By Lyttleton Shurland, CPIC Analyst The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has required Federal agencies to adopt a “Cloud First” approach to evaluating options for new IT deployments. This was born out of the 25 Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management by Vivek Kundra, who was the US Chief Information OfficerRead… Read more »
Both technology manufacturers and resellers will compete under a potential 10-year, $20 billion government-wide information technology contract vehicle run by a National Institutes of Health office, the Washington Post reported Sunday. Marjorie Censer writes that NIH’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center intends to award 50 contracts under the Chief Information Officer-Commodities and Solutions programRead… Read more »
By Cynthia Zieman, CFCM Imagine this scenario. Your acquisition lead time is quickly slipping. Time is running short to develop your solicitation documents, which could jeopardize meeting the target project completion date. What do you do? It’s likely that you don’t start entirely from scratch on a completely blank page. Do you pull the lastRead… Read more »
By Tony Carr, Program Manager, Binary Group. One of the country’s most beloved pastimes is upon us – NFL football. While the winning and losing teams are being decided, I can’t help but think how Government agencies are a lot like football teams. The ones that win at mission success do it as a teamRead… Read more »
Sometimes it is refreshing to look at how other countries approach the challenge of measuring and managing performance in their governments. Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a World Bank seminar where the Secretary of Performance Management for the Government of India described how his country is doing it. Background. In June 2009,Read… Read more »
By Mike Ipsaro, PMP, CCE/A In this time of tight budgets and mandates to do more or the same with less, the need for innovation is greater than ever. This is the case wherever you add value to your organization, including acquisition. Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Effect, talks about intersections as “the placeRead… Read more »
Non-profits, foundations, and universities are enthused by government’s growing interest in the use of evidence and evaluation. They are chiming in with either support for government initiatives or undertaking their own initiatives. Some non-profits and foundations are advocates for the use of evidence-based decision-making in different policy arenas, while others advocate use of different toolsRead… Read more »
The federal government is not the sole player in the growing movement toward the use of evidence and evaluation in the policy decision-making process. While the federal government is undertaking a number of evidence-based program initiatives, the “moneyball government” movement is broader, encompassing initiatives at the state, local, and even international levels. Examples of State-LevelRead… Read more »
OMB’s guidance to agencies on the development of their FY 2015 budgets promises that “OMB will issue a separate memo at a later date that encourages the increased use of evidence and evaluation, including rigorous testing of innovative strategies to build new knowledge of what works.” This encouragement comes on top of a foundation alreadyRead… Read more »
Policymakers are fixated on short-term budget austerity measures such as furloughs, pay freezes, and conference and travel spending. However, there is a small, but growing effort to take a longer, more strategic look at how to manage austerity by finding what works and targeting dollars there instead of to programs that cannot demonstrate effectiveness. ThisRead… Read more »