That strong encouragement should last through the end of January 2022 and includes a maximization of virtual meetings and a total ban on unofficial visitors to the worksite. The agency will also remove food court seating as of Jan. 3.

“We have seen an increase in coronavirus disease 2019 and positive test results in the National Capitol Region in recent weeks,” Donley wrote. “Additional mitigation measures will be implemented on the Pentagon Reservation to protect the workforce and our support to the no-fail mission of the Department of Defense. We will continually assess health protection measures and will update this guidance, as appropriate.”

The Pentagon did not change its health protection condition status, which currently sits at Bravo+. The agency’s most severe classification is HPCON D, while HPCON A represents limited spread of the virus.

The HPCON B+ designation represents a level of community spread that does not quite warrant moving up to the HPCON C level, but requires more stringent attention than a standard HPCON B status.

“While the Pentagon Reservation remains at HPCON Bravo+, organizations are expected to maintain occupancy rates at less than 40% of normal occupancy, subject to the exceptions approved by my office,” Donley wrote. “Effectively immediately, all previously approved exceptions for occupancy limits over 60% are now capped at 60%, through the end of January 2022, in order to protect the workforce and preserve mission effectiveness.”

Cases of COVID-19 in Washington have skyrocketed in recent weeks, with the city hitting a record daily case rate of 273.6 cases per every 100,000 members of the population as of Dec. 25. Substantial community spread in the city is classified at 16 cases per 100,000 members of the population.

The highly transmissible omicron variant of COVID-19 has driven a surge in cases across the U.S., with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that the variant made up approximately 58.6% of all new cases during the week leading up to Christmas.

The announcement comes alongside new rules from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on vaccination for employers of 100 people or more and for healthcare workers participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

“And third, to make it easy for businesses and workers to comply, we will be aligning the deadline for the previously announced requirement for employees of federal contractors to be fully vaccinated with these new OSHA and CMS rules. This single, consistent deadline across all three requirements is Jan. 4, 2022,” a senior administration official told reporters on a late Nov. 3 call.

According to that official, contractor employees will need to receive their final vaccine dose by that date or risk penalties.

Contractors initially had until Dec. 8 to get their employees vaccinated per Biden’s executive order.

“We wanted to do this because we’re really aligning it to make it easier — to make it as easy as possible for businesses to implement these requirements and for workers to comply,” the official said.

“That said, there’s no reason to wait, and … we know that many employers are not waiting. And we hope that employers and workers will get vaccinated as quickly as possible, because that’s obviously our path out of this pandemic.”

According to guidance issued by the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force, contractors should determine the best enforcement strategy for employees that refuse to get vaccinated by the deadline, though it recommends modeling enforcement after the planned penalties for federal employees.

Agencies also have the right to deny a non-vaccinated contract employee entry to a federal workplace.

Contractors that willfully refuse to comply with the requirement could face “significant actions” by the contracting agency, such as termination of that contract, but a contractor working in good faith and honestly struggling to comply can receive collaboration assistance from the agency contracting officer.

The robust increase, announced by the Social Security Administration Oct. 13, reverses the last couple years of consistent declines in the COLA increase, which hit a low of 1.3 percent for 2021.

COLAs are determined using the Consumer Price Index released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates changes to the average price of household goods in the U.S.

The announcement means that not only Social Security beneficiaries but also individuals receiving a variety of Veterans Affairs benefits will see a significant bump in their payouts later this year. Last month, Congress approved legislation tying the VA financial support to Social Security COLA.

The change affects the COLA for both Social Security recipients and federal retirees under the Civil Service Retirement System, which is only available to feds that started their federal employment before 1987.

Employees under the Federal Employee Retirement System will only see a 4.9 percent increase, due to legal caps on FERS COLAs.

“For a significant number of federal retirees, the news is not quite as good: The January 2022 COLA will be 4.9 percent for those who retired under the Federal Employees Retirement System,” National Active and Retired Federal Employees National President Ken Thomas said in a statement.

