LATE LAST MONTH, the director of the Office of Personnel Management outlined to the Senate Appropriations Committee the direction he wants to take OPM in 2011.

Since OPM administers a broad range of benefits for 2 million current federal workers and 2.5 million retirees, John Berry said OPM's strategic goals budget are to hire the best, respect the work force, expect the best and honor service.

To accomplish this, Berry outlined high-priority goals that include hiring reform, telework, security-clearance reform and retirement claims processing.

Berry indicated that 80 percent of major departments and agencies will meet improvement targets that reduce the time it takes to hire and improve applicant satisfaction and quality.

Berry said that OPM is committed to increasing employment outreach to veterans and the development of a government-wide Veterans Recruitment and Employment Strategic Plan with the Departments of Defense, Labor and Veterans Affairs.

When it comes to telework, Berry wants to increase by 50 percent the number of eligible federal workers who telework over the 2009 baseline level of 102,900.

He called telework an essential part of OPM's effort to improve work-life flexibilities and believes that its expansion would help the delivery of government services when federal workers are forced to work from home due to extreme weather conditions or other threats to health and safety.

When discussing security-clearance reform, Berry reported that OPM continues to shorten the time needed to complete initial clearances and has eliminated the backlog of pending background investigations.

To improve the processing of retirement claims, Berry asked for additional staff to allow OPM to reduce claims processing from 45 to 40 days in 2011 and 38 days in 2012.

Berry also wants to continue automating the retirement process in an effort to improve the accuracy of retirement calculations and eliminate the potential for manual data-entry error.

To accomplish what he concludes is "a commitment toward a new day for civil service," Berry is asking Congress for $240 million in discretionary appropriations, the same amount as enacted in 2010.

FEDERAL WASTE AND FRAUD FIGHTERS

In 2008, the Federal Offices of Inspector General performed some impressive work to prevent and detect fraud and abuse. These efforts saw over $14 billion in savings from audit recommendations, $4.4 billion in investigative receivables and recoveries, over 6,000 indictments and similar legal actions that produced a like number of successful prosecutions. In total, the Inspector General Community handled over 300,000 hot line complaints and concluded over 32,000 investigations.

Kevin Wilkinson of Spotsylvania County is a veteran federal employee. Write him c/o Federal Feedback, The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401. Or e-mail
Email: kwlknsn@yahoo.com.