Leveraging Your Company’s Social Media

GovLoop recently hosted an online training session “Does Government Need an Exit Strategy for Facebook?” that explored ways to increase your organization’s outreach through social media. While the session was jampacked with information, only so much can be explained in 60 minutes – and registrants had many questions that unfortunately went unanswered. But we madeRead… Read more »

Building Stakeholder Relationships via Web Communications

By Lucas Pillman, Implementation Consultant For most public sector organizations, just having a website is not enough when it comes to engaging stakeholders and increasing stakeholder satisfaction. Government communicators need to be constantly driving traffic to that website through multiple channels so that their mission-driven content is consistently being engaged with and used by stakeholders.Read… Read more »

GovHack’s National Prizes – Analysis

I’ve done some work analyzing who actually won the National awards at GovHack based on the official results at govhack.org/2014-winners/, and this is what I’ve discovered…There were 87 National GovHack awards given out to Projects and Teams, with one GovHack subcategory (Best Science Reporting) unawarded. Of these, 66 awards were awarded to Teams for theirRead… Read more »

Cut Out of Your Spouse’s Annuity?

http://www.psretirement.com/cut-out-of-spouses-survivor-annuity/ Federal Retirement Survivor Annuity Eligibility This is a very sad story but true and eye opening. I recently had a woman come to me in tears about having some difficulty receiving herdeceased spouse’s survivor annuity. She said that she had contacted OPM after her husband’s sudden death and was told that she was notRead… Read more »

Phased Retirement’s Debut

http://www.psretirement.com/phased-retirements-debut/ The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued the final regulations on Phased Retirement on August 7, 2014. Phased Retirement will allow full-time employees the opportunity to work part-time while drawing retirement benefits. Phased-retirement debuted as a mentoring tool to preserve the government’s institutional knowledge. As I stated previously, it is a start to something becauseRead… Read more »

TSP Talk Weekly Wrap Up

After a couple of weeks of selling, stocks started to rebound from some extreme oversold conditions last week. The question now is whether we have seen the lows or if this is just a relief rally. Geopolitical events are still playing catalyst as solid gains on Friday quickly turned into losses when violence was sparkedRead… Read more »

Are You Ready For Some Football?

The GOV LOOP NFL Pool for the 2014-2015 season is officially open! No buy-in, no pay-out, no money involved, just bragging rights for the week and a beautiful metal water bottle prize for most correct picks over the season. While I post the picksheets in the BREAK ROOM group’s NFL POOL discussion, you might wantRead… Read more »

Phased Retirement Annuity

Phased Retirement Annuity One of the incentives offered to gain employee participation in the Phased Retirement program is the more generous annuity at full retirement. Federal annuities are calculated based on years of creditable service and the high-three average salary. Therefore, the longer you work the better things might look in the end for you.Read… Read more »

Duo of Doctors Heal Veterans

Duos Come in all forms and across all trades. Batman and Robin. Simon and Garfunkle. Ben and Jerry. Mork and Mindy. Lewis and Clark. Bert and Ernie. Bauman and Spungen. Haven’t heard of the last duo? Well under their leadership the two doctors have collaborated to study medical consequences of spin cord injuries for overRead… Read more »

Digital Engagement Strategy Series

By John Simpson, Engagement Consultant What should go into your digital engagement strategy can be a complex and organizationally challenging question. The specifics of your own strategy are usually discovered with some internal “soul searching” and by nailing down exactly what public engagement is for you and your leadership. Yet, there are a few basicRead… Read more »