http://www.psretirement.com/cut-out-of-spouses-survivor-annuity/ Federal Retirement Survivor Annuity Eligibility This is a very sad story but true and eye opening. I recently had a woman come to me in tears about having some difficulty receiving herdeceased spouse’s survivor annuity. She said that she had contacted OPM after her husband’s sudden death and was told that she was notRead… Read more »
http://www.psretirement.com/phased-retirements-debut/ The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued the final regulations on Phased Retirement on August 7, 2014. Phased Retirement will allow full-time employees the opportunity to work part-time while drawing retirement benefits. Phased-retirement debuted as a mentoring tool to preserve the government’s institutional knowledge. As I stated previously, it is a start to something becauseRead… Read more »
After a couple of weeks of selling, stocks started to rebound from some extreme oversold conditions last week. The question now is whether we have seen the lows or if this is just a relief rally. Geopolitical events are still playing catalyst as solid gains on Friday quickly turned into losses when violence was sparkedRead… Read more »
The GOV LOOP NFL Pool for the 2014-2015 season is officially open! No buy-in, no pay-out, no money involved, just bragging rights for the week and a beautiful metal water bottle prize for most correct picks over the season. While I post the picksheets in the BREAK ROOM group’s NFL POOL discussion, you might wantRead… Read more »
Phased Retirement Annuity One of the incentives offered to gain employee participation in the Phased Retirement program is the more generous annuity at full retirement. Federal annuities are calculated based on years of creditable service and the high-three average salary. Therefore, the longer you work the better things might look in the end for you.Read… Read more »
Duos Come in all forms and across all trades. Batman and Robin. Simon and Garfunkle. Ben and Jerry. Mork and Mindy. Lewis and Clark. Bert and Ernie. Bauman and Spungen. Haven’t heard of the last duo? Well under their leadership the two doctors have collaborated to study medical consequences of spin cord injuries for overRead… Read more »
By John Simpson, Engagement Consultant What should go into your digital engagement strategy can be a complex and organizationally challenging question. The specifics of your own strategy are usually discovered with some internal “soul searching” and by nailing down exactly what public engagement is for you and your leadership. Yet, there are a few basicRead… Read more »
I’ve done some work analysing who actually won the National awards at GovHack based on the official results at govhack.org/2014-winners/, and this is what I’ve discovered… There were 87 National GovHack awards given out to Projects and Teams, with one GovHack subcategory (Best Science Reporting) unawarded. Of these, 66 awards were awarded to Teams forRead… Read more »
Citizen engagement operates with a lot of fancy titles like consumer education, consumer protection, client-centered services, outreach, or prevention and preparedness. In a prior life as an independent consultant, it was called community-based participatory research, and in my current role it is dubbed Community Engagement. (I must note, “citizen” explicitly denotes a legal status thatRead… Read more »
Across the country healthcare systems are focused on ways to reduce variation in care, improve patient safety and more effectively use health information technology to improve clinical decision-making and outcomes. The Military Health System isn’t immune to such changes. In fact, within the military, there are additional imperatives for designing an integrated health system whichRead… Read more »