Long-considered to be the “Oscars” of government service, the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals (Sammies) celebrate the best and brightest of our civil service – men and women who perform real-life acts of heroism away from the camera’s lens. The 2012 Sammies Winners Each day, federal workers are making high-impact contributions to theRead… Read more »
We depend on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure that the medical innovations are safe and effective. Director of Innovate FDA and PEW Health Expert, Kathleen Stratton, has said, “FDA has a critical mission to promote and protect the public health and we should all care about their ability to do that.” ChrisRead… Read more »
Most Americans will tell you that their number 1 issue in this past Presidential election was the economy. So Obama’s contribution to the economic upturn in various cities must have helped him clinch the win, right? Wrong. I read an interesting study on the relationship between votes for Obama and the economy and was surprisedRead… Read more »
I was watching a friend get crushed by his incompetent superior. It seemed inadvertent, unsuccessful, and painful. Actually, incompetent was too strong a word. The superior was overmatched by his environment, and didn’t take appropriate action. I see that happening a lot. Which got me thinking about loyalty. There is an internal efficiency to demonstratingRead… Read more »
By RyanKamauff Led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, with Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures Palo Alto, Calif. (December 5, 2012) – ClearStory Data, a company delivering a new big data solution that makes it simple for business users to find, combine and interactively analyze data from corporate sources and disparate third-party sources, today announcedRead… Read more »
Stop wishing and start asking for what you want It happens to everyone eventually. You don’t get what you want. Maybe it was the pony you really wanted at Christmas or the job promotion that went to a colleague. It really doesn’t matter because it always hurts, not getting what you want. I think mostRead… Read more »
Through the leadership of Mayor Thomas Menino, the city of Boston tracks an extensive amount of data in an effort to answer three questions: 1) What is City government doing?2) How well are we doing it?3) How can we do it better? Since 2010, the City of Boston has created a Performance Management Scorecard forRead… Read more »
On Monday Dec 3rd I attended the Lean Startup Conference. And get this – the first two speakers at the conference – were from the Government! Todd Park on Lean/Agile Government Todd is the CTO of the Federal Government. A lot of what he covered in his talk can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows Key points:Read… Read more »
The current brouhaha over the impending Fiscal Cliff is yet another example of a national culture that waits for crisis before taking action. The irony in this current example is that our political leaders actually created the cliff to force themselves to address this complex economic issue. In other words, because they couldn’t work togetherRead… Read more »
After using all three in a professional setting for a few years, I think these are some general notes that can help new government contract specialists. Phone Negotiations First, I prefer phone negotiations. They’re usually faster than the alternative and don’t give either side much time to delay, meaning neither side overanalyzes its interests toRead… Read more »