# [AGENDA]{.underline}

**Welcome** -- [Ken Quantock](mailto:kenneth.quantock@mail.va.gov),
Moderator OHRM -HRM P&P (202-273-9753)

Welcome to the August HRM Conference call, this is Ken Quantock and I
will be your moderator for today\'s call. I asked Terry if I could
handle the call today. Before we begin, I have been asked to move one
agenda item to the beginning. In my closing comments I had planned to
quote Lewis Carroll? \"The time has come the walrus said...,\" and the
time has come for me to close my 33-year VA career. I will retire at the
end of this month,33 years with VA and 28 in Washington. With that I
wish you well, and turn the mike over to Ventris Gibson.

1.  **Opening Remarks** -- [Ventris
    Gibson](mailto:ventris.gibson@mail.va.gov)**,** DAS for HRM,
    (202-273-4920)

I am back and it's good to be back. I would like to correct a couple of
rumors. The Shared Service Center (SSC) is not being assumed under the
aegis of VHA. No administrative changes of that nature are anticipated.
The expertise and work ethic of the SSC personnel are outstanding and
make their operations commendably viable. Also, there is some
consideration, but only that at this point, to centralize retirement
functions at the SSC. OPM is concerned about the (lack of) quality in
retirement processing they have observed at the local VA level. A high
rate of errors in doctors and dentists' processing can be cited as an a
example here. Conversely, OPM has found the SSC's retirement processing
to be outstanding.

**2. HRMO Activity Report** -- -- [Ken
Quantock](mailto:kenneth.quantock@mail.va.gov), (202-273-9753)

[SELECTION MADE]{.underline}: Greg Moore has been selected to the
position of Human Resources Officer at Durham, NC.

##### [CURRENT VACANCY]{.underline}: Muskogee, OK 

**3. Human Resources Management Programs and Policies - Items of
Interest**

**Leadership VA 2003 Applications --** [Jim
Mayer](mailto:jim.mayer@mail.va.gov), (202-501-3415)

Leadership VA (LVA) is seeking applications for its 2003 program year.
The document announcing the program is VA Notice 02-6. The Service
Distribution Center (Hines, IL) mailed one copy of this VA Notice to
every VA field facility.

In July, LVA e-mailed the VA HRM Officers mail group an electronic
version of VA Notice 02-6 and the LVA 2003 application form, VAF 5-9987.

VA employees may download copies of both of these documents on the VA
Intranet at <http://vaww.lvaaa.va.gov/>

The LVA class of 2003 will mark the 26^th^ year of our executive
development program.

We ask that you please encourage eligible employees at your facility to
apply for LVA 2003. Any non-temporary VA employee occupying a position
at or above GS-13 and equivalent Title 38 levels (including Veterans
Canteen Service employees) may apply. Nurse grade IV and V employees are
also eligible for LVA.

LVA seeks individuals from all elements of VA who are having or who may
have significant impact on the future of the Department. In accordance
with the Department's commitment to equal opportunity, it is
particularly important to encourage qualified minority, female and
disabled employees to apply for LVA.

In light of VA's significant financial investment in the LVA program,
selected LVA participants are encouraged to remain with VA for five
years after graduation.

Four LVA Sessions are planned for next year's program, as follows:

Philadelphia, PA April 6 - 12, 2003

Washington, DC June 8 - 14, 2003

Baltimore, MD September 7 - 13, 2003

Williamsburg, VA November 16 - 22, 2003

Completed applications, including supervisor's endorsements, are due no
later than September 18, 2002 -- applications are to be submitted to the
employee's organization as listed in VA Notice 02-6. Applications are
not to be submitted to the LVA office.

VA Notice 02-6 has additional guidance for the LVA 2003 application
process for VHA employees.

VHA employees need to also include a copy of the final (summary) rating
page from their most recent performance appraisal. VHA requires their
employees in the field to route their applications through the field
facility Director prior to submission.

VHA applications are not to be submitted to VA Central Office -- they
should be sent to:

Employee Education Resource Center

VA Medical Center (OOR/B)

10000 Brecksville Road

Brecksville, Ohio 44141

###### Or sent via fax to (440) 838-6034

VHA field applicants also should forward a copy of their application to
the appropriate Network Director.

Questions about the VHA LVA application process may be directed to Gary
D. Trende at 440-526-3030, ext. 6697.

Requests for additional LVA program or application information may be
e-mailed to the LVA staff: Elona Williams, Trenna Carter, or Jim Mayer.

Thank you for your continued support of the LVA program.

**Training Updates --** [Marisa
Palkuti](mailto:marisa.palkuti@mail.va.gov), (202-273-9765)

####### VA Position Classification

The VA Position Classification course that will be held September 9 -13,
2002 in Pittsburgh, PA has reached its 30 employee limit. However, Human
Resource Development Service (053) has created a waiting list for
employees who register from now until the September 4, 2002 deadline.
All wait-listed employees will receive priority registration for any up
coming classification courses.

