Monthly Archives: March, 2011

Whatever your take on the Obama administration, it has undeniably created a lot of web sites. Enough, in fact, that the White House  has launched a new portal to help you find your way to all those other sites. The portal, www.whitehouse.gov/goodgovernment, debuted yesterday and is billed as an online path “to tools and data that connect citizens to their government and improve their everyday lives.” On it, you can easily find all your old favorites: White House visitor logs, the IT Dashboard, and data.gov, along with new offerings like FOIA.gov. It also includes the public schedules for both President…

The Government Accountability Office on March 9 upheld a protest challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s multimillion-dollar contract with CACI to integrate financial management systems. CACI was awarded up to $450 million worth of work on Nov. 19 to support the department’s troubled Transformation and Systems Consolidation program, which required the company to consolidate financial, acquisition and asset management systems across the department. Competitors – Global Computer Enterprises and Savantage Financial Services – protested the award with GAO about a week later. GAO upheld GCE’s protest but dismissed Savantage’s, according to a GAO decision released Wednesday. GCE argued that DHS…

The Defense Department Inspector General released a summary of a recent investigation into contracts awarded to the International Oil Trading Company (IOTC), which provides fuel to the military in Iraq by using supply routes through Jordan. According to the report, contract officers at the Defense logistics Agency, which handles energy/fuel procurement for DOD, did not have accurate data to compare against other contracts and ended up overpaying. By a lot. With total contracts valued at $2.7 billion, it added up. According to the report: “We calculate that DLA Energy paid IOTC about $160 to $204 million (or 6 to 7…

Attentive (and we mean really attentive) Fedline readers might remember a post from last month about the apparent disconnect of the Office of Personnel Management’s charging the U.S. Postal Service more for its current pension contributions at the same time the Obama administration is proposing a big refund to the Postal Service on past contributions. We’d asked OPM for comment and finally received an answer yesterday.  So, in the interest of thoroughness, we’re rerunning the original Feb. 22 post, with  the OPM response appended verbatim. Here’s an intriguing nugget from the U.S. Postal Service’s latest quarterly report: Even as the Obama…

After a five-year stint at NASA, Chris Kemp is stepping down as the space agency’s chief technology officer. In a blog post Monday, Kemp said “deciding to leave NASA has not been easy, and is something I’ve been struggling with for the past few months.” About a month ago, I mentioned to one of my mentors that “it’s a very difficult time to be an entrepreneur at NASA.”  She responded “is it ever a good time to be an entrepreneur at NASA?” Reflecting on this, I realized that most of my accomplishments at NASA were not at Headquarters, but out…

Federal executives from across government are reaching out to younger feds through an online video project launched this week by Fedscoop. Chief information and technology officers from the Veteran Affairs, Justice and Agriculture departments are among the IT executives who will appear weekly on fedscoop.com/fedmentors in a series of one to two-minute videos. In the video interviews, executives offer career advice, insight about their first government jobs and updates on their current work. This week’s featured mentor is Dave McClure, associate administrator for the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services & Innovative Technologies. McClure said among his office’s top priorities are expanding…

Two years after President Obama pledged a new dawning of governmental sunshine, barely half of 90 federal agencies say they’ve made concrete changes in their handling of Freedom of Information Act requests, according to survey findings released Sunday. While 49 agencies reported changes to their FOIA processes, the remainder either said they had no information or did not respond to the Knight Open Government Survey. In a similar round-up last year, only 13 agencies reported changes, so this year’s numbers reflect a large uptick. Still, “at this rate, the president’s first term in office will be over by the time federal agencies…

Whether the event is a dinner party or a rock concert, everyone knows that seating arrangements can be a touchy subject. But at a congressional witness table? That, though, was a not insignificant issue at a House oversight subcommittee hearing Friday. The session, dedicated to open government efforts, featured two panels. The first was made up of transparency advocates and federal departmental officials; the second featured just one person, Office of Management and Budget Controller Danny Werfel. The reason–as an agency spokeswoman later confirmed–is that OMB will not allow its staff to testify alongside people from outside the government. While…

Apparently, there is much spin going on in the wake of our story on Wednesday that the Postal Service is cutting its workforce by 30,000 positions this year. The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe said he was told by postal officials that this is not correct. Let’s be clear: There was nothing incorrect about our coverage and I stand by it. Not only that, you can see for yourself exactly what was said. Federal Times reported this story directly from an editorial board meeting we held with Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe on March 9. Donahoe said his goal is to downsize…

Contrary to popular report, Jeffrey Zients is not leaving the Office of Management and Budget for a top job in the Commerce Department, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. “Jeff is staying here,” the OMB representative, Moira Mack, said in an email. President Obama asked Zients, she said, “to take a hard look at how we can better organize federal programs and functions to boost our nation’s competitiveness and that is where he is focused.” Zients has been OMB’s deputy director for management since mid-2009, and also carries the title of federal chief performance officer. But his name has lately hit the…