HR Topics: Richie Taffet

Richie Taffet introduced the new Commission Corp Liaison for NIH, Commander Doris Ravenell-Brown. Commander Brown will be handling all personnel actions for Commission Corp employees, and she is located in Bldg 31/B2B63, and her phone number is 301-402-0261. Consisted of three main points:

1. 12 New HR Specialists will come on board beginning this month to those institutes that had previous vacancies. At this time Branch C, E, and K did not receive additional FTE support.

2. Delegated Examining Unit: As a result of the OPM audit and in order to preserve our delegated authority the Delegated Examining Unit was established. This unit will review every vacancy announcement to verify that it complies with OPM standards. In addition, a new recruiter has been hired who will be assigned the responsibility for targeting recruitment for specialty positions such as T42, and Top 5 personnel.

3. Retention Expiration Notices: Mr. Taffett reminded the staff that two separate notices will be going out addressed to the employee, EO, and HR Branch Chief. The notification will occur 120 days and 60 days before expiration. If retention renewals are not received by the NTE date the employee's retention incentive/allowance will be terminated.

4. Austin Project: Dave Whitmer and Joe Martin will be surveying the ICs on whether or not they would like to see an HR specialist co-located within the institute. Gahan Breithaupt and Trish Wimsatt are working on staff selection and mutual evaluation for HR staff and will determine how to evaluate HR specialists. Lori Thompson and Bill Fitzsimmons will be working on FAQs to be uploaded on the intranet.

5. T42 probation period: ICs can determine whether or not they would like a 1 or 2 year probationary period. However, this does not apply to those T42 appointees who are veterans. A suggestion was made that HR make the choice of probation versus individualized ICs.

Update IAOG Retreat: Linda Adams

1. Proposed retreat date- the week of May 21st (most likely May 22 and 23), will start at 12:00 pm and end the following day at 4:00 pm. Currently working with the training center to find the retreat location.

2. Two teams: one led by Donna Siegle putting together the agenda, the second led by Ellen Rolfes on writing a charter and mission for the IAOG.

3. Each IC can send their Principal AO and Deputy AO.

4. Each IC will be paying the Training Center for all expenses, and then putting their people on a travel order to cover mileage and incidentals.

Update on Administrative Fellows Program: Linda Adams

1. The co-chairs have attended job fairs at Georgetown, and Towson (representing multiple colleges at each) and will shortly be going to UMCP, UMUC, GW, GMU, American, Gallaudet, UMBC, and University of Baltimore.

2. ICs have committed slots for 18 AOs, 7 contracts, and 6 grants.

3. Job announcements are now open and will close on March 31st.

4. AO interviews will be held all day on April 23rd. Announcements were sent out to AOs requesting volunteers to assist with interviewing the candidates.

5. If anyone thinks they know of someone who is qualified and would be a great candidate, please have them e-mail Tim Tosten.

Update on HR Roles and Responsibilities: Linda Adams

1. The HR roles and responsibilities have been worked out with HR.

2. Tim Tosten is finalizing the format and creating a presentation.

3. Tim will try to present to the EOs in March.

4. Tim would like to present to the IAO and EAO groups in April.

5. Tim will be working with HR to get them all online and clickable with links to information for each role and responsibility.

6. If you recall, this is from the EO/AO retreat, and was the number one issue the AOs felt was needed to be corrected in the area of HR.

7. These R&Rs will outline how every IC and every HR Team will handle any type of HR action to make it uniform across the NIH.

Open Discussion:

PI Survey: Linda Adams

Linda reported that the PI Survey is almost ready to send to the ICs for review. The survey was completed on Monday, January 30, 2007. 524 PIs responded (25-35% response rate). Results were constructive, and they even received volunteers to serve on the focus groups. Dr. Schwartz plans to present the results to the IAOG at a future time and Dr. Gottesman will attend the IAOG in May to discuss issues such as this with the PAOs. This could potentially be a topic to be discussed at the retreat.

SD Retreat: Linda Adams

The SD retreat took place and the SDs evaluated the corporate look of their roles and their relationships with IC Directors. Joan Schwartz prepared an SD orientation book and asked SDs to review and comment and will be asking AOs for input also. There will be an SD 101 topics SD meetings and principal AOs will be involved when appropriate.

PMAP Exceptional Awards: Jeff Domanski

Jeff reported that HR needs to provide clarification on whether or not Title 42 f ($212,000) and g ($200,000) employees covered under PMAP who have reached or are close to reaching their pay cap need NCC approval. HR is requesting to annotate the spreadsheet by typing "Pending final management decision" HR will hold these nominations until a decision has been made.

Travel: Matt Burr

Matt reported that he met with NIH and HHS representatives to discuss mis-ticketing, TMC fees, and overall customer service. Matt reported that an Omega customer service survey is provided to 30-40 DHHS travelers per quarter. No one seemed to have ever heard of that. Matt requested that when poor customer service occurs with Omega to please contact Joy Gaines so that she can investigate and report these incidents. NIH plans to host a travel fair some time later this year.

Finally, Matt commented that it's not too late for IAOs to respond to the NHGRI travel budget survey he distributed a few weeks ago. To date, no one had responded.

NBS Deployment Challenges: Jeff Linden and Michael Foecking

Key highlights:

Another communication will be sent out to move outstanding stock orders from the ADB into the NBS. The NBS has 160 orders, Jeff could only match 90 orders. And there still are 170 orders outstanding.

Valerie Rovine has been appointed in the new change management role for Tracks 3 & 4.

The transition from the ADB to NBS relating to the warehouse was not pain free. There were system issues, shipping problems due to a new wireless infrastructure, and wireless printers caused some of the issues. Reporting issues need to be understood and appreciated as well as NBS issues.

If any IC uses any system that extracts information from the datawarehouse, i.e, access databases, excel spreadsheets, IT programming, etc..please take a look at those systems and verify that they work

Significant challenges exist in simultaneously launching new NBS modules and new nVision capabilities at the same time. Some of these challenges are:

1. There is no-live data to optimally test the report system.

2. NBS data may continue to change during development and possibly after deployment- these changes impact the development and testing of the reporting system.

3. Management and resource challenges- both efforts are interdependent and require some of the same sets of skills.

4. Users will be confronted with learning both a new transaction system and a new reporting system.