It’s amazing how expensive something as simple as benefit checks can be. The Treasury Department is getting ready to stop mailing government benefits to citizens in check form and, instead, switching to electronic payments. In a blog posted this morning, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said this will save $300 million over the first five years, and more than $120 million each following year. But what about those who don’t have a bank account, or who don’t want to use direct deposit? Orszag said they’ll get their benefits through Treasury’s Direct Express debit cards. He said this change will benefit…
Monthly Archives: June, 2010
This is why you don’t let anyone follow you into the building without proper identification. A group of thieves is targeting office buildings in northern Virginia, including sensitive federal offices, the Atlantic reported today.
The fireworks might come a week early for President Obama’s interagency task force on small business contracting. The group, formed in April, will hold a public meeting June 28 to discuss ways to get small businesses more involved in federal contract opportunities. Given the recent grumbling about Obama’s acquisition reforms and their impact on smaller firms, some might see this as an opportunity to vent their frustrations. The public meeting announcement emphasized “removing barriers to small business participation” as one of the task force’s goals, but there’s a strong argument to be made that the administration has added significant barriers…
Federal employees will be able to take leave to attend to their sick or deceased domestic partners beginning July 14, under final regulations issued today by the Office of Personnel Management. Feds also will be able to take up to 13 days of sick leave to care for their domestic partners or their partners’ parents, children or grandchildren. And agencies will be able to advance feds up to 13 days of sick leave if they are out of leave. Take note that these changes will apply equally to both unmarried heterosexual and homosexual domestic partnerships. The Obama administration recently extended long…
Call it “Halo: Kandahar.” The Army is looking for ideas from the private sector on how to build a “virtual world” for training soldiers. But the requirements the Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command outlined in its June 2 request for information don’t sound that different from many popular Playstation or Xbox video games. The Army wants the game to contain highly complex, interactive environments that precisely recreate real-world terrain “on a 1:1 scale,” changing weather conditions, basic physics and collision detection, and realistic vehicles and weapons. And the virtual world should be able to handle 10,000 players and in-game…
The 31-story Peachtree Summit Federal Building in downtown Atlanta was evacuated yesterday after mailroom workers flagged a suspicious package that turned out to be a decorative egg. Federal Protection Service authorities ordered the evacuation just before noon Tuesday after a routine X-ray spotted what appeared at first to be a grenade inside the package. The suspicious item later turned out to be a Fabergé-like egg. About 1,900 federal employees from the IRS, Social Security Administration and other agencies work at the building, which also contains a daycare center. Employees were allowed to return to the building about an hour and…
The General Services Administration has tapped an industry expert to serve in the newly created career position of chief greening officer. Eleni Reed, director of sustainability strategies at property management firm Cushman and Wakefield, will oversee green building programs and strategies across GSA’s inventory of 9,600 owned and leased facilities, the agency announced Tuesday. While at Cushman and Wakefield, Reed led the effort to enhance the environmental performance of the firm’s portfolio of U.S.-managed properties. She played a key role in develping a memorandum of understanding between the firm and the Environmental Protection Agency aimed at enhancing energy efficiency, cutting water use…
So let’s say you’re sitting around on a Saturday afternoon, thinking, “Well shucks, I’d sure like to finally get around to solving America’s national debt problem today, but I’m really starting to get a little soft in the middle … maybe I should go outside and get some exercise instead.” We’ve all been there, right? Well, worry no more: Budgetball is here! Budgetball is, no lie, “an active sport of quick passes, tough defense, and bold comebacks designed to increase awareness of the national debt and reward strategic thinking and collaborative problem-solving around the issues of fiscal responsibility.”
You may have seen the music video for OK Go’s song “This Too Shall Pass.” But what you probably don’t know is that the amazing, extended Rube Goldberg device that is its centerpiece was partly designed by a few engineers and staffers at NASA’ Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL engineers Mike Pauken and Heather Knight, planetary scientist Eldar Noe Dobrea, and intern Chris Becker joined forces with Syyn Labs, a group of engineers who “twist together art and technology” and were tapped to build OK Go’s machine. The results — featuring dominos, a falling piano, a Mars rover, and a TV showing the band’s…
Wired magazine reported today that a new bill from Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, currently in draft form, would give the government broad powers to take over responsibility for civilian networks in case of an “imminent cyber threat.” It’s commendable that legislators are thinking about private networks while making contingency plans for a massive cyber attack. Protecting government IT systems isn’t enough — the vast majority of the country’s infrastructure in this area lies in private hands. From the Wired report: “These emergency measures are supposed to remain in place for no more than 30 days. But they can be…