Yearly Archives: 2012

3 Great Case Studies – Local Government Adopting Google Technology

Within the last few weeks, Google has made quite a few announcements regarding numerous local governments beginning to use Google Apps for Government. Three cities in particular have been the City of Edmonton, which was the first major municipal government in Canada to use the Google suite. Two other cities where St.Louis and Columbia, Missouri.Read… Read more »

New IBM Report: A Manager’s Guide for Using Twitter in Government

This week IBM released a new report on Twitter use for government. The report, Working the Network: A Manager’s Guide for Using Twitter in Government, was written by Professor Ines Mergel, Professor at Syracuse University. Professor Mergel is currently an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. TheRead… Read more »

Suspensions and Debarments — 3 perspectives — Why do they happen and are they necessary?

Joe Jordan is the President’s nominee to be the next administrator at the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. During his confirmation hearing Jordan was grilled on how he would improve agencies’ use of suspension and debarment against poorly performing contractors and how he would get a handle on the unknown number of contracts used throughoutRead… Read more »

Government Resume Makeover: Glen Forrester Edition

Last year, GovLoop and Young Government Leaders (YGL) launched the “Rock Your Resume” project, which has already grown to over 1200 members. What began as peer reviews has evolved to leverage the experience of two top-notch expert reviewers – Camille Roberts & Andrea Boulanger Lowe – who are reviewing 8 resumes each month. To date,Read… Read more »

Continuous improvement is great, but shouldn’t we innovate?

Do more with less. We’ve all heard it, and it’s great to create lean services during austerity. However, there’s a limit to lean, and a point where we need to try new things and do things differently. Chris Dorobek of the DorobekINSIDER spoke with Ron Ashkenas, Managing Partner at Schaffer Consulting, author of Simply EffectiveRead… Read more »

Multiple Studies Show Social Media in Government on the Rise, Though a Reminder that Print Media is NOT Dead

The federal government is quickly changing its views on employee use of social media. In our Social Media in the Public Sector 2011 study, published last year, we found that only 19 percent of agencies banned the use of social networks in 2011, a sharp decline from 55 percent in 2010. Along these same lines,Read… Read more »

Is there a role for a project manager on Agile projects?

Are you a Project Manager in an Agency or Organization moving to Agile? Is there a role for you? The typical Agile answer to most yes or no questions is “it depends.” (but my answer is a resounding, YES!) Whether you work for the Federal Government or for private industry, you are probably wondering orRead… Read more »

DorobekINSIDER: 7 Stories you need to know: Defense contractors join the Pentagon’s cyber-defense strategy

The SEVEN stories that impact your life for Tuesday the 15th of May, 2012 The Pentagon predicts that as many as 1,000 defense contractors may join a voluntary effort to share classified information on cyber threats under an expansion of a first-ever initiative to protect computer networks. BusinessWeek reports that the program comes after aRead… Read more »

Management/Project plans

Josh is exactly right. Gaining consensus for processes that are not well defined is key.So is building on the strengths & values of your organization in a project plan. That’s part of “how things get done around here”.

Why Not?

Have you ever come up with a new idea and someone immediately lists the million things that could potentially go wrong? I think that energy is negative – it’s focused in the wrong direction. It is stifling creativity, conversation and, quite possibly, game-changing solutions. In some government organizations, we hear “that’s how we have alwaysRead… Read more »