“FERS COLAs are capped at 2 percent when consumer prices increase between 2 and 3 percent, and are reduced by 1 percent when consumer prices increase by 3 percent or more. This inequitable policy, enacted in the 1980s with the creation of FERS, fails to fully protect the earned value of FERS annuities, which decrease in value year after year — exactly what COLAs are intended to prevent.”

The Equal COLA Act, introduced in January 2021 by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and has bipartisan support in the House, would alter the FERS COLA calculations to adhere far more closely to the consumer price index, as the Civil Service Retirement System does.

Military Times Deputy Editor Leo Shane III contributed to this report.

“Military spouses are versatile, talented, adaptable, and experienced leaders who strengthen the organizations they join,” OPM director Kiran Ahuja said. “President Biden promised to harness the unique skills and experiences military spouses draw from, and OPM’s regulation expanding the Military Spouse Non-Competitive appointing authority will help military families thrive, and allow federal agencies to hire from this highly qualified talent pool.”

The Military Spouse Non-Competitive appointing authority, which allows agencies to hire military spouses to permanent positions without the usual competition requirements for a federal job, currently requires spouses to have their servicemember partner receive relocation orders authorized for dependent travel in order to be eligible for the appointment authority.

This format was effectively designed to enable military spouses that lose their jobs as a result of their partner’s relocation to have access to federal positions that reflect their professional experience.

But the new guidance allows for any military spouse, regardless of location or relocation status to apply under the hiring authority.

“It removes limitations — such as a relocation requirement, geographic restrictions, and arbitrary quotas — which caused this authority to be underused until now,” wrote Rob Shriver, associate director of employee services at OPM, in a Medium blog post. “As a result, this new regulation means more military spouses can find their place in the federal workforce, and federal agencies have a larger talent pool of highly-qualified people to hire from.”

Expansion of this program has been several years in the making, as both a May 2018 executive order and the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act mandated that OPM make the program available to a wider pool of military spouse applicants.

But according to Shriver, the new regulation also leans on changing work expectations as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Employers across sectors and around the world rely heavily on telework and remote work as a result of the pandemic, and the federal government is no exception,” said Shriver.

“These have become the new ways of working, and OPM is helping agencies use these flexibilities as strategic management tools to better recruit and retain workers. This creates a unique opportunity for military spouses — while military families often have to move frequently, they can access their work remotely and remain in their federal jobs.”

Ahuja specifically pointed to employment of military spouses as a good reason to maintain robust telework programs in the future.

The removal of relocation requirements and unlimited nature of noncompetitive appointments is a temporary change that will expire Aug. 13, 2023, because the provision of the 2019 NDAA allowing for the changes sunsets on that date. Military spouses therefore have just under two years to take advantage of the change.

Military spouses can also use this authority to be hired multiple times until the August 2023 deadline, rather than the one per relocation rule currently in place. Spouses of 100 percent disabled veterans and non-remarried widows or widowers of servicemembers killed while on duty may still only use the authority once.

After Aug. 13, 2023, military spouses may apply for federal jobs under the authority that are not in the vicinity of their relocation, if there are no agencies with available positions in their geographic area.

The new regulation goes into effect Oct. 20.

Federal employees insured under GEHA now have until Dec. 31 to get vaccinated and receive a $75 incentive, as part of the insurance company’s efforts to support vaccination within the federal workforce. GEHA announced Sept.10.

This is the second time GEHA has extended the deadline — originally moving it from July 31 to Sept. 6 — and comes in response to President Joe Biden’s recent executive order requiring all feds to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Update

The GEHA insurance company will extend its vaccination incentive program to Sept. 6, 2021, to encourage more federal employees to get their COVID-19 vaccines, the health insurer announced July 30.

“GEHA is committed to the health and safety of the U.S. federal workforce in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Extending the Vaccination Incentive Program is paramount to our commitment to our members and their families,” Interim President and CEO Rich Bierman said in a news release.

The expansion of the $75 reward program — which originally gave feds until July 31 to receive their vaccines — comes less than a day after President Joe Biden announced that federal employees would have to attest to their vaccination status or face workplace restrictions.

