Thursday, March 3, 2005 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Next Meeting: April 12, 2005

9:30a.m.- 11:00 a.m.

Bldg 31, Conf Rm. 10

Results/Status of NAPA AO Resource Impact Study

Open to all intramural/extramural AOs

 

Attendees:	Substitutes:
Abbott, Corrine NIDCD	Broadnex, I NHLBI
Adams, Linda NHGRI	Burrell, Eve
Adams, Ronald CC	Ng, Cathy
Affeldt, Mary NIDA	Preston, Rebecca NICHD
Bortner, Don NIA	Schaffert, Karen NCI
Childers, Olive OD/OIR	Unger, Gary
Harrelson, Susan NIDDK
Hennings, Marsha NIAMS
Siegel, Donna NCI
Stewart, Pat NIAID
Strickland, Maryln CIT

Minutes: Prepared by Kitzmiller, Francie NIDDK

Closed Session (1:00 - 2:30)

The meeting started with Susan Harrelson and Mary Affeldt introducing themselves as the new chairs of the IAOG.

1) IAO Grade & Position Description Sub-Committee - Katy Perry

Katy Perry and John Slauson are members of the IAO Grade and PD Subcommittee who are working with the NAPA working group committee to review the Administrative grades and positions. John Slauson has taken another position outside of NIH, so Susan asked if there was anyone interested in helping Katy with this task. Donna Siegel graciously agreed to assist Katy with this very important task.

Katy was unable to attend the meeting today but had forwarded the information to Susan for presentation. The survey from this subcommittee went out to the NIH community and the intention was to have focus groups after the information was gathered. However, when Colleen Barros received the data from the surveys, it was more than expected. Colleen then made a decision that this would be too much to handle with focus groups; therefore, her office would try to consolidate the information for further presentation to the IC Directors.

The IAO Grade & Position Description Sub-Committee felt that they would like to provide recommendations to Colleen so they should review the information that had been received from the surveys. They feel that they have a good understanding of the issues identified from the surveys and can consolidate this data into recommendations that Colleen's office could use as global recommendations which could be applied NIH-wide. They would like to even consider the amount of turnover in the Administrative Offices' as this might provide a better understanding of the impact of the changes, consolidation, restructuring and A-76 investigations.

Donna & Katy are charged with working with Colleen to present this aspect. They will hopefully be able to report back before month as to the progress.

2) DDIR Update - Olive Childers

Olive presented the information from the SD meeting held March 2, 2005. She said the most significant piece of information was the handout given today, "Government-wide, DHHS-wide, and NIH-wide Management Initiatives". Colleen Barros presented to the SDs this document and Olive felt it was the most comprehensive view of the ARAC and consolidations plus the impacts on NIH.

The goal of the NIH is to retain local authority with the ARAC consolidation. The travel program is also being reviewed and it is questionable as to when a new system will be implemented or if it will be a new system or GELCO.

One of the SDs asked Colleen about the rumor of the AO's being consolidated into the EO office, whether this is a NIH move or an IC specific issue. Colleen was very aware of the issue and had heard the rumors herself. She assured the SDs that there is no NIH mandate or guidelines on this issue. Colleen stated that the Administrative Officers are critical to the DIR and we need to work as a team.

Olive stated that Colleen is very concerned with the impact that A-76 is having on the community. Because of her meetings with the IC Directors, SDs, and the Extramural AOs, she implemented the NAPA study. Her hope was to get a better understanding of the issue. There was a 97% response with the NAPA survey.

The Stem Cell Facility budget was approved at the SD meeting as well as the terms for the NIH Biodefense Program for joint initiatives.

 3) EO Update - Mary Affeldt/Susan Harrelson

Susan attended the EO meeting on March 1, 2005. Several issues were addressed:

• The A-76 inventory will come out next week. You will have about 1 month to code the areas.
• NLM has a new EO, Todd Danielson, previously NCI Intramural AO.
• The DFAS Training is in full swing, hopefully everyone's staff has taken the training. On March 17, 2005, Employee Express will go away, DFAS becomes effective on March 20,
• For Title 42 (f):

  o No COLA's will be given for this cohort.

  o No decision has been made as to when the 0-6% increase will take effect

  o DHHS put forth a new policy in regards to the T42 (f) and NIH has not yet implemented it. They have requested that we move forward with the implementation.

• Performance contracts meeting at HHS will be March 8, 2005.
• VERA authority has been approved and some employees may opt for early out
• Conflict of Interest information has been sent out to the NIH community. Sontag still has an interest in maintaining the reporting of the scientific meeting ceiling, largely attended meetings but the good news is that the NFT's are going well.
• HHS has drafted a new travel manual and requested comments. Susan asked that the AO's provide as much feedback as possible.
• Comp Time while on travel has been approved but there is no official policy as of yet. It does not apply to Title 42 employees as of this time.
• OMB is putting out a draft policy on IMPACT and travel cards. They are considering doing a credit check on your personal credit to see if you should be given the authority for a credit card through NIH as part of your duties. Linda Adams will send out the new information on this policy. ACTION: Everyone should reply to the Federal Registry on this topic
  
  There will be a new phase of the NBS and Pat Williams is looking for a liaison between the NBS and the IC's, an IC/OD Advocate Role. There is concern with the implementation, the amount of training required for these new NBS systems appears to be enormous. EOs must provide one or two names for the IC/OD advocate per IC by March 8.
  
