life balance. But often times remote workers are too disconnected from the team, outcomes are too vague and oversight is too minimal. We get some practical tips.

It is budget week at the White House as the President plans to release the 2014 budget.

• A budget primerfor White House budget week.
• Obama to propose $35 billion in federal retirement program savings
• White House proposing large increase in VA funding to cut backlog

Meanwhile the GOPis ready to bash Obama budget—Ginger Gibson—President Barack Obama might think he’s offering a compromise budget on Wednesday when he formally unveils it. But Senate Republicans—a group Obama will try to woo with a dinner that night—are expected to vigorously push back, casting the 2014 spending plan as another attempt to raise taxes to fuel more deficit spending. Reid Epstein & Kevin Robillard are also available on this.

The SEVEN stories that impact your life

1. New projections from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments show that by 2024 the entire DoD budget will be spent on pay, benefits, operations and maintenance. Federal News Radio reports, that given historical trends of cost growth in personnel spending and O&M, those two items will consume 86 percent of the allowed DoD budget by 2021, the year that the spending caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act expire.
2. For the third straight month, federal retirements are exceeding expectations. Federal News Radio reports, OPM received 10,183 retirement claims in March, more than double the number it expected to receive, according to new OPM data.
3. The Pentagon is trying to get more precise in how it classifies information. Secrecy News reports, the Manual presents a framework for classifying information, beginning with a series of questions for determining whether information is eligible for classification in the first place.
4. A new study show most CIOs check in after work hours. NextGov reports, a survey of more than 2,300 U.S. CIOs by Robert Half Technology found that the majority (73 percent) are checking in with work often or somewhat often on the evenings and weekends. Only 14 percent said they never check in with work outside of normal business hours.
5. The White House is gearing up for another hackathon. FCW reports, the White House is looking for hackers, tech experts and developers to participate in its second Hackathon on June 1. The goal is to produce “full, production-ready applications and visualization tools” that will be used on the We the People petitioning system under an open-source license.’
6. The Federal Aviation Administration has delayed the closing of 149 small airport control towers. Federal News Radio reports the first of the shutdowns were to have started this past weekend. Now they’ll all close at once on June 15. The FAA says it needs more time to deal with legal challenges to the closings. A group representing tower operations contractors sued to stop the closings. The U.S. Contract Tower Association said the FAA is singling out its members for too much of the sequestration cost cutting. The FAA also has to consider bids from 50 airport authorities, who say they’re ready to step up and fund tower operations themselves.
7. And on GovLoop. You can now register for the April edition of DorobekINSIDER Live. We’ll be talking citizen engagement. Register for the free event here.

DorobekINSIDER water-cooler fodder

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