Shipmates,
Having recently returned from annual leave, I wish to remind all NOAA Corps Officers to submit your executed annual leave chits in a timely fashion, and to monitor your Leave and Earning Statement (LES) to ensure accuracy of all your entitlement data. Intentional failure to submit leave chits can be career-limiting. Additionally, being lax in your review of your LES can create personal financial "surprises" such as an erroneous payment of sea pay for the past few months. Yes – this just happened to me and embarrassingly it took me a while to discover it. Our payroll specialists in Topeka (Carol Holley and Ron Cunningham) are on the job though and I'm sure I'll be hearing from them soon regarding my repayment plan. With all the work-arounds and manual damage control efforts employed to make our NOAA administrative systems work with the USCG administrative system, errors are inevitable. Don't assume your pay is correct 100% of the time. Bravo zulu to Carol and Ron for managing to keep as many rags out of our payroll bilges as they do.
Expanding on leave and leave accounting, I will be conducting my first periodic audit of annual leave balances next month. If you've failed to submit your executed leave chits for this fiscal year, amnesty runs out sometime around mid-July when we will conduct a leave audit. With the winter holidays behind us and the summer leave season upon us (for us land lubbers), I expect to see that officers have been using their earned leave. If you have a huge annual leave balance and you truly have NOT taken any leave yet this fiscal year, I want to know why you haven't used it. USE IT! No matter what's happening at work, remember - the ship will sail without you. It has before, and it will when you're gone. Unless, of course, you couldn't get an augmenter and the ship couldn't meet safe manning…in which case, call me. Please.
Semper serviens,
CAPT Jeremy Adams, NOAA
Director, CPC
| 25 June 2016 | NOAA Corps 99th Anniversary BBQ |
| 07 July 2016 | Oscar Dyson Change of Command |
| 14 July 2016 | Thomas Jefferson Change of Command |
| 24 July 2016 | BOTC 128 Commences |
| 2017 | NOAA Corps Centennial Events |
| VADM Michael Devany | 01 July 2016 |
| LTJG Jason Wilson | 01 Sep 2016 |
| RDML Gerd Glang | 01 Sep 2016 |
| CAPT Wade Blake | 01 Sep 2016 |
| LT Charlene Felkley | 01 Sep 2016 |
| LTJG Eileen Pye | 02 Sep 2016 |
| CAPT Eric Berkowitz | 01 Oct 2016 |
| CAPT Adam Dunbar | 01 Oct 2016 |
| CAPT John Caskey | 01 Oct 2016 |
CPC is soliciting for volunteers at the O-3 level and above to provide access to their OPFs for the purpose of developing "FrankenOPFs" to be used in future mock promotion boards. The individual OPFs would be accessed by a small cadre of NOAA Corps Junior Officer Advisory Committee volunteers who will pilfer content from many files to create enough fictional officers to be able to hold mock promotion boards. Identifying information will be edited/redacted to ensure a reasonable level of anonymity is maintained by the OPF donor.
This initiative is the result of feedback received by the NOAA Corps Junior Officer Advisory Committee. Mock promotion boards were held in the late 90s and early 2000s and not only removed the mystery surrounding OPB deliberations, they were found to be very beneficial to the career management of the officers who participated in them. Through this volunteer effort, our mock boards can be updated to be relevant to our current officer evaluation system and deployed virtually to a wider audience. The OPF content donors are the critical first step. Please contact Commander Devin Brakob, Chief, Officer Career Management Division at chief.careermgmt@noaa.gov to volunteer your OPF to a worthy cause.
Last week, all junior officers should have received an email encouraging participation in the 2016 Junior Officer Survey from LT Joseph Phillips on behalf of the NOAA Corps Junior Officer Advisory Committee. This survey was carefully crafted by fellow junior officers to obtain critical ideas and opinions from junior officers regarding the NOAA Corps and their experience thus far. This feedback is anonymous and senior leadership is looking forward to hearing your ideas. So far, the response rate is at 49% (93/191). If you have not done so already, please take a moment to complete the survey and have your voice heard. Remember, as Socrates once said, "the secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new". Please help us shape the future of the Corps!
The Blended Retirement System (BRS) is coming. Serious financial decisions will have to be made for those officers with less than 12 years of service prior to December 31, 2017. If you didn't take advantage of the Joint Knowledge Online "BRS Leader's Training" noted in the last Cyberflash then perhaps you'll take 5 minutes to read ALCOAST 222-16 - SITREP 1 - IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BLENDED RETIREMENT SYSTEM (BRS). This is possibly one of the best messages (brief and to the point) generated to prepare service members for this monumental change.
The NOAA Corps website is fully transitioning to the new OMAO webpage very soon! You can access the new website now at https://www.omao.noaa.gov/learn/noaa-commissioned-officer-corps to experience the new look and feel. The https://www.noaacorps.noaa.gov/ URL will be redirected to the new website when transition is complete.
This is a living webpage, if you have any comments or suggestions on ways to improve the new website, please contact LT Jeffrey Pereira directly at jeffrey.pereira@noaa.gov.