Do you ever wonder if you’re really, truly, most definitely supposed to be a public servant? Do you wonder if perhaps you should have stuck with the whole guitar thing and hit the festival circuit? Or perhaps opted for a highly lucrative career as a consultant? Or star of Vine? Well, some folks (including me)Read… Read more »
The unofficial end of summer, Labor Day is a holiday for celebrating the economic and social contributions of the American worker. It’s also a good time to think about protecting those workers from occupational hazards. We have many federal safety and health standards to protect workers at more than 8 million U.S. worksites, but accidentsRead… Read more »
In 2001, I began my career in Government hoping to gain stability and a nest egg to start my own business as a child and family therapist. Money for social services was in surplus at the time. Two years later as we began to feel the recession at work and many young, energized staff wereRead… Read more »
Technology is an enabler. It gives us the ability to harvest big data, mobilize in ways unknown to previous generations, and shows us the means to improve every aspect of society. But that’s all. It just gives us the means, not the action. Some industry leaders are looking to turn means into action. One ofRead… Read more »
With the stagnant economy, cost control has become the new mantra of every business. Businesses are deploying various strategies to contain costs and maintain profitability. Amongst such strategies is control and visibility into spending with external suppliers. Spend analytics is the process of aggregating, cleansing, and analyzing corporate spending data for the purpose of reducingRead… Read more »
Whether you’re interviewing for an internship or for a job in the Senior Executive Service, your interviewer may ask you that old “What are your weaknesses?” question. But even interviewers who still ask that widely reviled question recognize its limitations. “No one realistically expects to receive brutally honest answers like, ‘I’m below-average intelligence and difficultRead… Read more »
As the market for talent acquisition software evolves, government agencies typically move through a process of identification, proposals, testing and selection to determine the best fit for their organization. There are the usual RFIs, RFPs, solution bake offs and pilot testing, with the goal to bring in the solution that will best help the organizationRead… Read more »
As summer’s barbecues and beach days wind down, so do the experiences of a select group of graduate and undergraduate students in GAO’s Student Intern Program. We talked to some of them about their experiences. Student interns are hired to contribute to our teams and gain experience in the roles of analysts, program staff, orRead… Read more »
There was a FERS open season held back in 1987-88 and 1998, allowing employees with at least five years of Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) service to voluntarily transfer to FERS during one of the two open seasons. When these individuals, called TransFERS retire, they receive both a CSRS annuity and a FERS annuity. TheseRead… Read more »
Well, not the entire Senate, yet. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) recently introduced a bill called the Federal Adjustment of Income Rates (FAIR) which would give federal employees a 3.3 percent pay raise in 2015. The proposed pay raise is welcomed news for Federal employees. Federal employees have endured a lot over theRead… Read more »