May 1, 2008
A summary of daily news relevant to the federal workforce produced by the Partnership for Public Service.
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Report Questions Quality of Medical Care for Workers in War Zones
The Washington
PostBy Stephen Barr
An increasing number of federal employees are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is not clear that the government's policies go far enough to
ensure they receive the best medical care or the most appropriate benefits, according to a congressional report released yesterday.
The report was issued by the House Armed Services Committee oversight and investigations subcommittee, which looked into the incentives and
medical coverage being provided to civil service employees.
Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.), the subcommittee chairman, and Rep. Todd Akin (Mo.), its ranking Republican, told reporters that the review turned up a
number of concerns.
The Defense Department, for example, has issued a memo that provides medical care for injured Defense civil service employees at the same level
and scope of that provided to military personnel. But that directive may not be sufficient or properly implemented, the report said.
"The Walter Reed experience demonstrated you need to have a very reliable system of a medical case coordinator for uniformed people who are in a
very disciplined environment," Snyder said. "This may not be the situation for our civilian folks who are injured or hurt."
Federal employees also may not have access to the latest medical advances for treating combat wounds, he said.
"If you are a Department of Agriculture person and you have some kind of severe wound, when you come back to the states, the expectation is that
you are going to be taken care of through your normal health care system," Snyder said. "Well, the best experts in the world may be in the military
treatment facilities to which you are not going to have access."
About 10,000 federal employees have volunteered for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, the subcommittee estimated. The Defense Department has about
3,000 civilian employees in the two countries now.
The numbers are likely to increase if the departments of State and Defense continue with stabilization and reconstruction plans. President Bush's
fiscal 2009 budget also would pull together more than 2,000 federal employees from 15 agencies for a "response corps" and would create a civilian
reserve corps of about 2,000 drawn from state and local governments and nonprofit organizations.
Snyder said the report grew out of an investigation of Provincial Reconstruction Teams, the joint military-civilian teams that help rebuild
communities in Iraq and Afghanistan, often in dangerous conditions.
Congress expects that all government agencies are going to work closer together and that successful cooperation hinges on how people are treated,
Snyder said. "And if we are not treating them in an adequate and equitable manner, then that is part of the flaw that we have in our interagency
process," he said.
In examining the reconstruction teams, Akin said the subcommittee learned that "we really don't have a system to create any incentives to get
these people to volunteer."
The subcommittee found that the federal workers' compensation program, set up to deal with the typical injuries that happen in a workplace, is the
primary source of medical coverage for wounded federal employees returning from the combat zones.
In the workers' comp program, the burden of proof for validating a combat-zone injury falls on the employee and can require substantial time and
paperwork. The report recommends that the program form a special office that is adequately staffed and able to readily answer questions from wounded
employees.
Snyder said it took about a month for the workers' comp program to respond to the subcommittee's questions about what types of war-zone injuries
qualify for coverage. The program, for example, determined that an off-duty employee playing basketball who was injured by mortar fire would be
covered by the program.
Snyder and Akin said that many of the issues raised by the subcommittee review are outside the jurisdiction of the Armed Services Committee, but
that the panel intends to continue studying civil service benefits, incentives and medical care as they relate to combat zones. The Congressional
Research Service and the Government Accountability Office are collecting data, and the Defense Department has been asked to provide a report on
civilian benefits.
"These things have not been carefully analyzed or defined," Akin said.
FDA: Millions More Needed for Inspections
CongressDaily
By Anna Edney
FDA's Janet Woodcock told lawmakers Tuesday the agency needs hundreds of millions of dollars more to inspect foreign and domestic drug
manufacturers more frequently as House Energy and Commerce investigators exposed gaping holes in inspection efforts that put the public at risk.
FDA needs $225 million annually to inspect foreign drugmakers every other year and an additional $100 million to keep the same pace of inspections
with domestic plants, Woodcock, the agency's drug center director, told the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.
The cost estimate is the first exact admission from the agency after repeated questioning by members in recent weeks and is considerably more than
the $11 million the agency plans to spend on foreign inspections this year.
FDA's estimate goes further than a GAO report last week that found the agency would need $71 million to inspect foreign drug manufacturers
biennially. FDA inspects domestic plants about every three years, while pharmaceutical manufacturers in China are inspected once every 30 years.
Congress has held hearings in recent weeks on FDA's ability to police products under its oversight, focusing on the recent tainted heparin scandal
that has led to 81 deaths in the United States.
Energy and Commerce staff investigated the heparin scandal and told lawmakers Tuesday that FDA's inspection policies are inadequate and could have
contributed to the heparin-related deaths.
"While FDA may respond quickly to a crisis when the danger to the public health is known, committee staff found that its routinely poor
performance as a regulatory agency, responsible for the safety of food, drugs, biologics, and medical devices, invites catastrophe and may have
contributed to the tragic use of contaminated heparin on patients in the United States," the committee's senior investigator, David Nelson, told
lawmakers.
FDA's first mistake, Nelson said, was to abandon its policy to inspect plants before approving a new drug application or a supplemental change to
a drug application. "There is some chance an inspection in 2004 would have prevented this," Nelson said.
A clerical error prevented FDA from inspecting the Chinese manufacturer of the active ingredient in heparin, but the agency claims routine tests
used during inspection could not have detected the contaminant.
Nelson argued FDA might have encountered the manufacturing errors it detected after the deaths and barred the Chinese plant from exporting product
to the United States.
Investigators also determined FDA's policies are flawed because it fails to take geography, manufacturing complexity or the sensitivity of the
final product into account. FDA should have taken special care when Baxter International requested to switch its active ingredient manufacturing from
Wisconsin to China because manufacturing problems are widespread in China and because the active ingredient in heparin is derived from pig intestines
using a difficult process, and it's used in a sensitive population, Nelson said.
Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell has proposed draft legislation that would collect $300 million in industry fees for inspections of drug
manufacturers. Woodcock demurred on offering her opinion on the bill.
CIO: Young Workers Create New Headaches
Federal Computer Week
By Wade-Hahn Chan
Young federal employees' technology knowledge can create headaches for information technology support staff members, Molly O'Neill, the
Environmental Protection Agency's chief information officer, said today.
However, she also said those support staff members may be able to prevent potential security problems by using new technologies such as the social
media.
O'Neill spoke at the Government Customer Support Conference held by High Tech High Touch Solutions.
She also said the next generation of government workers may inadvertently be creating security hazards simply because they approach technology
from a different angle.
For example, younger federal employees might use telework from cafes and coffee shops rather than from home. Those new employees will want to
customize their phones and BlackBerrys by adding their own ringtones and wallpaper. Staff members also must learn how to manage instant messaging and
the numerous other forms of communication the younger generation uses.
And the biggest problem is that the next generation will already be experts at the technology. "They know how the stuff works," O'Neill said.
O'Neill compared today's generational divide in the federal workforce with the situation she encountered early in her career when she served as an
unofficial IT help desk simply because she had rudimentary computer skills.
She said the only way to bridge that divide was to understand the technology. In particular, she noted that social-media tools such as wikis can
make support staff members' jobs easier.