Original article

The GEHA insurance company announced June 29 that federal employees enrolled in its medical plans will be eligible for a COVID-19 vaccination incentive program starting July 1, as part of the organization’s efforts to promote a healthy federal workforce.

GEHA plan members who are 18 years and older and have not already reached their annual wellness program reward limit will receive $75 to spend on qualified medical expenses, such as co-pays and drug costs, after providing proof of vaccination.

Employees who are near their annual wellness program reward limit will receive whatever amount below $75 will get them to reach the maximum.

Members must get their vaccine on or before July 31 of this year to be eligible and may submit that proof until the end of 2021. Members who have already received their vaccinations are eligible and must simply submit proof of doing so.

“As the second largest medical benefit provider of federal employees, GEHA is committed to helping safeguard the health and safety of the U.S. federal workforce, and combating COVID-19 has been at the top of the priority list for more than a year,” Interim President and CEO Rich Bierman said in a news release.

“Federal workers are the backbone of our nation’s infrastructure, and our vaccination incentive program is designed to support them and their families during this critical time.”

GEHA is the second federal insurance program to offer incentives for proof of vaccinations.

Its 2 million members, combined with the 5.6 million members of Blue Cross Blue Shield — the first federal insurer to offer such an incentive — represent approximately 95 percent of the 8 million people who receive benefits under the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, meaning that a majority of federal employees should be eligible for some sort of incentive.

Information on how to submit proof of vaccinations is available on the GEHA website.

The Board of Veterans’ Appeals also is failing to reach targets to cut a backlog of legacy appeals cases because of pandemic complications, the House Veterans Affairs Committee learned.

Board attorneys who fall short of certain caseload expectations are often placed on performance improvement plans, and usually about two or three employees must follow such plans each year.

“Currently, there are 31 attorneys on PIPs, 20 of whom are women, and many whom are also parents of young children who did not have child care for all or part of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Gillian Slovick, second vice president of Local 17 for the American Federation of Government Employees.

“As a mother of a young child myself, I can assure you that having my child at home made a hard job requiring intense focus and concentration even more difficult.”

Of the 996 employees at the board listed under the “general attorney” classification, approximately 59 percent are women, but about 65 percent of the 31 employees placed on PIPs were women, indicating that female employees disproportionately struggled with performance metrics.

For all attorneys, the struggle stems in part from the transition to a new appeals system under the Appeals Modernization Act that passed in 2017.

“Prior to the implementation of the AMA, Board attorneys were expected to complete 125 cases a year, a pace that averaged 2.4 cases per week. Each case, regardless of the number of issues decided, carried the same weight towards an attorney’s production quota. In FY 2018, the Board increased its production standards from 125 to 169 cases per annum, (or 3.25 cases per week), a 35 percent increase in production requirements which was overwhelming for Board attorneys,” Slovick said at the hearing.

The union official described an alternative productivity measure the Board of Veterans’ Appeals created in fiscal 2019, evaluating the total number of issues within cases that an attorney resolves. The number has changed every year.

“AFGE supports the creation of this alternative metric as it better accounts for the amount of work required to complete each case. However, we caution that measuring the number of issues can also be manipulated to create unfair metrics. Unfortunately, this manipulation appeared in FY 2020, the first full year the AMA was fully implemented, because while the case quota remained at 169, the issue quota was raised to 566.”

This year, the number lowered to a “more manageable but still difficult” level of 156 cases or 491 issues, Slovick said.

The COVID-19 pandemic also threw a wrench into the board’s efforts to reduce its backlog of benefit appeals cases and transition more completely to a new, faster process under the Appeals Modernization Act.

As Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., noted at the hearing, the agency will fail to meet its goal of addressing all legacy cases that don’t fall under the AMA as “a direct result of impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

But according to board Chairman Cheryl Mason, the agency is on track to hold a record number of hearings in FY 2021, leading to potentially larger caseloads for attorneys.

And caseloads may prove particularly challenging because from March 1, 2019, through June 23, 2021, a total of 148 board attorneys resigned or were removed, according to Slovick.

The Biden administration has begun to take steps to expand the workforce at the board, as Mason announced July 13 that the White House had approved 20 new veterans law judges to join the agency.

