Federal Daily - November 12, 2008

OPM: More Vets Joining Fed Workforce

An increasing number of veterans are joining the federal workforce—and vets together make up just over one-quarter of all federal civilian employees, said a report issued Nov. 10 by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The report, “Employment of Veterans in Federal Government: Fiscal Year 2007,” outlines federal employment statistics in Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 and provides comparisons with FY 2006. There were 462,744 veterans employed by the federal government in FY 2007, which amounted to 25.5 percent of the workforce, up from 25.4 percent in FY 2006. The number of disabled veterans holding federal jobs increased to 103,180 in FY 2007, the report said. Full-time permanent (FTP) employment of disabled vets increased from 5.8 percent in FY 2006 to 6.1 percent in FY 2007, and new hires of FTP disabled veterans increased from 7,561 in FY 2006 to 8,401 in FY 2007 (an increase of 11.1 percent). Overall, veteran new hires increased from 50,108 in FY 2006 to 52,452 in FY 2007 (a 4.68 percent jump). OPM actively assists veterans through the agency’s Veterans Outreach Offices, established to work directly with returning vets interested in federal civilian employment opportunities, OPM said in a statement. Offices are located at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, and at Fort Carson, Colo., OPM said. To see more, go to: www.opm.gov/veterans/dvaap.asp.

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FSOs Call on Obama to Make Security Clearance Process More Transparent

A group of current and former State Department employees called on President-elect Barack Obama to improve the government security clearance process by making it more transparent—and removing alleged institutional biases. In an open letter to Obama dated Nov. 7, the group—Concerned Foreign Service Officers—raised the issue of recent alleged abuses of the security clearance process in the State Department. The group claims that some government security adjudicators have a bias against applicants who are immigrants or the children of immigrants, have foreign relatives, or who adhere to certain faiths. The group also alleges that the State Department is increasingly misusing a poorly managed and poorly regulated security clearance process to circumvent personnel regulations, to bypass equal employment opportunity and to improperly suspend or revoke clearances of employees who have already been cleared. The group asked Obama to take steps to retrain adjudicators, identify and eliminate harmful biases, and increase the oversight and transparency of the investigative and adjudicative processes. “We urge you to devote some attention to the greatest impediment to diversity in our Foreign Service, in our intelligence agencies, and in those agencies entrusted to protect our nation from foreign terrorism and aggression,” the letter said. To see more, go to: www.worldcrafters.com.

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Veterans Groups Sue Over Disability Benefits Delays

Two veterans groups announced on Nov. 10 that they had filed a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) over delays experienced by veterans applying for disability benefits. Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) and Veterans of Modern Warfare (VMW) filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to force VA to put a halt to the delays. The lawsuit asks the court to mandate that VA provide an initial decision on every veteran’s claim for disability benefits within 90 days, and resolve appeals within 180 days. VA acknowledges that it takes an average of at least six months to reach an initial decision on a typical benefits claim; but the actual delay is closer to a year, the groups said. Appeals of these initial decisions, which are reversed more than 50 percent of the time, take—on average—more than four years, with some stretching 10 years or more, the groups said in a statement. If the court decides to impose strict deadlines, the groups ask that the court set up a process to award interim benefits if VA breaks the deadlines. “The failure to expedite veterans’ compensation claims creates, at best, the impression that the nation does not respect its veterans,” said John Rowan, national president of Vietnam Veterans of America. To see more, go to: www.vva.org/PressReleases/2008/pr08-021.htm.

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