DHS Rule Protects Small Business? Think Again.

Federal Computer Week reported on a proposed change to the Homeland Security Acquisition Regulation, the supplement to the Federal Acquisition Regulation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in order to help small businesses fend off rapacious primes contractors from “windfall” payments on Time and Materials contracts. “Help” like this is not desired by smallRead… Read more »

DC Workers Repaid Furlough Days, Thanks to AFGE District 14

District 14 National Vice President Dwight Bowman (pictured) and AFGE led the charge to ensure D.C. government employees were reimbursed for furlough days. District of Columbia government workers will finally be getting paid for the furlough days that they were forced to take last year thanks to efforts by the American Federation of Government EmployeesRead… Read more »

The Rise of the Fifth Estate – a good yarn worth reading

This morning I read Greg Jerico’s book ‘The Rise of the Fifth Estate‘ which chronicles the rise of political blogging and social media reporting in Australia. Some of you may remember Greg better as Grog of Grogs Gamut, a blogger and then public servant, known for his detailed analysis of political and sporting matters. HeRead… Read more »

DARPA Opens up for Plan X Proposers’ Day Workshop

On the 27th of September, 2012, DARPA will be holding a one day workshop “in support of the anticipated Broad Agency Announcement for the Plan X.” This workshop will be held in Arlington, VA and offer unclassified and classified sessions. Here is a description of Plan X: “The objective of the Plan X program isRead… Read more »

Weekly Round-up: August 24, 2012

Gadi Ben-Yehuda Start Your Engines! The White House announced the first round of Presidential Innovation Fellows. Of particular interest to me are those working on the MyGov project, which has already launched an IdeaScale component. Now Get to Work! In related news, the White House has also open-sourced its “We the People” platform, so anyoneRead… Read more »

Bankruptcy Warning Signs For NY Local Governments

Since 2010 seven municipalities nation wide have filed for bankruptcy. California has the largest number of municipalities filing for bankruptcy with three. According to several recent reports, many local governments in New York are in serious financial trouble. – Rochester used a one-time, $15 million in state aid to reduce its $40 million deficit thisRead… Read more »

Arguing with the boss

I don’t enjoy arguing with the boss. But, sometimes you have to. The Wall Street Journal‘s Joann Lublin seems to agree: Knowing how to disagree agreeably with higher-ups increases your chances for advancement, career coaches, management consultants and recruiters say. Original post

Big Data Webinar Focused on Use Cases in Government 28 August 2012

On 28 August 2012 Carahsoft will sponsor a webinar on Apache Hadoop use cases in the federal government. I’ll be providing introductory context on several categories of use cases and extracting some broad lessons from those use cases. This scene setter on Big Data use cases will be followed by a dive into Cloudera’s foundationRead… Read more »

Cloud and Shared Services

There has been a push for Shared services adoption across organizations for a while since such services reduce duplication and can result in cost savings. However there have been challenges to proposing and implementing shared services. Shared services initiatives challenges have been related to areas such as resistance to change, start up costs and managementRead… Read more »