The VA Position Classification course will be held at the Pittsburgh,
PA - Highland Drive VAMC. For all registered employees, Paul Battisti is
the on site contact person. The will be conducted by VACO's Jim Halliday
and Richard Davis (051). The deadline for registration is Wednesday,
September 4, 2002. For additional information, employees can contact
Marlee Garrick at marlee.garrick@mail.va.gov

####### Title 38 - Online Training Course

OHRM continues to work with Title 38 subject matter experts, and with
the VHA Employee Education System to complete an online training course
for the Title 38 Personnel System. A group of SMEs and instruction al
designers will be meeting during the week of September 9-12, 2002 to put
a concentrated push behind this project. We will keep you posted on the
project as it develops. Thanks to everyone in the field who responded to
our request for volunteers with Title 38 experience. We'll keep your
names handy in case we need additional assistance in the development
process or in the testing process.

####### HR Intern Program and Intern Training & Development Guide

Many of you have probably heard that there may be a resurrection of the
Human Resources Intern Program. VHA is indeed working on a project that
would do that. The administration has established a workgroup that is
developing a substantial proposal to develop roughly 20 internship
positions each in HR, Acquisition, Resident Engineers, Prosthetics,
Accounting & Budget Analyst, and what had formerly been the MAS interns.
The plan is to cover training & relocation costs for these interns to
first locations if VA employees and for placement at first site. The
finishing touches are being put on that proposal and it will be
presented for concept approval to the new VHA HR Committee, Co-Chaired
by Linda Belton and Tom Hogan. Assuming concept approval is received,
the proposal will then be presented to the National Leadership Board for
funding. The hope is to begin hiring early in FY 2003.

In preparation for that, the members of the Technical Career Fields
workgroup are working to develop prototype position descriptions for
intern positions at the GS 7/9 (or as appropriate for the profession)
that are targeted for the full journeyman level in each occupation. If
any of you have good sample prototype position descriptions and rating
guides to help us jump-start that task, please fax them to Marilyn
Buckler at 202-273-9757.

The Human Resources Development Service is working to complete the
training and development guide to be associated with that program. I
especially want to thank everyone in the field and in headquarters who
has helped pull together the content for this document. You've been
enormously helpful and incredibly responsive and we appreciate
everything that you've done on this project. We hope to have the project
completed by the end of this month.

**Career Intern Program/Appointment Authority** - [Elodie
Murray](mailto:elodie.murray@mail.va.gov), (202-273-9823)

> The following are some of the key features of the VA policy and
> Federal regulations on the excepted Career Intern appointing authority
> that is now available for use with 2-year formal training programs in
> VA.

The new VA policy from VA Staffing Handbook 5005 was transmitted to the
VA HRM Officers and VHA National HRM Specialists e-mail groups on
7/26/02, upon its certification by Information Management Service. It is
also on OHRM's web site under **NEW!**.

Career Intern is an added flexibility to assist in competing for
entry-level talent at grades GS-5, -7 and -9, and should help us address
the challenging workforce staffing demands that the Department faces.

However, there are unique features that you need to know about:

The Career Intern hiring authority can only be used for placements into

2-year formal training programs, such as the one for Veterans Service
Representative (VSR) that VBA has developed. The preceding presenter
Marisa Palkuti, Director, HR Development, shared the current status of
the Internship Guide for the HR field, a program which would also last 2
years. She also advised that VHA is working on 2-year intern programs
for 7 other technical career fields.

In the absence of a Department- or Administration-level intern program
for an occupation, VA policy allows for one to originate at the facility
or regional level. Determining whether a higher-level program exists
would involve coordinating with the VACO officials in that career field.
They may be just delighted to have someone pilot a program that could
grow to have a wider VA application in the future.

Once an appropriate 2-year training program is in place, the excepted
Career Intern appointing authority becomes one of the possible options
for making selections. Please note that a choice can be made to use the
excepted Career Intern authority as the exclusive entry avenue for a
given program. At the same time, neither OPM regulations nor VA policy
prevent using it along with other traditional selection mechanisms, like
merit promotion, VEOA, VRA, 30% disabled veterans, etc. Likewise for
Outstanding Scholar hires, but recall that, as OHRM's and OPM's web
sites advise, the Outstanding Scholar appointing is only properly used
to supplement hiring from competitive certificates when targeting
underrepresented groups.

Since a USAJOBS announcement is not required under Title 5 excepted
service procedures in 5 CFR 302, you can target recruitment, e.g., to
college campuses that's done in accordance with merit system principles,
especially "fair and open competition."

