Checking in on Your Pocketbook

Woah, January! If you were watching the stockmarket last month you were in for a wild ride. The stock market was incredibly volatile last month. “Our Chief Investment Officer said in January there were 10 days where there were 100 points swings. It was a roller coaster,” Kim Weaver, Director of External Affairs, Federal Retirement ThriftRead… Read more »

G2G (Gov to Gov) – Sharing Public Services and What Makes It Work

The concept of public agencies delivering services to one another is nothing new, but doesn’t happen as often as it could. Policy wonks, the media, elected officials, and agency managers all agree the concept makes sense: One public organization does something well, and shares that expertise with another public agency, at a cost that providesRead… Read more »

Questionable Leadership Decisions: “Pass or Run?”

Super Bowl XLIX was this weekend. The Seattle Seahawks had second-and-goal at the 1 with 26 seconds remaining. The Seahawks were only one yard away from a second consecutive championship. Everyone, including me, knew that the only logical thing was for the quarterback to hand off the ball to their best running back to run theRead… Read more »

Esri GIS conference will spark innovation through “Immersion Summits”

Esri’s annual Federal GIS Conference (February 9-10, 2015) gives government employees the chance to take advantage of GIS as an analysis, decision-making tool. At the conference, five “Immersion Summits” will be held that dive deeper into five different categories that GIS is useful in: Economic and Community Services: Focuses on improving American lives and jobRead… Read more »

Prohibition Yields Innovation

Perhaps the most popular example of average Americans resisting authority came during the Prohibition Era of 1920-1933. Putting aside the imagery of movies like The Untouchables, moonshine & home breweries took on bigger, albeit clandestine, role in American innovation. Also of note during prohibition, production of sacramental wine for churches rose by hundreds of thousands… Read more »

Everything You Need to Know to Build a Successful Analytics Program You Learned in Kindergarten

For several years, the Partnership for Public Service and the IBM Center for The Business of Government have partnered to have Conversations on Big Data, a series of discussions designed to broaden the perspective about quantitative analytics and share lessons learned about what worked well and what did not. As I was reviewing the transcriptsRead… Read more »

My Parents Are on the Internet: Online and Aging

Mom’s battling it out with words, animals, and vegetables on her favorite game site. She’ll be reading the news again later this afternoon and probably paying the bills. I’ve noticed that she leans forward more often to see the screen. Dad’s balling and making it rain on his favorite computer parts site. He gets frustratedRead… Read more »

Applied Innovation: Creativity Through Competition

Competition can be thrilling and challenging. Here at GovLoop, we’ve all taken Gallup’s Strengthsfinder assessment, which measures an individual’s greatest professional assets. These can include strengths such as achiever, adaptability, discipline, includer, and many more. Many on our team scored high in the category of competition. Many of us, it seems, enjoy the thrill ofRead… Read more »