Former Governor West’s Valentine to Future Oregonians

Oregon owes its public beaches to decision by Oswald West 100 years ago By Lori Tobias, The Oregonian on February 13, 2013 MANZANITA – Have you thanked Oswald West lately?Assuming you’re like most Oregonians, you’ve strolled Oregon’s beaches a time or two. You’ve explored the tide pools, watched the surfers, combed the sand for anRead… Read more »

The Two-P Syndrome*

When it comes to fixing things around the house, I range between Unconscious and Conscious Incompetence depending on the task, (or the prior evening’s indulgences). Recently, while standing in the checkout line of my local Home Depot, (for the second time that day), I looked at the guy behind me and said “What is itRead… Read more »

14 Feb CTOvision Podcast

By Bob Gourley In this podcast we offer assessments on two coming events of high interest, the 7 March Government Big Data Forum and the 8-10 April DIA Worldwide Mission Conference. We also offer context on these stories: Important Observations on Pentagon IT from Arthur Herman and John Scott and Joint Information Environment – IncrementRead… Read more »

FedGeo Day 2013: The Conference for Open Source Geo Applications

FedGeo Day is a new conference focusing on modern, open source geospatial tools being used in and around the federal government. In recent history the mapping space has been transformed, with open source applications powering rapid advancement in web mapping, cartography, and GIS. New tools now exist that are powerful, open, and allow you toRead… Read more »

Counting “Likes” and “Followers”: Social Networking Data and the Nat’l Library of Medicine

Companies and agencies are data obsessed. With the big data boom came the desire to leverage data in countless ways. Organizations began with analyzing their own data, but now the goal is to collect droves of information from outside sources, and in many cases, hiring companies to do it for them. Libraries are doing thisRead… Read more »

Heroes of Excellence

Excellence.gov Awards were created to recognize government programs that provide substantive improvements in government activities. But that is not the whole story – At a time when government employees were singled out at the cause for everything wrong in the world, we felt that it was important to put faces on the great things thatRead… Read more »

Odds & Ends

The First Rule of Brainstorming: Suspend Disbelief This interview with Kon Leong, co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies, an e-mail and file archiving company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Tell me about some important leadership lessons you’ve learned. A. One of my early jobs was selling computer hardware. What IRead… Read more »

How to Improve your Scores on the Federal Employees Viewpoint Survey

Thought you might be interested in this article I wrote regarding how to improve your scores on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey: The results of the latest government-wide Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey have been released. Over 687,000 federal employees completed the FEVS survey, and according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (PDF): The 2012Read… Read more »