How To: Obtain a Contracting Job in the Federal Government (GS-1102 series)

Times have never been worse, yet never better for obtaining a position in the Federal Government as a “contract specialist” commonly referred to as a GS-1102. My name is Robert Knauer. I am a certified professional contracts manager, certified professional purchasing official, and federally certified at the highest level (Level III) in contracts. I retiredRead… Read more »

VPS Hack Day Returns on 18 Nov

VPS Hack Day is an initiative under the VPS Government 2.0 Action Plan. Teams turn up on the day for an intense hack session to devise and build applications and mashups using Victorian Government data. Some really cool stuff came out of the first VPS Hack Day held last year. More info @ http://go.vic.gov.au/qqXTfm. FollowRead… Read more »

An ADDITIONAL Day Off With Pay For Social Security Employees

From GovExec: Social Security employees get bonus Thanksgiving holiday By Emily Long October 25, 2010 Social Security Administration employees this year will receive an extra day off to celebrate Thanksgiving, according to a report from Federal News Radio‘s Mike Causey. SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue told nonemergency employees they do not have to report to workRead… Read more »

The next steps in cyber security

Did you know this is the seventh annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month? Get out your protective gear and we’ll relate what we learned about cyber security from Gigi Schumm of Symantec at FedTalks 2010. If you go back seven years ago to 2003 the big viruses were blaster and slammer. In those olden daysRead… Read more »

Curbing tax expenditure addiction through procedural change

My organization (Citizens for Tax Justice) released a new report today describing how to reform the ways in which the Legislative and Executive Branches deal with “tax expenditures” (or special tax breaks). The reforms discussed within the report (such as performance reviews, sunsets, caps, changes to the committee system, etc) would serve as a usefulRead… Read more »

Does Social Media Really Matter to HR?

This morning, HCI Blogger Hillary Roberts asked, “Has the endless debate between risk mitigators and cheerleaders left HR confused about how social media should be used by your organization?” After surveying over 800 HR specialists, the Human Capital Institute wondered what social media sites were favored by HR professionals and how were they used toRead… Read more »

Getting To Seamless

In my last post, I set out a comment from a speaker at a recent event held at NASA. The quote was: “The future of Open Government is allowing seamless conversations to occur between thousands of government employees and thousands of others.” I think this is what we are now calling a network. In thisRead… Read more »

Project of the Week – LAUNCH: Health…Finally!

This is it! The week we host LAUNCH: Health, the second in our series of sustainability incubators. NASA partnered with USAID, Department of State, and NIKE to create the LAUNCH initiative to identify, showcase and support innovative approaches to global challenges. Through LAUNCH, NASA can host a global conversation about innovative solutions. We’re problem-solvers, afterRead… Read more »

Return on Relationships

This article was originally published on the Tri Tuns Blog. OBSERVATIONIt is a common trap on many IT projects that team members are so focused on ensuring project “success” (typically defined as on-time and on-budget delivery) that team members forget the critical importance of developing and maintaining effective relationships. Ironically, forgoing the relationship building elementsRead… Read more »

Australia’s broadband dilemma

Workers in Australia’s ICT industry have never had it so good – not only has broadband taken its place as a ‘water cooler’ topic, it has brought with it unprecedented levels of investment. But not everyone’s happy. I sat at a roundtable held at the Australian High Commission in Singapore yesterday with a trade delegationRead… Read more »