Happy Tuesday! The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered two agency attorneys to remove a YouTube video they produced that criticizes climate change legislation backed by the Obama administration. Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, who are married and live in San Francisco, received clearance from EPA to post the video, but were told they could mentionRead… Read more »
VA Finds It on Craigslist The Department of Veterans Affairs has done what many people do when looking for just the right product or service—it went to Craigslist. Or rather, to the man who created it. VA announced this week that Craigslist founder Craig Newmark has agreed to serve on a blue-ribbon panel charged withRead… Read more »
A previous post laid out the Focus on Efficiency Framework: Plan-Decide-Implement-Review-Repeat. In this post I’ll spend some time talking about Planning. In the Plan phase you’ll plan to become more efficient by working toward an established goal or taking advantage of some new opportunity, to ensure your limited resources are used to the best possibleRead… Read more »
The Office of Personnel Management wants to make political appointee “burrowing” into agencies more difficult all the time – not just during election years. OPM director John Berry recently sent a memo to agency leaders outlining a new policy that mandates OPM’s approval on all current and recent political appointees who want to move intoRead… Read more »
As the annual Federal Benefits Open Season begins, one thing is clear: while this may happen every year, this year is different. Fourteen health plans are pulling out of the FEHBP, another 18 are lowering their coverage, and the Office of Personnel Management says that, across the board, the premiums for those plans that areRead… Read more »
Greetings GovLoopers! UPDATE as of 11/8/09: Based on initial feedback last week, please see the various changes in BOLD below. In talking to many of the social media practitioners in and around government agencies, one of their stated best practices is the development and display of a solid policy that provides guidelines for engagement onRead… Read more »
Focusing on Efficiency is about making a concerted effort to utilize our limited resources to the best possible advantage to accomplish our mission. Sounds good right, but how? Over the next several posts I’ll be laying out a Plan-Decide-Implement-Review-Repeat framework you can use to help your organization use your limited resources to the best possibleRead… Read more »
This is the second of a two-part post about Software as a Service (SaaS) for performance management. In the first part I provided an introduction to SaaS, defined what it is and touched on some of its applications to performance management. In this second part I’ll detail the various benefits of SaaS including but notRead… Read more »
November 5th is GOSCON the Government Open Source Conference, and I’ll be there. In fact, I’m planning to volunteer a little of my time at the Drupal Booth, so stop by and say hello. Heck, you can even ask me about the http://go.usa.gov site. I promise, I will answer you. I’m also planning to headRead… Read more »
From The Acquisition Corner Recent reporting by Federal Computer Week (FCW) highlights an issue that is not being addressed by acquisition reform initiatives; reforming the contract protest process. Writing in the Editor’s Notebook blog at Washington Technology, Nick Wakeman discusses the protest by Unisys and General Dynamics of TSA’s contract award to Computer Sciences CorpRead… Read more »