Former head of the Coalition for Government Procurement Larry Allen, now President of Allen Federal Business Partners, wrote a spot on article recently calling out the absurdity of the current environment of anti-contractor sentiment running rampant throughout the federal government. Recent examples of these activities, among many, includes the Office of Management and Budget’s recentRead… Read more »
A common complaint about government contracting is it takes forever to complete a deal. Well, much of the delay comes from what’s called cost analysis. Cost analysis requires govies to go into each cost element in a proposal like direct labor, overhead rates, G&A, ODCs, COM and profit/fee. Govies are required to get the bestRead… Read more »
Beginning in 2009, the city of Collinsville, Illinois, (pop. 26,000; in southern Illinois near St. Louis) implemented a performance management system that allows it to evaluate what programs are and are not working. A cross-functional group of employees from every city department, has worked over the past two years to build the foundation for theirRead… Read more »
Last Saturday, CityCamp Honolulu packed the student center at the University of Hawaii. The one-day event brought together nearly 150 locals to discuss and plan for updating the interface for Honolulu’s city services. Forest Frizzell, director of the City’s department of information technology and Burt Lum, a local activist and the man behind ByteMarks Cafe,Read… Read more »
Reader Note: This is the second in a series of blog posts about online public comment forums (OPCFs) – that are becoming increasingly prevalent across the country. Other articles in the series discuss the justification and best practices for implementing OPCFs. The author, Michael Alvarez Cohen, is a co-founder of Peak Democracy Inc — aRead… Read more »
From my research with government technical staff, I discovered that strictly speaking, there are not many issues that are truly “unknown.” Usually, the case is that the issue has at least has been experienced by government staff, but no best practice has clearly emerged. And then, sometimes it is not the issue that is unknown,Read… Read more »
The Government Big Data Solutions Award was established to highlight innovative solutions and facilitate the exchange of best practices, lessons learned and creative ideas for addressing Big Data challenges. The top five nominees and overall winner was announced at Hadoop World in New York City on November 8 2011. The Government Big Data Solutions AwardRead… Read more »
In SharePoint 2010, Microsoft introduced support for a claims-based identity model. Claims can be used in SharePoint 2010 to enhance security in two different ways. First, they can enhance authentication in SharePoint by going beyond traditional authentication methods to verify additional information about users. Claims can also greatly enhance authorization specifically within the SharePoint 2010Read… Read more »
New York will be reducing a payroll tax designed to help pay for public transportation that effects small business owners and the self employed. The move was announced on the heels of another announcement that the state will be giving regional councils $785 million to support job creation. The Cuomo Administration hopes that by takingRead… Read more »
Senior government leaders appear hesitant to make decisions or convert risks into opportunity even when presented with data that justifies a certain decision. Why?– Supervisor (GS-14), U.S. Food and Drug Administration Decision-making is difficult in any organization given incomplete information, competing stakeholder demands and tight timeframes bearing down on leaders who are responsible for makingRead… Read more »