News Briefs

THE DAILY FED

News Briefs

SECTIONS TO CHOOSE FROM:

Access America Conferences

The National Performance Review (NPR), will launch a series of informational conferences aimed at providing government employees and private industry IT officials with techniques and strategies for implementing the goals of Access America, an NPR report outlining steps to increase access--via the Internet--to government services. The first conference will be held September 25 in Baltimore, Md. and then will travel to other cities across the country. Expert panels will discuss IT topics, including Internet/Intranet successes, the future of Distance Learning and collaboration, IT acquisition and procurement reform, and privacy and security.

DTIC Annual Conference

The Defense Technical Information Center is presenting its Annual Users Meeting and Training Conference on Nov. 3-6, 1997 at the DoubleTree Hotel, National Airport, Arlington, Va. The conference theme is Information in the New Millenium. Contact Ms. Julia Foscue at 703-767-8236 or by e-mail at jfoscue@dtic.mil.

The following news summaries are from OPM AM, the daily newsletter of the Office of Personnel Management. OPM AM is available on OPM Mainstreet, the agency's electronic bulletin board, at 202-606-4800.

THE FEDERAL DIARY--"When folks in federal car pools start talking about retirement, odds are that half the crowd doesn't understand the other half. That's because the federal work force is about evenly divided between people who are under the Civil Service Retirement System (mostly pre-1984 hires) and those under the newer Federal Employees Retirement System, most of whom have been hired since 1983....Benefits expert John Elliott says the two systems are just enough alike to be confusing" (The Washington Post).

KING TO LEAVE OPM--"Jim King, director of the Office of Personnel Management during the greatest period of government downsizing in American history, is leaving OPM to take a senior position at Trinity college in Hartford, Conn. During King's tenure, OPM's workforce was reduced by one-third amid talk that it might be abolished altogether. Labor-management partnership went from being a new idea to a way of life for many federal agencies. And a host of reinventing government' initiatives resulted in non-personnelists gaining responsibilities that personnelists used to have....King's proudest accomplishment is that we strengthened the merit system by renewing a focus on the merit system and veterans' preference.'" (August 18, Federal Human Resources Week).