Even though time-in-grade restrictions do not apply in the excepted
service, the governing qualification standard must be met as usual, and
veterans preference and the rule of 3 must be observed as applicable
under5 CFR, Part 302.

For the 51 VA occupations covered by the *Luevano* Consent Decree, a
specific assessment tool must be used for excepted Career Intern hires
at GS-5 and -7. That examining instrument is what most of us knew as
ACWA (or Administrative Careers With America). It can be provided most
easily to applicants on-line via OPM's USA Staffing software either
through a VA Delegated Exam Unit that has a site license or an OPM
Service Center.

> After a person receives this excepted appointment and successfully
> completes a 2-year Career Internship, VA may noncompetitively convert
> the Intern to career-conditional. This feature is a lot like the
> familiar VRA conversion mechanism. Note that VA has an option to
> convert an Intern, but generally is not required to retain someone at
> the end of the 2 years. However, in the case of a VA career or
> career-conditional employee who had entered but failed an excepted VA
> Career Internship, the VA organization in which the Internship was
> served must place the person back into a competitive job of no lower
> grade or pay than held just before starting the Internship.

The points just touched on should give you a sufficient overview about
what's involved in using Career Intern appointments, so that you know
you should prepare yourself before advising management on how to wisely
use this new flexibility to support VA's mission-critical staffing
needs.

[References]{.underline}: Ex. Or. 13162; 5 CFR 213.3202(o),
315.201(b)(1)(xix), & 315.712

VA Hdbk. 5005 - Staffing, Pt. II, Ch. 2 - Title 5 Appointments, Sec. C -
Employment in the Excepted Service, para. 7 & Appendix N, both titled
Career Intern Program, dtd. 6/19/02;
[http://www.opm.gov/employ/luevano-fields.htm]{.underline}

**Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA)** - [Elodie
Murray](mailto:elodie.murray@mail.va.gov), (202-273-9823)

Briefly, the status of Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) is
that the current Department VERA window runs as usual with the fiscal
year. So, VERA is in place through September 30, 2002. We are developing
VA's request to have VERA again in FY 2003. Neither we nor OPM
anticipate any difficulties in our continuing to have this helpful
restructuring tool. As soon as we do have the OPM approval for FY 03, we
will certainly send out a VA-wide alert that you won't miss.

**Salary Survey Update** -- [Donna
Schroeder](mailto:donna.schroeder@mail.va.gov), (202-273-9810)

[Revised Nurse Locality Pay System (LPS) Policy:]{.underline} The
revisions to LPS policy that will allow use of third party salary survey
data is still awaiting General Counsel concurrence. The new policy also
includes adequacy guidelines for third-party surveys, instructions for
setting beginning rates of pay based on different types of salary data,
job-matching criteria to assist data collectors in identifying
comparable positions, procedures for the Under Secretary for Health
authority to modify local LPS decisions, and criteria for applying the
mandatory survey requirement. Facilities may still conduct surveys and
adjust rates under the existing policies and procedures until the new
policy is implemented.

[LPS Annual Report on Staffing:]{.underline} Thank you all for
submitting the LPS annual report data in a timely manner. The data is
being aggregated as part of the report to Congress and will be shared
with you shortly after the report goes to Congress. It is due to them
9/30.

**4. \"A little bit of this...a little bit of that...\"**....-- [Ken
Quantock](mailto:kenneth.quantock@mail.va.gov), (202-273-9853)

> • Status of the HR web site... has been developed by humble staff\
> member and should be operational real soon

• The student loan policy is back from the Office of General Counsel
after\
some clarifications and a final version is expected soon

> • Question (Bob Grant) -- Any update on von Zemenszky?
>
> Answer -- The VA is pushing the possibility through DOJ of an appeal
> to\
> the Supreme Court and may consider some legislative relief
>
> • Buyout /Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment (VSIP) Authority\
> Status - Under PL 106-419, VA\'s authority to grant Voluntary\
> Separation Incentive Payments (or buyouts) extends through 12/31/02.\
> We will advise you if this statutory authority is further extended.
>
> • NOTE: The next call is on *September 11^th^*
>
> • "The time has come, the Walrus said...
>
> To talk of many things:
>
> Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax --
>
> Of cabbages -- and kings --

########  And why the sea is boiling hot --

> And whether pigs have wings!"

-   Lewis Carroll (*Through the Looking-Glass*)

**NOTE**: *For the sake of brevity, I did not include the gracious and
praising remarks that were made throughout the call with regards to Mr.
Quantock's career and his innumerable contributions to HR. Resisting the
temptation to use erudite lexicon or literary quote to make a point,
perhaps it might be said best by simply stating that Ken Quantock was
one of the good people and truly will be missed.* - TY