Joe Davidson

Members of a Committee on Oversight and Government Reform panel explored novel ways the Postal Service might pull itself from deep debt, but what they heard was apprehension about the future and dismal reports about the past.

A House committee has thrown the US Postal Service a lifeline, but it won't be substantial enough to allow the agency to fully escape the financial quicksand pulling it under....

The list of presidential appointees is long -- very long -- and the appointment process, particularly for jobs that require Senate confirmation, can take months. In the meantime, agencies and the public they serve suffer from lack of leadership.

The United States Postal Service is like a once-proud thoroughbred now crippled with a broken leg -- or two. It remains a venerable institution, but it has been so severely handicapped by the recession that lawmakers are beginning to seriously consider cutting a day of delivery.

Deep inside the current swine flu scare, there may be a silver lining for federal employees -- greater acceptance of telework in musty bureaucracies. Although increased telecommuting has been a federal workplace goal for many years, statistics show a difference between theory and practice.

Put simply, the mission of the federal government could suffer because federal workers might not go to the office if they, or people dependent on them, are ill. Or as Cindy Auten, general manager of Telework Exchange, a public-private partnership that promotes telecommuting, asks: "If Uncle Sam calls in sick, who will tend to America in a time of an emergency?" Part of the answer: federal workers at home.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors -- which oversees Washington's international broadcasting operations, including the Voice of America -- is rated one of the worst places to work by federal employees in a survey conducted by the Office of Personnel Management.

Less than 8 percent of those eligible to telework did so in 2007 and the total number declined by 14 percent from the preceding year, according to an Office of Personnel Management report.