President Obama last week appointed Health and Human Services Chief Technology Officer Todd Park to oversee technology innovation across the federal government. Park will fill the position of federal CTO, left vacant by Aneesh Chopra in January. In his new role, Park will work with federal Deputy CTO for Telecommunications Tom Power to ensure the adoption of innovative technologies that support job creation, access to affordable healthcare, open government and other administration priorities. “Todd Park has demonstrated a remarkable talent for enlisting innovative technologies to modernize government, reduce waste, and make government information more accessible to the public,” Obama said…
Monthly Archives: March, 2012
The American Federation of Government Employees today dug up a gem of a recruitment video from its archives. Behold: “AFGE and Me.” It’s got literally everything one could hope for. Saxophone riffs paired with footage of union members playing a cheap toy sax. Elephants and horse-riding Border Patrol agents. Hawaiian shirts. Astronauts. Little kids. And best of all, a maddeningly addictive earworm of a chorus. It looks and sounds 80’s-tastic, but AFGE spokesman Tim Kauffman says it was actually made around 1994. So, who wants to make the inevitable dubstep remix?
You may soon have an additional option to consider as you approach retirement age: retiring part-time and working part-time at your current federal job. Courtesy Goodyear, Ariz. The Senate approved an amendment that would authorize the use of phased retirements for retirement-eligible feds. Under a phased retirement, a fed can work part-time — say, one, two, three or four days a week — and collect a partial retirement annuity for the time he or she is not working. And, throughout that time, the fed continues to earn partial retirement benefits. These proposed phased retirements, which President Obama proposed in his…
Federal program managers may be breathing a little easier this afternoon after the Senate killed an amendment that would have ordered the Obama administration to zap at least $10 billion from this year’s budget. Although the provision, sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., received a simple majority of 52 votes, that total fell short of the 60-vote supermajority needed to add it to a highway spending bill. Under the amendment, the Office of Management and Budget would have had to use its administrative authority to “eliminate, consolidate and streamline” duplicative and overlapping programs singled out by the Government Accountability Office…
A revamped version of the government’s information technology tracking website released Tuesday provides granular details about investments and allows users to view funding by bureau and services provided. The three-year-old website, called the IT Dashboard, uses data from agencies’ budget submissions, investment data and evaluations by the chief information officers to track the health of federal IT projects. “By publicly posting data on more than 700 IT investments across the Federal government, we armed agencies with the tools needed to reduce duplication in IT spending, strengthen the accountability of agency CIOs, and provide more accurate and detailed information on projects…
The U.S. Postal Service signaled today that it will suspend mail processing plant closures starting Aug. 31 “to avoid any adverse impact on the November election.” The freeze will last until early next year, according to a news release, and comes after some state election officials had reacted with alarm to the possible disruption to vote-by-mail balloting. But today’s announcement also raises the odds that the planned downsizing (in which 223 of 461 processing plants would ultimately be closed or consolidated for a predicted savings of more than $2 billion annually) will be shelved for the rest of this year.…
Sen. Tom Carper is not happy with the Postal Regulatory Commission. More evidence of that fact emerged during yesterday’s confirmation hearing for Tony Hammond, nominated for another term on the five-member oversight body. The session before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee lasted less than an hour; Hammond, a Missouri Republican who has served on the commission for most of the last decade, is likely to win easy Senate approval for another six-year stint. But Carper, D-Del., took the occasion to ask again why the agency can’t move faster in issuing advisory opinions on proposed changes to national…
Former Harris Corp. executive Barclay Butler has been appointed director of the DoD/VA Interagency Program Office (IPO), which oversees the agencies’ integrated electronic health record project and other joint initiatives. Barclay, who served as vice president of healthcare operations for Harris’ Falls Church, Va., office, started work at the joint office on Feb. 27, DoD announced Tuesday. David Wennergren, DoD’s assistant deputy chief management officer, had been serving as interim director since July. The director position required approval from VA and DoD secretaries. As director, Barclay is also the program executive for the iEHR and the health portion of the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) initiative, according to a…
For feds tired of the daily commute in and around Washington (as well as traffic choke points around the country) Telework Week has grown increasingly popular. Run by the Telework Exchange and held annually, feds pledge to telework at least part of the week. Last year there were about 40,000 pledges to telework while this year the number has increased to more than 66,000. Here are some more tips provided by the Telework Exchange. 66,688 Total number of pledges $5,301,811 Total amount saved by teleworking during Telework Week 6,453,604 Number of pounds of pollutants saved during Telework Week 3,226.80 Number…
The General Services Administration has selected Hewlett-Packard to help manage its USAccess program, which provides identity credentials to more than 500,000 federal employees and contractors. Under the one-year contract, which has a $47 million ceiling, Managed Service Office will use an HP technology solution to help manage the delivery of Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials to federal agencies, according to HP. PIV cards issued through the GSA program meet the Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 12– Policy standards. The 2004 order by President George W. Bush said all employees and contractors must have a common ID card including a photo and…