Federal managers on the whole do a mediocre job of managing their people and the positions they oversee. That's one take-away from a survey just-completed by the Merit Systems Protection Board. The result is less-than-optimal stewardship of the government's most valuable asset, it's people. We asked Sharon Roth, senior research analyst at the MSPB, about the survey, starting with a definition of stewardship.

It's about time. By and large, that's what military leaders and analysts are saying about the Pentagon's decision to let female troops fill up to a quarter-million combat jobs that used to be for men only. The services have until May to figure out how to make this happen. And they have until 2016 to request that some jobs remain just for men. So all of this raises some questions about how the military will and should proceed. Lt. Cmdr. Jean Marie Sullivan is the deputy director of the Navy Office of Women's Policy. She also chairs an annual women's leadership symposium for all servicewomen.

The IT division of the Internal Revenue Service has cut the time it takes to hire new employees down to 90 days. That's down from more than seven months in 2009. IRS as a whole has struggled with long hiring times, and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has just released a report on its efforts to improve.

Two thousand government employees are now covered under a new contract signed by the Small Business Administration and the American Federation of Government Employees Thursday. It's effective immediately and will last three years.