“As we go forward, we will be announcing another cohort … for veterans law judges once we get the FY22 funding,” said Mason. “One judge equals about 10 staff, both attorneys and administrative staff.”

But Slovick also suggested that the agency adjust requirements that a judge sign off on a case before it counts toward attorney totals, as that leaves a part of the attorneys’ performance metrics outside their control. She also recommended allowing certain attorneys to specialize exclusively in legacy cases while the backlog remains in place, so that employees don’t have to switch back and forth between two different systems for different cases.

Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., suggested that the board invest in machine learning performance management tools, similar to one used by the Social Security Administration to improve the accuracy of decisions and compliance with agency policy.

“I believe the VA should take its cues from SSA and make critical investments in the technology that will simplify the process. This would allow employees to focus on work that computers can’t do,” said Bost.

But SSA’s appeals employees are facing their own problems with caseload and performance expectations, as a recent Government Accountability Office study found that the agency had not provided clear rationale for its decision expectations, which many employees have struggled or failed to meet.

Biden signed an executive order on “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce” on June 25, charging the heads of federal agencies, the directors of OPM and the Office of Management and Budget, and the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with developing policies and practices to expand diversity and inclusion of the federal workplace.

“As the nation’s largest employer, the federal government must be a model for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, where all employees are treated with dignity and respect. Accordingly, the federal government must strengthen its ability to recruit, hire, develop, promote and retain our nation’s talent and remove barriers to equal opportunity. It must also provide resources and opportunities to strengthen and advance diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility across the federal government,” Biden wrote.

“This order establishes that diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility are priorities for my administration and benefit the entire federal government and the nation and establishes additional procedures to advance these priorities across the federal workforce.”

Though the order itself does not mention critical race theory by name, it does instruct agency leaders to provide greater access to training that covers many of the ideas outlined in that theory, among other diversity and equity concepts:

“Such training programs should enable federal employees, managers and leaders to have knowledge of systemic and institutional racism and bias against underserved communities, be supported in building skillsets to promote respectful and inclusive workplaces and eliminate workplace harassment, have knowledge of agency accessibility practices, and have increased understanding of implicit and unconscious bias.”

Kiran Ahuja, who was recently sworn in as OPM director, came under fire from conservative members of Congress for her previous support of critical race theory, and was confirmed by a narrow 51-50 vote.

“This executive order will help in our efforts to recruit, retain, and honor the most effective workforce, one in which federal employees from all backgrounds and walks of life feel included and valued,” Ahuja said in a statement. “These types of efforts are best practices for major employers across sectors seeking to stay competitive in the marketplace, and OPM is looking forward to working with all of our federal partners as we better position our workforce for the future.”

Critical race theory, which examines the cultural and institutional practices that contribute to racism, has recently become a controversial topic between Republicans and Democrats, despite its inception nearly half a century ago.

That controversy came to a head in the federal government when then-President Donald Trump prohibited agencies from conducting any diversity training that was based in critical race theory. Biden later rescinded that order when he took office.

Beyond training programs, the order also instructs OPM, OMB and the EEOC to develop metrics for measuring and improving diversity in the federal government across racial, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, parental status and religious lines.

Those agencies will be expected to issue a Governmentwide Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Strategic Plan within 150 days of the order, based on agency evaluations of their current diverse state. Agency heads will then have to submit their individual plans based on that guidance 120 days later.

Agencies will, under the order, be expected to track demographic data of workforce, leadership, employment, hiring and pay decisions to better understand how those areas do or do not support expanding diversity.

The order also outlines comprehensive considerations for transgender and gender-nonconforming feds by instructing agencies to remove administrative barriers to employees changing their gender identification on forms and IDs, requiring such forms to have a nonbinary options, and ensuring that federal health insurance offers gender-affirming care.

The order once again steps into contested territory by also instructing the Defense Department to “take actions to promote equitable healthcare coverage and services for LGBTQ+ members of the uniformed services (including their beneficiaries and their eligible dependents), LGBTQ+ beneficiaries, and LGBTQ+ eligible dependents, including coverage of comprehensive gender-affirming care, through the Military Health System.”

