Developing APIs and the Digital Government Strategy: Is Your Agency Prepared to Create New Software?

Yesterday, the third session of Howto.gov’s (managed by GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies and the Federal Web Managers Council) 8-part series on APIs aired. These free, online discussions aim to inform and inspire agencies nationwide to get their data online and develop APIs to make life easier internally and externally. This sessionRead… Read more »

Registration is now open for AABPA Continuing Resolutions Program on Sept. 27!

Register Here Continuing Resolutions: CRs in a Nutshell Thursday, September 27, 2012 12:00-1:00 PM National Place Complex, Room 720 1331 Pennsylvania Ave NW –Use the entrance on F St between 13th and 14th Streets Guest Speaker: Judy Thomas, Budget Methods Specialist, Budget Concepts Branch, Office of Management and Budget Budget pressures are increasing the demandRead… Read more »

Book announcement: “Studying Social Networks”

I am happy to announce a new book “Studying Social Networks”. I was honored to be a co-author on this book with Marina Hennig, Ulrik Brandes, and Juergen Pfeffer who took on a leading role publishing the book. It’s available on Amazon.com in February 2013 and will be distributed by Chicago University Press. In EuropeRead… Read more »

Make Your Voice Heard! Get Involved with Voices of AFGE 2012!

IMPORTANT: Federal employees should not access the www.voicesofafge2012.org website or send links or materials from this website with a government computer, on duty time or while on federal property. To do so would be a violation of the Hatch Act. Attacks on government workers and the vital services you provide are at an all-time highRead… Read more »

RFP-EZ: What We’re Thinking

Hi All — We’ve been working hard on RFP-EZ trying to come up with a system that really works for all the parties involved in small contracting. We’d love your feedback on our general thoughts so far, which are here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nm9k5do801umh2u/RFP-EZ%20Product%20Documentation.doc It’s a loose spec of the various products we intend to build, but subjectRead… Read more »

6 Pitfalls to Workforce Planning: The Fifth and Sixth Pitfalls

The first four pitfalls have been covered. Now it’s time to share the last two, and most likely pitfalls of all … Pitfall No. 5: Running Out of Steam; and Pitfall lNo. 6: Planning for the Wrong Skill Sets Regarding Pitfall No. 5: It should not escape the astute reader that sharing these last twoRead… Read more »

The Goverment Man Talks About the GSA Scandal (Again) and the Inspector General – Some Fun Stuff

My last few blogs departed from the fun stuff from Confessions and shifted to some caustic commentary about the GSA scandal with just a few barbs pointed at the Office of the Inspector General. My You Tube videos did the same. Given the recent well-publicized and hard to justify midnight raid on someone’s hotel room,Read… Read more »

Online Training: 5 Takeaways from a Social Learning Experiment

This summer, GovLoop hosted its first ever multi-week social online training, called “Your Path to Leadership: Mastering Core Competencies to Get Ahead in Government.” The course examined 10 traits of a great leader, each of which corresponded to one of the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs) of the Senior Executive Service (SES). The course consisted ofRead… Read more »

We Need Publicly Financed Elections

The fact that Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has $1 million dollars in his campaign war chest is good news for the mayor but bad news for the citizens of Buffalo. It means there will not be a real election for mayor of Buffalo next year. No challenger will be able to compete in a significantRead… Read more »

The Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard Institute is a well-respected organization that has a popular method for measuring organizational effectiveness. I’m going to work on building its lessons into my office. The basic idea behind the Balanced Scorecard comes from its creators, Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” AccordingRead… Read more »