Lessons Learned: VA Cloud Email Termination

According to a Federal Computer Week article by Frank Konkel, The Department of Veterans Affairs terminated its five-year, $36 million cloud computing contract for email and calendaring services with HP Enterprise Services. Citing a material change in the agency’s requirements, VA officials declined to elaborate on the requirement changes that were actually made. Although IRead… Read more »

Mental health dialogues happening tomorrow in Sacramento and Albuquerque

This Saturday, community members in ‪‎Sacramento‬ and ‪Albuquerque‬ are coming together to discuss mental health topics and identify priorities. Not in CA or NM? Follow @MentalHealthCCS or join the online dialogue at www.theciviccommons.com/mentalhealth. A bit about the project… An important component of the National Dialogue for Mental Health, “Creating Community Solutions” is a series ofRead… Read more »

Contract Duplication Remains a Cost Drag on the Federal Acquisition System

Contract duplication increases bid and proposal, administration and management costs for government and industry. Last summer the Coalition issued a summary report highlighting the results of a survey conducted among our member firms regarding contract duplication costs. The report was subsequently provided to the Department of Defense (DoD), the General Services Administration (GSA) and theRead… Read more »

Contingent Commitments

During the course of a month I go to several meeting and events which require advance registration (RSVP). I usually work the registration desk and find that between 20% to 40% are no shows – registered to come but do not make it. Several people have shared their disappointment in the number of people whoRead… Read more »

4 Tips on Fostering Diversity and Inclusion

To continue the discussion on diversity, the Department of the Interior hosted an event to elaborate on the tactical implementation of agency’s Inclusive Workplace Strategy. This event served as a follow-up to last week’s Diversity and Inclusion Leadership in the 21st Century put on by the Partnership for Public Service. The talk consisted of aRead… Read more »

Do we still need Training Conferences?

Yes! I just returned from the Association of Government Accountant’s (AGA) annual Professional Development Conference (PDC). With all the scrutiny on conference spending, I thought it would be interesting to go through a quick run down of what’s new and what’s changed since the last AGA PDC in order to help address the question ofRead… Read more »

iCohere Education Series Webinar: Virtual Peer Learning Case Study, August 8

iCohere Education Series Webinar This webinar is free for government employees. Thursday, August 8, 11:00am to Noon Eastern Peer learning can be particularly effective for government agencies, where the need for expertise is strong, yet training and development resources are limited. In this live interactive webinar, participants will hear about the purpose and benefits ofRead… Read more »

Weekly Round-up: July 19, 2013

Gadi Ben-Yehuda Last week, GSA OK’ed Instagram, this week, FedTech rounds up “7 Federal Agencies That Have Embraced Vine.” As FastCoExist reports on a citizenship app, ReadWrite discusses “citizen developers“ On HowTo.Gov, Justin Herman invites fellow federalistas to the SocialGov Summit. Dan Chenok GSA focuses more emphasis on strategic sourcing. Progress on Cyber Executive Order.Read… Read more »

Yet Another Study Showing Tax Breaks Do Not Create Jobs

Study after study shows that tax breaks and other government incentives do not create the number of jobs that are promised in return for such funding. The latest study to prove this point is by the New York State Authorities Budget Office. As reported in the Buffalo News: “Back in 2008, the industrial development agenciesRead… Read more »