Trump backed his decision to ban transgender people from the military in 2017 by referencing the “tremendous medical costs” of such service members. Not all transgender people choose to medically transition, either by medication, surgery or both.

Biden reversed that ban in his first week in office.

Agency leaders must additionally seek to improve harassment prevention, pay equity and workplace accessibility.

Biden’s order also addresses employment concerns raised by experts for improving the federal workplace, such as ensuring that more federal internships are paid, expanding opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals and preventing agencies from relying on an applicant’s salary history during the hiring process or when setting pay for an existing employee.

As often demonstrated under the Trump administration, the president has broad authority to determine federal workplace policy, unless expressly prohibited by law. Therefore, despite the potentially controversial nature of elements of Biden’s order, it is likely to stay in place for the extent of his administration.

Currently, most federal employees and contractors who hold security clearances have to go through a reinvestigation every five to 15 years, depending on their clearance level.

Not only does this reinvestigation interval run the risk of allowing someone who may develop a security compromise to continue to hold a clearance until their next reinvestigation, but it also contributes to the backlog of background investigations, as investigators must collect years of data at once to make a determination.

Trusted Workforce 2.0 instead aims to have a clearance-holders undergo continuous vetting, meaning that investigation systems are continuously collecting data about individuals to evaluate their security risk.

“We want to increase the number of data points that we’re collecting, and we want to make it go across the entire U.S. government workforce. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re well on our way in the last year,” said Lietzau, explaining that they currently have about 3 million clearance-holders transitioned onto the Trusted Workforce 1.25 program, an intermediary step on the way to full 2.0 rollout.

According to Brian Mazanec, director of defense capabilities and management at the Government Accountability Office, DCSA has made good progress in resolving some of the problems with the background investigation process — such as getting the backlog of investigations down from 725,000 in 2018 to a steady-state of about 200,000 today — but the agency still has more work to do to ensure that they continue to have success.

“These are promising developments, however there are some areas where we thing more attention is needed, specifically in the areas of resource planning and workforce management, timeliness, measuring performance and building out the necessary IT for transformation,” said Mazanec.

Specifically, DCSA needs a more comprehensive plan for how many more resources and employees it will need to support the continuous evaluation element of Trusted Workforce 2.0.

A large component of the preparedness for Trusted Workforce 2.0 will come from transitioning to the National Background Investigation Services IT system, a comprehensive replacement for the outdated, legacy IT systems taken from the Office of Personnel Management, which is currently predicted to fully deploy by fiscal year 2023, according to a February 2021 agency fact sheet.

“One of the things that we saw in the last year was that NBIS was not really on track in parallel with what the Performance Accountability Council was taking our policies. So there was a policy expectation to move in the direction of Trusted Workforce 2.0, but that required an IT component that wasn’t going to be ready,” said Lietzau.

And though Mazanec said that GAO worries that the master calendar does not accurately reflect how long NBIS implementation will take and could end up negatively impacting the timeliness of the program, members of Congress and federal contractors hope that the new system, coupled with continuous monitoring, will help improve security clearance reciprocity between agencies.

“If we can all eventually get onto a singular system that has all of the touchpoints, that will allow much more rapid checking of data,” said Lietzau.

“Coming from industry myself, I saw those problems with reciprocity. You could come up with hundreds of anecdotes of what a ridiculous situation [and] how long it takes them to get on the job. I looked into it when I got here, and [Assistant Director for Adjudications] Marianna [Martineau} and her group in adjudications were already working the issue. At that time it was about 65 to 90 days to get a reciprocity decision just within this agency. And last month she had it down to six days, and this month we’re averaging three days for reciprocity decisions within DoD. Now, that doesn’t cover the entire U.S. government but that is a majority of them.”

Martineau herself agreed that all agencies referencing the same system and being able to pull more up-to-date data should help to speed the process along.

But reciprocity — where a contractor or federal employee working under a security clearance for one agency is accepted at the same clearance level at a different agency — is also stymied by differing standards for acceptability across different agencies.

