January 20, 2021 9:31 a.m.
As the President boarded the plane for Florida Wednesday morning, bidding farewell to his presidency in a brief speech at Joint Base Andrews, it appeared his administration had failed to carry out one of the most ambitious but under-the-radar power grabs the federal government had seen in years.
In October, two weeks before Election Day, the President signed an executive order creating a new tier of the civil service called “Schedule F” that would make a broad swath of workers on the federal payroll much easier to fire.
Those employees designated as Schedule F would have been more like the political appointees that cycle in and out of the government with each administration subject to political pressure and stripped of certain job protections guaranteed to protected government workers. The number of Schedule F employees could have reached into the thousands or tens of thousands, and the execution of the order would have s
Defense Department/Lisa Ferdinando
The Pentagon is heavily reliant on software, using it to perform day-to-day business operations and employing complex weapons systems on the battlefield.
But new and emerging challenges, demanded that the Defense Department become significantly more agile and responsive in its ability to leverage software.
Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment since August 2017, recounts the transformation she oversaw in the department s approach to software and describes what must still be done for the military to fight and win in information-age warfare.
As DoD s chief weapons buyer, I oversee the acquisition and sustainment of a $1.7 trillion portfolio of warfighting and combat support capability that defends the nation.
Don’t Expect Trump’s Workforce Policies to Be Reversed Overnight
With the Biden team focused on issues like COVID response and immigration reform, significant action to rescind the Trump administration’s harmful federal workforce policies could take a back seat.
On the eve of President-elect Biden’s inauguration, experts sought to temper expectations regarding the speed at which the new administration will act to rescind the Trump administration’s federal workforce policies.
Federal employee unions and good government experts have consistently urged Biden to act swiftly to rescind three executive orders aimed at making it easier to fire federal workers and reduce the role of unions at agencies.
Trump is someone who misunderstood the purpose of the career workforce, who went to war with his own [government] . with the public s workforce, said Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit that studies the federal government. He s done enormous damage. Now, Biden has a long list of damage to undo. At the top are actions that can be done with a pen stroke. Biden can immediately reverse three Trump executive orders from 2018 that sharply curtailed the ability of organised labour to represent employees, including those who are not union members, and allowed agencies to fire feds faster.
Biden names acting agency heads as his Cabinet nominees remain unconfirmed
President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced a slate of acting agency heads after taking office without a single one of his Cabinet nominees in place and confirmed by the US Senate.
“These individuals, nearly all of whom are career civil servants, will temporarily lead federal agencies while Cabinet nominees continue moving through the confirmation process,” White House officials said in a statement.
The Biden team had previously declined to publicly announce the officials who would take over departments in a temporary capacity because of concerns the Trump administration could attempt to thwart or complicate their work.