Federal Daily - February 19, 2010

Lawmaker Takes Aim at Agency’s Travel Costs

The increased use of higher-priced, business-class airline tickets is driving up one agency’s costs of sending federal workers on international work-related trips, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Grassley on Feb. 18 released an internal Health and Human Services Department memo that included figures on the department’s costs to send its employees on business-related travel for Fiscal Years 2008 and 2007. It showed that HHS spent $63 million on work-related international travel in FY 2008—a 13.7 percent increase from the previous year.

A 6.3 percent increase in international travel by the department’s employees from FY 2007 to FY 2008—some of it attributable to the H1N1 virus and other concerns—does not account for the double-digit hike in costs, Grassley said.

In fact, FY 2008 travel for both Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees, for example, cost much more per trip than for employees at other agencies, a cost Grassley said was not attributable to distance or remoteness of destinations.

“According to the report, the increased costs were not caused by travel to more distant locations but by travel at the higher business-class fare, and that raises questions about whether department policies are being followed to make sure official travel isn’t any more expensive than it needs to be,” Grassley said.

To see more, go to: http://grassley.senate.gov/about/upload/2010-02-17-Letter-to-HHS.pdf.

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DoD Offers Online NSPS Transition Course

DoD has launched a new online program to serve as an information primer for the approximately 200,000 employees who will be transitioning out of the National Security Personnel System into the General Schedule pay system by 2012.

The training program, called GS 101, resides on the NSPS Web site and covers four broad topic areas: GS classification architecture and salary structure, changing positions within the GS, performance management, and career development. The program allows the user to print a certificate of completion at the conclusion of the course.

Elimination of NSPS was mandated by the FY 2010 National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Obama on Oct. 28. Under that law, all NSPS employees must be converted by Jan. 1, 2012 and are guaranteed the full annual GS pay adjustment over the transitional period.

To see more on GS 101, go to: www.cpms.osd.mil/nsps.

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