All federal agencies are required to adhere to the same base standards, but certain agencies or programs can place additional measures on their security clearance adjudications, such as medical evaluations or polygraph tests, based on the nature of their work.

“That’s I think where a lot of challenges in reciprocity begin to manifest,” said Mazanec.

The commission’s sweeping report on improving service in the U.S., which was released in March, detailed changes to both federal and military personnel practices, as well as better educating the public about the ways in which they can and should serve.

“The general purpose of our report is to elevate all forms of service, both the military service that we recognize and is so solid here within the jurisdiction of this committee, as well as the national service — as evidenced by the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps — and then public service, the public servants at the federal, state, local, tribal level,” said Steve Barney, commissioner on the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service.

“By building on that spirit and expectation of service, we believe that we will elevate all forms of service, and it will expose individuals who might not have a family member who has served in our nation’s armed forces to that service opportunity.”

For example, the report recommended creating public service versions of the Reserve Officers Training Corps at universities that allow students to receive financial benefits and additional training in return for a guarantee to work in a government job after they receive their degree.

The report also encouraged military service academies to accept civilian enrollees alongside the students training to become military officers to create a cadre of highly-trained feds ready to support the Department of Defense mission on the civilian side.

“Military service academies and ROTC programs deliver a steady stream of talent into the military’s ranks each year and have proved successful in developing leadership among the military’s junior officer corps,” the report states.

“Creating similar pipelines for the government could help reduce current workforce imbalances and encourage agencies to engage in more long-term, strategic workforce development. Establishing a Public Service Corps alongside ROTC programs and integrating a cohort of public service cadets at military service academies would mitigate the growing civil-military divide among American youth and promote service more broadly.”

Commission members also encouraged a more collaborative advertising and recruitment approach across the different service options.

“We believe that there should be a council on military, national and public service that is something with longevity and sustainability that has responsibility for the integration across service lines to make sure that we are addressing the national security and critical skill needs of the nation. We truly believe that individual should have cabinet rank, ideally, so that there is a seat at the table,” said Commission Chairman Joseph Heck.

If, for example, a young person interested in serving their country shows up at a military recruitment center but would likely be ineligible for military service, Heck said that the recruiter should still be able to offer them information about serving in the Peace Corps or at a government agency.

Those individuals that do enter military, civilian or national service would then be made more aware of the pathways available to them to use their skills in another service area later down the road.

The report also recommended that the federal government alter the way it approaches veterans preference by both extending the time limit on the Veterans Recruitment Authority and restricting veterans preference to only a tie-breaking preference that applies exclusively to veterans entering federal service for the first time.

“What we have found, especially now, is that many service members want to go on to get an education, to use their GI Bill. Once they complete their education, they are no longer eligible to exercise the VRA,” said Heck, adding that the government should shift to “revamping the veterans’ preference to focus more on recently-separated veterans to allow them to enter into public service. Whereas right now, a veteran who enters public service, has got a career in public service can utilize that same preference to apply for another job at a higher pay grade within the public service. So we should refocus it on individuals that are recently separated and use that as an incentive to get them into public service.”

The commission also recommended sweeping changes to the federal hiring and HR process as a whole, including simplifying USAJobs postings and making them more cross-compatible with other job listing sites; ensuring that all federal internships and fellowships are paid and offer a concrete path to full-time employment; streamlining the process for transitioning a fed from one agency to another; and creating a reserve program of cyber talent to call upon in emergency situations.

Many elements for reform in bringing in new or returning talent revolve around expanding the noncompetitive eligibility designation for employees that left public service temporarily to gain outside experience, participated in a federal internship, or spent time in another service avenue like AmeriCorps prior to applying for a federal job.

The report also recommends that agencies be notified when an NCE applicant expresses interest in their job opening, so that they may choose to pursue the potentially faster course of hiring that individual.

