The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers and outpatient clinics located throughout the country. Non-healthcare benefits include disability compensation, vocational rehabilitation, education assistance, home loans, and life insurance. The VA also provides burial and memorial benefits to eligible veterans and family members at 135 national cemeteries.
Veterans Day is a federal holiday in the United States observed annually on November 11, for honoring military veterans of the United States Armed Forces. It coincides with other holidays including Armistice Day and Remembrance Day which are commemorated in other countries that mark the anniversary of the end of World War I. Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 when the Armistice with Germany went into effect. At the urging of major U.S. veteran organizations, Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.
Human resource management is the strategic and coherent approach to the effective and efficient management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employer's strategic objectives. Human resource management is primarily concerned with the management of people within organizations, focusing on policies and systems. HR departments are responsible for overseeing employee-benefits design, employee recruitment, training and development, performance appraisal, and reward management, such as managing pay and employee-benefits systems. HR also concerns itself with organizational change and industrial relations, or the balancing of organizational practices with requirements arising from collective bargaining and governmental laws.
The United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that manages the US civilian service. The agency provides federal human resources policy, oversight and support, and tends to healthcare (FEHB) and life insurance (FEGLI) and retirement benefits for federal government employees, retirees and their dependents.
Organizational behavior (OB) or organisational behaviour is the: "study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself". OB research can be categorized in at least three ways:
The excepted service is the part of the United States federal civil service that is not part of either the competitive service or the Senior Executive Service. It provides streamlined hiring processes to be used under certain circumstances.
The Senior Executive Service (SES) is a position classification in the civil service of the United States federal government equivalent to general officer or flag officer rank in the U.S. Armed Forces. It was created in 1979 when the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 went into effect under President Jimmy Carter.
The Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 or FEPCA was an attempt to address the need for pay reform in the executive branch of the United States Government that became apparent in the 1980s as Federal civil service salaries fell behind those in the private sector. FEPCA provided guidelines to achieve pay comparability between Federal and non-Federal jobs. FEPCA was enacted as Section 529 of the Treasury, Postal Service and General Government Appropriations Act, 1991.
The United States federal civil service is the civilian workforce of the United States federal government's departments and agencies. The federal civil service was established in 1871. U.S. state and local government entities often have comparable civil service systems that are modeled on the national system, in varying degrees.
Howard Weizmann was deputy director of the United States Office of Personnel Management. During his tenure, he led efforts to reform the Federal hiring process and worked to help modernize the Federal pension system. He also was responsible for the oversight of the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) which manages the annual charitable contributions process for the Federal government. Previous to his appointment, Weizmann served as president of the Private Sector Council (PSC), part of the Partnership for Public Service, a not-for-profit organization that pairs private sector advisers with federal employees to improve agency performance management.
Blindspots analysis or blind spots analysis is a method aimed at uncovering obsolete, incomplete, or incorrect assumptions in a decision maker’s mental scheme of the environment. Michael Porter used the term "blind spots" to refer to conventional wisdom which no longer holds true, but which still guides business strategy. The concept was further popularized by Barbara Tuchman, in her book The March of Folly (1984), to describe political decisions and strategies which were clearly wrong in their assumptions, and by other authors since, such as social psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald in their study of prejudice.
Dorian Shainin was an American quality consultant, aeronautics engineer, author, and college professor most notable for his contributions in the fields of industrial problem solving, product reliability, and quality engineering, particularly the creation and development of the "Red X" concept.
Gini Graham Scott is an American author, songwriter, and game developer. She is also a consultant specializing in business and work relationships, conflict resolution, creativity, social issues, and criminal justice.
Morrell John Berry is an American former government official who was named President of the American Australian Association in 2016. Berry was director of the United States Office of Personnel Management from 2009 to 2013 and United States Ambassador to Australia from 2013 to 2016.
Human resource management in public administration concerns human resource management as it applies specifically to the field of public administration. It is considered to be an in-house structure that ensures unbiased treatment, ethical standards, and promotes a value-based system.
e-QIP is a secure website managed by OPM that is designed to automate the common security questionnaires used to process federal background investigations. e-QIP was created in 2003 as part of the larger e-Clearance initiative designed to speed up the process of federal background investigations conducted by OPM's Federal Investigative Services (FIS). e-QIP is a front end data collection tool that has automated the SF-86, questionnaire for national security investigations as well as the SF-85P, the questionnaire for public trust positions. e-QIP allows applicants for federal jobs to enter, edit and submit their investigation data over a secure internet connection to their sponsoring agency for review and approval.
John Baldoni is an executive coach, speaker and an author who has written 15 books on leadership published by the American Management Association and Mc-Graw-Hill, some of which have been translated into other languages.
Ray Jefferson is an American government official and retired military officer who served as assistant secretary of labor for the Veterans' Employment and Training Service. He graduated from the United States Military Academy and served in the United States Army. During a training session while serving as an Army officer with Special Forces, he lost all of his fingers on his left hand while attempting to protect his teammates from a defective hand grenade that was detonating prematurely.
The Veterans Health Administration controversy of 2014 is a reported pattern of negligence in the treatment of United States military veterans. Critics charged that patients at the VHA hospitals had not met the target of getting an appointment within 14 days. In some hospitals, the staff falsified appointment records to appear to meet the 14-day target. Some patients died while they were on the waiting list. Defenders agreed that it was unacceptable to falsify data, but the 14-day target was unrealistic in understaffed facilities like Phoenix, and most private insurers did not meet a 14-day target either. By most measures, the VHA system provides "excellent care at low cost," wrote Paul Krugman, who believes that the attacks on the VHA system are motivated by conservatives who want to discredit a government program that works well. Conservative legislators have proposed privatizing the VHA, and legislative reforms will make it easier for veterans to go to private doctors.
In June 2015, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it had been the target of a data breach targeting personnel records. Approximately 22.1 million records were affected, including records related to government employees, other people who had undergone background checks, and their friends and family. One of the largest breaches of government data in U.S. history, information that was obtained and exfiltrated in the breach included personally identifiable information such as Social Security numbers, as well as names, dates and places of birth, and addresses. State-sponsored hackers working on behalf of the Chinese government carried out the attack.
