May 12, 2008

A summary of daily news relevant to the federal workforce produced by the Partnership for Public Service.

1. FBI, ATF Battle for Control Of Cases
2. Federal Diary: For Defense, Crunching the Numbers Is Half the Battle
3. GAO: Homeland Security Lacks Adequate Workforce for Performance-Based Acquisitions
4. Federal Employers Covet College Grads

FBI, ATF Battle for Control Of Cases

The Washington Post
By Jerry Markon

In the five years since the FBI and ATF were merged under the Justice Department to coordinate the fight against terrorism, the rival law enforcement agencies have fought each other for control, wasting time and money and causing duplication of effort, according to law enforcement sources and internal documents.

Their new boss, the attorney general, ordered them to merge their national bomb databases, but the FBI has refused. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has long trained bomb-sniffing dogs; the FBI started a competing program.

At crime scenes, FBI and ATF agents have threatened to arrest one another and battled over jurisdiction and key evidence. The ATF inadvertently bought counterfeit cigarettes from the FBI -- the government selling to the government -- because the agencies are running parallel investigations of tobacco smuggling between Virginia and other states.

The squabbling poses dangers, many in law enforcement say, in an era in which cooperation is needed more than ever to prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Michael A. Mason, a former head of the FBI's Washington field office who retired in December from a senior post at FBI headquarters, said outside intervention might be needed.

"A lot of these things require a little adult supervision from the Justice Department or Congress, which will resolve a lot of the food fights these two agencies find themselves in," he said. Mason said that although both agencies "have in their hearts the safety and security of this country," he worries about a potential attack "where the ball got dropped, and it's not going to matter whose fault it was because information wasn't passed or shared."

The ATF's transfer from the Treasury Department to the FBI's home at Justice after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was supposed to eliminate long-standing tensions between two proud and independent entities,

"We thought we'd get more cooperation from two agencies that ought to be cooperating in the war on terror," Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said of the 2002 law that created the Department of Homeland Security and authorized the merger.

But the transfer, thrown together in the final stages of the largest government reorganization in a half-century, proved to be a merger in name only. The ATF came under the Justice Department seal yet maintained its offices and headquarters. Little thought went into melding the distinctive cultures.

"It was all slapdash," said a Justice Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not an authorized spokesman. "One day you wake up, and ATF is part of Justice."

The new law not only failed to repair clashing jurisdictional lines, it also expanded the ATF's role in domestic terrorism cases, bringing that agency into conflict with the core mission of the post-Sept. 11 FBI.

Officials from both agencies acknowledged occasional tensions and said they are working hard to protect Americans and ensure smooth relations. They provided numerous examples of cooperation, including the response to bombings in Iraq, the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina and the investigation of the Virginia Tech massacre led by state and university police.

But law enforcement sources describe an unyielding struggle for control of explosives, arson and tobacco investigations that has played out in recent months at the government's highest levels. A dispute over the ATF's role in explosives cases, sources said, has helped delay a White House-ordered national strategy to protect the nation from terrorist bombs.

"Everything that we're doing, they're doing," said an ATF agent not authorized to comment. "It's just a constant battle."

 

To read the entire article, click here. 

 

For Defense, Crunching the Numbers Is Half the Battle

The Washington Post

By Stephen Barr

It has more than 3 million employees, more than 600,000 buildings and does business in 134 countries.

Those are some of the numbers that define the Defense Department, a megacorporation with lines of business and obligations that go far beyond war fighting.

"We do everything from floor waxing to repairing vehicles to accounting to logistics operations to running grocery stores," said Tina W. Jonas, the department's comptroller and chief financial officer.

From her Pentagon office, Jonas is responsible for the department's financial management policies, the computer systems that track $3.4 trillion in assets and liabilities, an annual budget of more than $600 billion and efforts to modernize business practices.

There are big-ticket items, like health care, which costs $43 billion a year -- "about $3 billion more than Germany spends on its entire defense budget," Jonas said -- and is likely to keep on increasing, to a projected $64 billion in 2015.

And there's the daily grind of managing cash flow. For example, every time the price of fuel goes up by $1, it costs the department $130 million, she said.

"When you get to this level, pretty much everything that walks through your door is going to be a problem," Jonas said during a recent interview. "So what you have to have is a mind-set to be a problem solver and figure out a corrective action plan."

Jonas was sworn in as an undersecretary of defense in July 2004, after serving as an assistant director and chief financial officer for the FBI. She also has worked as a budget examiner at the Office of Management and Budget and as a staff member on the House Appropriations Committee.

Her job is one of the toughest in the government. The Pentagon has been widely criticized for years on Capitol Hill and by think tanks for poor management, cost overruns, improper payments and payroll problems. The Government Accountability Office designated the department's financial management as an area of "high risk" in 1995.

Jonas, however, thinks the department is making substantial progress in financial management. She has created a "dashboard" on her desk -- two flat-screen monitors that display trend data on dozens of accounts over multiyear periods.