But the American Federation of Government Employees worried that greater use of such authorities could have negative consequences:

“Expanded use of noncompetitive hiring authorities perpetuates a closed system of hiring with less diversity and quality in job candidates. The current problems in federal hiring are more attributable to a largely closed system of hiring where managers use direct hire authorities to hire candidates they know rather than competitively selecting from a broad field of qualified candidates. A closed system of non-competitive hiring is not sustainable over the long haul and will only serve to further discourage persons from diverse backgrounds from applying for federal jobs.”

AFGE also opposed recommendations to expand the use of temporary appointments in federal hiring, grant more direct hire authority to agencies so that they can circumvent the competitive hiring process, create a pilot program for an entirely new personnel system outside of the General Schedule, and design a “cafeteria” benefits plan that allows employees to select which insurance and retirement benefits they want to participate in, depending on whether they plan to stay in government long-term or not.

And though many of the commission’s recommendations touch on hotly-debated issues of federal workforce reform, Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif. Introduced legislation earlier this month to implement many of the proposed reforms.

Oshkosh Defense, a contractor largely known for producing the kind of rugged, tactical vehicles normally found in warzones, was selected in February 2021 to receive the U.S. Postal Service’s multi-billion dollar contract for crafting the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle fleet over the next 10 years.

According to Oshkosh Defense President John Bryant, the needs of mail carriers for those new vehicles are centered on a truck that can keep going no matter what.

“Fairly early on in the competition, I was talking with one of our USPS customers, and he said something that stuck with me. He said, ‘we really need a purpose-built vehicle for our unique requirements, so we need it to last almost forever.’ And I thought, that is exactly what happens with our military customers,” Bryant told Federal Times.

“We have military vehicles that we delivered in the early 1980s. We have to support them over these very long lifecycles.”

The average USPS vehicle is 25 years old, with some vehicles purchased as long ago as 1987, meaning that the agency relies on a lifecycle far longer than most commercial drivers expect.

“The NGDV program, when you think about it, is the first major vehicle program in over three decades,” said Bryant.

“They lack the modern safety systems that you would see and that you would expect in a modern vehicle that you would use to commute to work, and they definitely lack some of the higher-end safety systems that are available.”

For both USPS and the military, that need translates to something that is rugged, reliable and adaptable.

“With out military customer, it’s all about delivering vehicles from the ground up to meet specific, stringent requirements. Our experience building and designing the world’s toughest military vehicles has actually applied directly to the NGDV program,” said Bryant. “The NGDV is designed to take a beating for a very long time.”

U.S. mail carriers have, of course, been promised several features that most drivers have long taken for granted: air-conditioned vehicles, collision detection, automatic breaking, 360 degree cameras and more.

The vehicles will also have more USPS-specific needs, like larger cargo areas for package delivery, much greater bumper visibility and better ergonomics for right-side driving and delivery.

USPS will also have the option to include all-wheel drive in some of its new vehicles for those mail carriers who have to deliver in rural areas in the midst of hazardous weather conditions or both at once.

That adaptability is also designed to address concerns that the USPS fleet is not moving to a more sustainable model quickly enough.

And though Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., worried at a May 13 hearing that Oshkosh “doesn’t know how to make electric vehicles,” Bryant told Federal Times that their plan for building the NGDV is designed specifically to adapt to electric vehicle or internal combustion needs.

“We’ll be ready to deliver them in any combination that USPS desires, so up to 100 percent of either one of them,” said Bryant.

“They’re actually designed on a common, unibody chassis, so we’re able to produce any combination of vehicles that USPS desires. We were thinking that over time the mission profiles, the business models, technology, costs may evolve and so we intentionally designed the Oshkosh NGDV so that you could take an internal combustion vehicle and convert it — during a mid-lifecycle refresh or rebuild — to a battery-electric vehicle.”

That adaptability may prove critical if a House bill mandating that at least 75 percent of the new fleet be electric or zero-emission becomes law.

According to Bryant, USPS was very specific about what kids of features and flexibilities mail carriers would need during the contract competition process.

The new NGDVs will have to go through a period of extensive operations and safety testing prior to arriving at U.S. mail facilities, but the first members of the new fleet are expected to hit the roads in 2023.

“The carriers will have the configurations to meet their needs,” said Bryant.

“They’ve been waiting a long time.”