On Sunday, Tom Shoop of GovExec’s Fedblog reported that President Obama’s Chief Performance Officer, Jeffrey Zients, will lead the government reorganization effort announced during last week’s State of the Union address. I don’t know about you, but I was ecstatic to see Civil Service reform get a high-profile nod during the address. (Full disclosure: IRead… Read more »
I haven’t always wanted to make a career in public administration. It’s been the furthest thing from my mind for most of my adult life, even. For most of my undergraduate schooling I had no clue as to what my future might hold. I knew I had a talent for communication in its various forms,Read… Read more »
[Note: cross-posted from cpsrenewal.ca] [Photo: my father Rick and my son Kohl, taken back in June 2008] At the last #w2p mixer (an unofficial social event in Ottawa for Government of Canada Web 2.0 Practitioners) a colleague asked me “What drives you?”. I replied that I cared in the movement in a general sense; thatRead… Read more »
For the longest time, one quote from the movie “Gladiator” keeps coming back to me again and again. But until recently I haven’t figured how it applies in todays environment. The quote is this, “Today I saw a slave become more powerfulthan the emperor of Rome. The gods have spared me? I am at theirRead… Read more »
I read somewhere that the (median) average age of entry into the Canadian federal public service is 34 years old. That fits me reasonably well; this is my second career. For my first 10 years of “professional” employment I was a social worker, and my speciality was child and adolescent mental health. It was theRead… Read more »
As naive as it sounds, I really do think the way to be above all the criticism is to do the best work you know to do. Most all of my fellow workers are dedicated public servants who take their jobs seriously. I find the caliber of people in my department to be comparable ifRead… Read more »
I was talking to a co-worker about our office’s reconfiguration plans, which involve merging divisions and training employees to handle a wider variety of customer needs. It’s a nice plan, and it is likely to benefit our customers by removing the layers they have to dig through to get to the services they need. InRead… Read more »
What South Korea, Oman, and Slovenia can teach us about Gov 2.0 GovLoop inspires me. The idea of a network of people working to make governance more transparent, more effective, more efficient has an energizing effect. I’m glad to be a part of it, and know you are too. We’re a part of something biggerRead… Read more »
Greetings! Steve Ressler and I are pleased to announce the release of our first ebook entitled, “I Am Public Service: Great Work in Our Own Words.” The book highlights and honors – in their own words – the great work of 34 public servants. In the ebook, you’ll read stories about people like: Vladimir Diaz:Read… Read more »