  QuickHire Phasing appears to be a "temporary" relief effort from the QuickHire process. It seems that with January 1, 2005, the QuickHire program was inundated with applicants and overloaded the system. It doubled the capacity and crashed the system and it is still not working correctly. This phasing is a tool to be used in conjunction with QuickHire for greater Subject Matter Expert (SME) input in evaluating the quality of candidates. This will allow a combined score between the QuickHire system and the SME. Hopefully this will provide the IC's with better "qualified" candidates. This will be done initially as a pilot program until we can prove its effectiveness.

 4) Discussion about role of the IAOG and ways to improve participation -- ALL

The participation in the last few months for the IAOG has been steadily deteriorating. It is suspected that much of the decrease in participation is the ever increasing workload of the AOs; however it is vital to the DIR program that the IAOG continue to have this networking. It is through this combined effort that many issues are resolved and brought to light.

The attendees discussed various ideas as to how to improve attendance from changing the format to a more focused arena such as strategic planning to have brown bag lunch sessions. It seems that many feel that the bulk of the information discussed is repetitive such as the SD and EO meeting information. Many of the Principals do disseminate information to their staff but the fear is that there is still a subset that do not. How do we cope with that subset? How do we change the format and agenda to obtain a larger cohort of attendees including the open sessions?

 Conclusions:

• We decided that we will have principal-only meetings to discuss urgent, impending issues and how to resolve them as a group; to discuss best practices in how to deal with changes; and to discuss strategic planning issues. Periodically, as issues arise that are applicable to a larger AO community, we will arrange for open meetings/presentations that may or may not also include the extramural AOs, depending on the applicability of the topic(s).
  
• We will no longer discuss all the issues brought up at SD/EO meetings, but we will distribute electronic/hardcopy handouts that we receive from SD/EO meetings and encourage the principal AOs to read the minutes from the meetings, which are distributed to us and/or filed on a website. We also encourage the principal AOs to distribute appropriate information from all the meetings to their staffs.
  
• We also decided to make the NIH IAOG email listing one for principals only so that we can use it to distribute even sensitive information to each other. All of the principal AOs will need to take the responsibility to forward appropriate information to our staffs. ACTION: Susan will coordinate with IAOs to establish a list of principals, verify address, email, phone, fax info and coordinate the updating of the email list to be consistent with this list.

Open Meeting (2:30 - 3:00)

 1) ARAC Acquisition Committee Update (2:00 - 2:30)

Presenter: Thomas Hooven

Tom Hooven has sent us his regrets because he doesn't feel that this is a good time to give the presentation on ARAC Acquisition committee. Mary Affeldt and Olive Childers are on the committee; they discussed some preliminary information that was distributed at the EO meeting yesterday to the Principal AOs

Our open session began at 2:30 with Ken Diepold from the Commissioned Corps Liaison Office.

 2) Everything you ever wanted to know about the Commissioned Corps but were afraid to ask (2:30 - 3:00)

Presenters: Ken Diepold/ Pat Childress, NIH Commissioned Corps Liaison Office

Ken Diepold did an excellent presentation on the Commissioned Corps. This information used to be provided to HR but with the consolidation, neither the Commissioned Corps nor the AO's were informed as to whom to contact for this information. It has been a struggle from both sides to get the communication started. Now the door has been opened to begin to initiate the communication between Ken's office and the Administrative Staff.

Ken has offered to allow the AO staff to access the DCP/ISB database. This is where all the information on Commissioned Corps employees' pay is maintained. It is called the Wang database and houses all the Commissioned Corps Officers' personnel data. He provided a form that you may fill out and fax back to him for access to this database. This office is more than happy to provide training as well either in their office or at your location.

For Special Pay Contracts (SPC), the AOs don't have to do anything really. It is up to the Officer to execute this SPC. They must obtain the supervisor's signature and get the form notarized. If an IC wants to be involved with this process, they simply need to let Ken's office know. ACTION: Susan will send out information to the IAOG and provide them the opportunity to give the office a point of contact. Once they have that information, they will assure we are alerted. However, each IC will need to make their own policy with the Officers to have the forms routed through a specific office. They do not advise the Officers as to internal policy issues.

REMINDER: The new Conflict of Interest rules currently applies to all administrative staff, so we should all take the time to send comments/questions to the federal register by April 4, 2005, you can send an email to: ethics@hhs.gov

SUBJECT line should be: "Comments to Interim Final HHS Supplemental Ethics Rule"

Or write to:

Office of the General Counsel, Ethics Division, DHHS, Room 700-E, Hubert H. Humphrey Building 200, Independence Ave, AW, Washington, DC, 20201, ATTN: Linda L. Conte