Last week, I wrote about a nonprofit group’s recommendations for a successful electronic government. This week, the Chief Information Officers Council is weighing it with its recommendations in a newly released report the council has shared with the Obama transition team. Here are the some of the key recommendations from the CIO Council on how to make e-government successful: Government must tap the power of collaboration both within its own ranks and with citizens. By letting citizens and employees “take what they need†and “share what they know†government can improve effectiveness and efficiency by creating an environment where the most up-to-date…
Monthly Archives: January, 2009
Feds scheduled to work in the Washington area next week could get a four-day weekend, thanks to the inauguration. Monday, Jan. 19 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, for which all federal employees receive a day off. And the following day is Inauguration Day, which is expected to nearly paralyze the nation’s capital. Federal employees who usually work in Washington, Fairfax Co., Va., Arlington Co., Va., Alexandria, Va., Falls Church, Va., Montgomery Co., Md., and Prince George’s Co., Md. will get Jan. 20 off, unless they were scheduled to be on official travel or telework in another location that day.…
Baseball may be the national pastime, but this seems a little extreme. A new report (pdf) from the Justice Department’s inspector general found that a U.S. Marshals lawyer, Joseph Band — who was moonlighting as a statistician for FOX Sports — arranged for the Marshals to escort the limousines of FOX’s baseball announcers (Joe Buck and Tim McCarver) after two 2007 World Series games. They then led McCarver’s limousine out of the Fenway Park area in a two-car motorcade… they had their emergency lights on as they were attempting to work their way out of the immediate area of Fenway…
It’s happened at countless workplaces across the country. Someone, on purpose or by accident, sends an email to the entire office and people start replying…to every person on the list. Inevitably, angry co-workers also start replying to everyone, chiding those who hit “reply-all.†Inboxes overflow with message after message. Annoying yes, but cause for disciplinary action? It could be if you work at the State Department, which was recently hit by a similar scenario that got so bad it nearly crippled the department’s unclassified email system. Now, according to a cable obtained by the Associated Press, senior department officials are…
One of President-elect Barack Obama’s most interesting nominations is Cass Sunstein, his pick to head OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard University law professor and Barack Obama’s pick to head OIRA. We’ll profile him in next Monday’s Federal Times — like I did this week with Nancy Killefer, Obama’s new chief performance officer — but a few early thoughts: Sunstein is a law professor at Harvard University; before that, he taught at the University of Chicago. He’s an old friend of the president-elect from his UChicago teaching days. And he’s written extensively on government regulation,…
I just got off a conference call with Sen. Robert Casey, D-Penn., about his meeting today with Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton. Casey, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that will consider Clinton’s nomination Jan. 13, said he is very pleased with the direction Clinton wants to take State and expects she’ll be easily confirmed. Most of today’s meeting dealt with State’s management, budget and personnel issues, Casey said, which will be among Clinton’s primary concerns. And one of Clinton’s first actions at State will be to elevate management issues to the deputy secretary level.…
Update: Full story here. Starting Jan. 15, new contracts awarded by agencies were supposed to mandate that vendors verify the immigration status of their workers using the Homeland Security Department’s E-Verify system. But Federal Times has learned that the department has decided to postpone the implementation of that requirement until at least Feb. 20 due to a lawsuit filed by five industry groups. Lawrence Lorber, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, which includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tells us that the government was responding to the plaintiffs request for a stay in the rule’s implementation. More to…
President-elect Barack Obama just formally named Dennis Blair and Leon Panetta as his picks to be the next Director of National Intelligence and Director of Central Intelligence, respectively. The choice of Panetta has been especially controversial, since he has no experience inside the intelligence world. In his comments today, Obama said that Panetta, a former White House chief of staff and Office of Management and Budget director, was chosen for his management skills and to restore the CIA’s clout: He has handled intelligence daily at the very highest levels, and time and again he has demonstrated sound judgment, grace under fire…
You’ve probably heard by now that the economy lost 524,000 jobs in December, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was the 12th consecutive month of losses, and it brought 2008’s total job losses to a staggering 2.6 million — the most since 1945. But the employment picture for (most) federal employees isn’t so bleak. The federal government added 79,400 jobs in 2008. What’s remarkable is that, since 1999, the federal government added 182,700 jobs — so half of that growth came in just one year. And with the president-elect declaring yesterday that “only government”…
Thought the presidential race was over? Not quite. The House and Senate met today in a joint session to count and certify the Electoral College votes, formally declaring Barack Obama the 44th president. With Vice President Dick Cheney presiding in one of his last official duties, four pages carried in the two gleaming wooden boxes containing the certificates from each state plus the District of Columbia. California was the first state read in alphabetical order to give votes to Obama, leading to a roar of applause in the House Chamber. When Obama was announced as the winner, the entire Congress…