The C Fund was the one account that got here in damaging, shedding 0.76% as in comparison with January. For the yr, all funds are within the black.
Michele Sandiford
- Federal staff noticed solely small progress in most of their retirement accounts in February. All however one of many funds within the Thrift Financial savings Plan got here in with optimistic returns for the month, however the improve was notably decrease throughout the board. The I Fund, for instance, noticed the most important improve of greater than 6% in February, however that was a lot decrease than the 12% improve it noticed in January. The C Fund was the one account that got here in damaging, shedding 0.76% as in comparison with January. For the yr, all funds are within the black.
- The Division of Veterans Affairs took step one to consolidate 20 completely different contact facilities. The VA receives over 60 million calls a yr throughout 20 name facilities that are not built-in and function independently. To unravel that downside, VA is reimagining its contact heart operations as a unified, concierge-style service. In a brand new draft efficiency work assertion and request for info, VA is asking distributors for suggestions on its plans to create an enterprisewide and fashionable contact heart that features phone providers, cellular purposes, textual content messaging, e-mail and different communication modalities. Suggestions on the draft work assertion and RFI are due by March 6.
- Owen West, a former vitality dealer at Goldman Sachs and Division of Authorities Effectivity staffer, has formally taken over as director of the Protection Innovation Unit. In his first message to DIU staff, West stated the group will slim its funding priorities, focusing primarily on applied sciences that “produce overmatch domination” and scale rapidly whereas “dramatically reducing cost-per-kill.” West stepped into the position following Doug Beck’s sudden resignation final yr. Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth stated West will “bring a warfighter’s mentality to DIU’s core mission of transitioning technology to our troops.”
- The backlog of claims for incapacity and pension advantages on the Division of Veterans Affairs is now persistently under 100,000, for the primary time since 2020. VA stated the backlog has been minimize by 63% since January 2025. On the time, the backlog stood at greater than 264,000. VA considers backlogged claims as these which were pending for greater than 125 days.
- The IRS locked lower than 1% of accounts believing the proprietor had died however the account really belonged to a dwelling individual. That’s in accordance with a brand new report from the Treasury Inspector Common for Tax Administration. TIGTA discovered solely 13,500 such circumstances of bureaucratic error out of 6.9 million accounts with a deceased lock placed on them between 2022 and 2024. Auditors say Taxpayer Companies administration attributed the inaccurate locks attributable to incorrect Social Safety information, taxpayer error and IRS worker error. The findings mark an enchancment in comparison with the final audit, performed in 2023, that discovered 20,000 circumstances.
- Pure disasters at navy installations have prompted billions of {dollars} in harm over the previous decade, however the Protection Division started monitoring these prices only recently. The Protection Division estimates that excessive climate occasions have value the division no less than $15 billion in damages to navy installations over the previous decade. However the effort to gather information to higher perceive financial penalties of those occasions solely started in 2024, and the info stays incomplete and at occasions inaccurate. DoD directed navy installations to finish a spreadsheet reporting the consequences of maximum climate and stated that it’s working to transition from the spreadsheet to a web-based system in fiscal 2026.
- Lawmakers are calling on the Workplace of Personnel Administration to offer solutions about federal retirement processing issues. Reps. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) and Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) stated many federal retirees reported they by no means obtained their 1099-R tax paperwork — varieties required to report federal retirement revenue — and aren’t capable of reliably get assist from OPM. In a March 2 letter to OPM Director Scott Kupor, the congressmen requested for info on what number of varieties are but to be mailed, the state of customer support and what actions OPM will take.
- The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company has misplaced one other key chief. Shelly Hartsook is stepping down from her place as affiliate director in CISA’s cybersecurity division. Hartsook led packages that present cybersecurity providers to different businesses, together with the flagship Steady Diagnostics and Mitigation program. Her departure continues an almost year-long procession of key CISA leaders resigning from their positions on the cyber company. CISA has seen almost a 3rd of its employees go away because the begin of the Trump administration.
- The Protection Counterintelligence and Safety Company is increasing a legal document verify program to cleared business personnel. DCSA stated the Rap Again enrollment is now increasing to business following a profitable pilot program. Rap Again is a service offered by the FBI that gives real-time notification of modifications in a person’s arrest document utilizing automated fingerprint identification. The extension of Rap Again to business is a part of DCSA’s push to streamline personnel vetting below the Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiative.
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