FAA Aims to Avoid Furloughs in 2014 – Plus the DorobekINSIDER’s 7 Stories

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER:

• We’ve all been part of the dreaded group project before. So you know there is always a weaker member, someone who doesn’t pull their own weight. The same phenomenon is true for inter-agency collaboration projects. Sometimes one agency just doesn’t give as much time or resources to a project as others. How do you avoid it? Insights during part two of our interview with Booz Allen Hamilton’s Ron Sanders.

The SEVEN stories that impact your life:

1. To end sequester-related furloughs at the Federal Aviation Administration, Congress and the Obama administration raided an airport grant fund four months ago. According to the Federal Times, the FAA Managers Association is pressing the administration to preemptively endorse the same strategy for the upcoming year that begins in barely six weeks. Congress has yet to pass any of the dozen spending bills needed to keep the FAA and other agencies operating past September.

2. Two years ago, the Office of Personnel Management began to aggressively attempt to stop more than $100 million in improper payments from being paid out to deceased annuitants each year. The Federal Times reports that the problem is continuing to persist over the years as relatives of federal employees continue to collect annuitants checks for years after a beneficiary’s death until the fraud is uncovered. Even when fraud is discovered, recouping money is often difficult to impossible.

3. The Office of Personnel Management has updated rules to relocation, retention, and recruitment of employees. According to Federal News Radio, OPM is requiring federal employees to establish residence in their new geographic area to receive relocation benefits. However, agencies will be able to define what constitutes the geographic area in relocation incentive service agreements.

4. The Department of Defense is on track to achieve the mandates of the Statement of Budgetary Resources in 2014 and the Financial Improvement Audit Readiness Plan by 2017. Federal News Radio reports that the DoD’s deputy chief management, Beth McGrath, has asked the military components and agencies to bring forward their financial audit readiness plans every quarter. In the Strategic Management Plan, McGrath outlines four business goals that the DoD is pursuing in the 2014 fiscal year.

5. The U.S. Postal Service is revamping its priority mail program to raise revenue and drive new growth in its package delivery business. According to Federal News Radio, the agency is now offering free online tracking for priority mail shipments, free insurance, and date-specific delivery. They expect the changes to generate more than $500 million in new annual revenue.

6. Recently, the Department of Interior awarded a set of contracts valued at up to $10 billion that will let them expedite their move to the cloud. In a press release, DOI states that the move is central to transforming their overall IT capabilities, which are expected to result in benefits of $100 million each year from 2016 to 2020. The contracts are in the form of ten individual indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contracts and each individual contract has a total cap of $1 billion dollars.

7. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) believes there will be an end to the sequestration, but not before October 1, the start of fiscal 2014. Government Executive reports that there are only nine legislative days before October 1 and Congress needs to pass legislation, likely a temporary spending measure, to keep the government open. Then there’s the debt ceiling fight, which begins in this fall to avoid defaults in November.

The DorobekINSIDER water-cooler fodder

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