Customer Service Design Thinking

To improve how government delivers customer service, agencies must understand how customer experiences work, how expectations are set and met, and how experiences are perceived and remembered. During the NextGen design thinking workshop, Molly Moran, Executive Secretariat’s Research and Design Center, State Department explained how the foundations for how meaningful and valuable experiences are defined,Read… Read more »

Trust: Secret Ingredient to Transform Everything

Author and speaker Barry Rellaford opened the NextGen session “Leading at the Speed of Trust: The Key Leadership Competency of the New, Global Economy quoting the latest Harvard University’s Institute of Politics poll about Millennial’s trust in government. Harvard’s poll showed Millennials, have lost trust in different major public institutions ranging from the President toRead… Read more »

10 Tips for Women and Negotiation

Several months back I reconnected with a UChicago classmate who is total rock star over in the private sector. Lindsey used to help me survive advanced statistics classes and now she is the Vice President of Strategy and Business Development for Goldman Sachs Bank USA. When I say Lindsey is a rock star I meanRead… Read more »

If You Want to Innovate, Collaborate

TaskRabbit began six years ago as an online marketplace where users can outsource small jobs to others in the surrounding community. From buying your dog food, to picking up your dry cleaning, to installing your Ikea furniture, or cleaning your oven, the site contracts out any chore you can imagine. Now an emblem of today’sRead… Read more »

The Double Down Strategy of Contract Management Risk

By Mike Ipsaro, PMP, CCE/A In blackjack, there is a strategy known as doubling down, in which players double their bet to get one more card in addition to their two card hand. Doubling down increases players’ chances of winning, just like risk management increases the chances of success during a contract’s lifecycle. Risk isRead… Read more »

Moving Towards an HIV/AIDS Free Generation

With guest co-blogger Nikhil Prachand, Director of HIV/STI Surveillance at Chicago Department of Public Health The HIV epidemic in our nation is rapidly becoming concentrated among poor, young black and Hispanic men who have sex with men. In Chicago, there are over 25,000 people living with HIV. Approximately 1,000 people are newly diagnosed every year.Read… Read more »

How to Engage in Public-Private Partnerships

We’re blogging from the Next Generation of Government Training Summit. Follow along @NextGenGov and read more blog posts here. Issues of Engagement: As an educator and director of a mentoring program I didn’t realize how difficult it was to foster relationships between Private and Public sectors in the government. I mean, I figured that everyRead… Read more »

Communications Professionals Have 5 Years to Understand Digital, or Become Unemployable

Back in 2009 I started telling communications professionals that they had ten years to understand digital channels and integrate them into their thinking, or there would no longer be jobs for them in the industry. I also blogged about this in February 2010. At the time this was highly confronting to a number of experiencedRead… Read more »

Budgeting 101: What Every Federal Employee Needs to Know about the Budget

He who controls the budget, controls where it’s going. Know the rules and move mountains. Edward Brigham, AABPA Speakers Bureau Coordinator and John Stehle, Senior Analyst for the Government Accountability Office focused on these two concepts during this 101 session on the budget at this year’s NextGenGov Summit in Washington. Ed and John encouraged theRead… Read more »