"We look at our numbers and say, 'We're not doing too hot today,' or, 'What are we doing about this problem that is emerging?' or, 'The trend doesn't look good here,' " she said.

One dashboard chart shows Jonas the percentage of debt more than 60 days old because of unpaid bills from "purchase cards," a government credit card used by federal employees for official business. The delinquency rate is about 4 percent, down from nearly 7 percent in 2001.

Another chart shows that unsupported accounting entries have been reduced from $2.3 trillion in 1999 to $95.7 billion at the end of last year. The goal is to make sure all financial information is documented, putting to rest allegations that the department can't find or track its money, Jonas said.

According to the dashboard, the Army's account for military salaries and other expenses will run out of money by June 15. Jonas will likely have to transfer funds from other accounts if a supplemental spending act does not take effect in time.

"It drives me a bit crazy when people say the department's books are all messed up and we don't know what the heck is going on," Jonas said. "We do know what is going on."

Part of the department's accounting woes can be attributed to outdated technology. Some computers in the field still run on old COBOL program language, operating like a checkbook register showing money in and money out, but incapable of connecting to a department-wide system that generates financial statements.

By June, Jonas hopes to have deployed new accounting codes and a software language that pulls together the department's 2,900 accounting systems.

Next year, Jonas predicts that two-thirds of the department's assets and liabilities will be ready for independent audits, a major step on the road to producing a department-wide financial statement that adheres to generally accepted accounting principles.

Jonas also has moved to cut operating overhead. The Defense Finance and Accounting Service, which once had 22,000 employees, is down to 13,000 and will shrink to 7,000. With the reductions and improvements in technology, the department has saved $500 million in operating costs.

Such savings "in the back office," Jonas said, make millions of dollars available for the armed forces. "It matters to the soldiers, it matters to the Marines, it matters to the airmen, it matters to the sailors, and all their families and all our defense workers whether or not we are efficient.

"So at least we are trying to change the culture, and we think we've made some good progress."

GAO: Homeland Security Lacks Adequate Workforce for Performance-Based Acquisitions

Government Executive

By Elizabeth Newell

Federal Employers Covet College Grads

The GW Hatchet

By Rustin Partow

Todd Jasper started working security at the Surf & Sand Hotel in Laguna Beach, Calif., four years ago. Now, the graduating senior will work at the Department of Homeland Security - one of a growing number of students to secure government jobs out of college.

The job market is especially good for GW graduates who want to work for the government, said Tim McManus, vice president of education and outreach for the Partnership for Public Service.

A third of the people working in the federal government are expected to retire in the next five years, making it easier to find a job in that sector, he said. In addition, the recession makes government jobs more attractive because of the extra security and stability.

"The government isn't exactly going to go away," he said.

Job prospects for students graduating in a few weeks may be better than in spring 2007, but reports show the recent mortgage crisis has made the market tougher than expected.

Employers are expected to hire 8 percent more graduates this year than last year, but this estimate was about twice as much prior to the crisis, according to a report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a research firm focused on college graduate employment. Salaries are also expected to increase by 5.3 percent, the association said.

"What makes the biggest difference is not a recession, but how and when a student taps his/her network," GW Director of Employment Anne Scammon wrote in an e-mail. She said this includes working on job search skills and utilizing the Career Center.

Networking and personal connections, in addition to Internet job listings, were more useful than any other resource for last year's job searchers, a Career Center survey found. Alumni said internships during college were more parallel to their current profession than their academic major. Also, one third of last year's graduates now work for the government or non-profit organizations.

GW alumnus Stephanie Cammoco was able to take advantage of the strong market for government jobs.

The 2005 GW graduate works at the Consumer Litigation Agency - a job she started during her senior year of college. She was promoted after graduation.

She advised students who want to work for the government to "apply (as soon as possible) and remember that government employers want all of the details."

More 2007 alumni work for the government and in politics than any other sector, according to a GW Career Center survey.

Laura Annetta, a 2007 graduate, works at Battelle Memorial Institute in Crystal City, Va., a non-profit science and technology advancement company, as a Navy contractor.

Although Annetta had two job offers before graduation, she said students should not get discouraged early on.

"My friends who began searching senior year and had to wait the longest to hear back about jobs ended up having some of the best job offers," she said.

Only 5 percent of 2007 graduates not attending graduate school lacked jobs, according to a poll taken last winter by the Career Center.

Job search success rates varied heavily from field to field. Despite the rapidly rising salaries, the number of engineering majors in colleges across the nation is shrinking, according to the NACE report. All participating 2007 graduates of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences reported being employed or enrolled in graduate school.

Engineering students will be highly sought after by employers following graduation, McManus said.

"Only two-thirds of engineering students are even eligible to work in the U.S. and everyone, including the government, is competing for them," he said. "The engineering school at GW has proactively made some great connections at places like NASA."