A coffee, a run, meditation…. We all need one thing to get our brains working early in the morning. For me, it’s a long, scalding hot shower. But as a native of California, which is experiencing one of the most severe droughts in the state’s history, my long morning shower is a thing of theRead… Read more »
Every year Arkansas Chief Technology Officer, Claire Bailey and her team, create an IT strategic plan. It’s sort of like the wish list kids leave in their stockings for Santa Claus. It contains all the priorities and initiatives the state wants to tackle in the upcoming year and where they are going to need help.Read… Read more »
With the stagnant economy, cost control has become the new mantra of every business. Businesses are deploying various strategies to contain costs and maintain profitability. Amongst such strategies is control and visibility into spending with external suppliers. Spend analytics is the process of aggregating, cleansing, and analyzing corporate spending data for the purpose of reducingRead… Read more »
Improper payments are always an area of concern for the federal government. These include overpayments, underpayments, payments made to ineligible recipients, or even payments that weren’t properly documented. While fraudulent payments are considered improper, not all improper payments are the result of fraud. For example, improper payments can be a result of mismanagement, errors, orRead… Read more »
It was great to see the recent blog of US General Services Administration (GSA) CIO Sonny Hashmi in which he establishes “open source first” as an agency policy: “Simply put, any solution developed using taxpayer dollars should be in the taxpayer’s domain (open source). At GSA, we believe that all code we developed should beRead… Read more »
Did you ever play the game telephone as a kid? It was one of my favorite games, because no matter how hard you tried, the message always got muddled somewhere along the way. Messages from government leaders can also run the risk of a telephone-esque misunderstanding. In the Best Places to Work in the FederalRead… Read more »
Performance-based budgeting or budgeting for outcomes (BFO) has taken center stage and not in the best light. Earlier this summer, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) introduced the world to BFO — the idea of linking spending to performance — and showed how unrealistic goals, inadequately managed performance measurement systems and improperly used, inaccurate dataRead… Read more »
Stocks had to endure a Fed policy statement and the July jobs report this past week and the result was 2% or more declines in the indices. Neither seemed to be the direct culprit of the selling, but rather the combination of geopolitical events and weakness in Europe seemed to finally take its toll onRead… Read more »
“Emotional intelligence.” The phrase conjures the image of a therapist and a couch, but in reality being more emotionally intelligent you can help relieve stress, help you communicate effectively, help you empathize with others, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict. Being emotionally intelligent is one of the keys to mastering your career. Don’t believe the hype?Read… Read more »
This week the Federal Times reported that federal hiring is now at its lowest level in almost 10 years, with just about every agency seeing drastic drops in new employees. The Times also reported that the federal government has shrunk by nearly 70,000 employees over the same time period, as more employees quit or retire.Read… Read more »