Sterling Whitehead

The question shouldn’t be “How do you trust your employees to telework?”. Rather, it should be, “Why should you not trust your employees to telework?”. If you hired and trust your employees in the workplace, you should trust them enough to do the work outside the workplace. It’s a manager issue, not an employee issue.

A replacement or vast upgrade for DOD’s Standard Procurement System (SPS). It’s the DOD-wide contract writing system. It’s pretty ancient now (came out in 1999). While it gets upgrades, it wasn’t designed for the next-generation workspace — i.e., tablets using touch-screen interface.

Look at government sites open to the public like:
1) fpds.gov
2) fbo.gov

While it rubs me the wrong way to do this, I would support it with the restriction that all funding be directed at paying off the federal debt.

Audrey, if it’s not too late, align you MPA electives with areas of growing (not shrinking) concern to the federal government. One area of growing concern are cyber (including technical skills and policy) through agencies like NSA and Homeland Security; expect lots of those jobs to be in Maryland. After Hurricane Sandy, you can bet disaster…[Read more]

Brian, I sympathize with your situation. It’s not easy getting into the “system”. The best advice I ever received is stop bothering with online applications until you are told to apply. It’s demoralizing and most likely a waste of time. Even with more experience and education, you’re going up against possibly hundreds of applicants, many who are…[Read more]

Agreed — the conflict of interest issue is the big area. It’s where you’re trained and therefore where you income potential is, but you can’t use it. Clearly, there should be restrictions. However, it seems there should be some reasonable middle ground given there are no raises these days. The thing is, I just don’t see where the middle ground is.

Remember The Milk. Hands down. Since I’ve used it, my procurements are far more likely to be under schedule.

Yes, raise it to $5000 and have it automatically adjusted on an annual basis according to inflation. Take it a step further and increase the certified cost or pricing data threshold from $700,000 to at least $1M and it adjusted on an annual basis according to inflation as well. All contracting thresholds should be adjusted on a basis like this and…[Read more]

I can’t attend any event this year with the word “conference” (unless on my own time) in it b/c of the scandal. The words “seminar” and “training event” are also being scrutinized by leadership.