A Necessary Contradiction: Merit-Based Systems and Diversity

Merit-based systems have dominated the federal, state and local human resources landscape for decades with the purpose of creating a process of employee advancement and job-seeker selection that is based on individual skills and abilities. The current issue of PA Times includes a press release related to a report (.pdf) published in December of 2009Read… Read more »

Focus on work/life balance could free you from the office

By Dorothy Ramienski Internet Editor Federal News Radio Will your 9 to 5 work schedule soon be a thing of the past? Federal News Radio told you about a recent hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management and the Federal Workforce, where officials from the Office of Personnel Management gave the initialRead… Read more »

As oil leaked, Interior Dept. official rafted with wife

Though the Obama administration has stressed its involvement with the April 20 BP oil spill since “day one,” at least one Interior Department official decided instead to phone it in and go white water rafting in the Grand Canyon with his wife and other officials. Tom Strickland — who serves as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar‘sRead… Read more »

Open Foreste Italiane is Gathering Momentum

Wow – there is a great new article on Ushahidi’s blog about an application I told you all about recently, which encourages crowdsourcing to stop Italian forest fires before they start. This has huge potential to increase community resilience and assist current firespotting efforts in a nonintrusive way. A lovely video by Elena Rapisardi, theRead… Read more »

Free “What is Gov 2.0?” webcast with Tim O’Reilly – May 11

What is the open government revolution and why should technologists care about it? Join Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media founder and CEO, for a discussion about improving efficiency and transparency in government, citizen-government collaboration, and government as a platform. There will be an open question and answer session. For background reading, please see Tim’s “Government asRead… Read more »

The Federal Coach: Housing and Urban Development’s ‘malignant optimist’

This week I interviewed Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who – through leading with ‘malignant optimism’ – tries to instill a culture at HUD that encourages creativity and risk-taking. Q: How can federal employees be better leaders? A: My sister, a psychiatrist, once jokingly diagnosed me as a malignant optimist, completely incurable,Read… Read more »

Web 2.0 and IT

VERY INTERESTING COMMENTARY From the Gartner Blogs Legacy systems are not socially adaptiveMay 5th, 2010 · Author: Mark McDonald Business executives, technologists, academics and journalists marvel at the emerging power of social technologies aka Web 2.0. They see developments in social media as transformational, ushering in a new type of computing – social computing. TheRead… Read more »