New guidance from the White House seeks to get agencies to break “bloated, multi-year” projects for information technology acquisitions into more manageable chunks that can be delivered quickly and for less money. Lengthy acquisition and IT development efforts to deliver massive new systems over years lead to projects that wasted billions of dollars and arrived years behind schedule, Joe Jordan, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy administrator, and Steven VanRoekel, the federal chief information officer, said in a June 14 blog post. By the time some projects launched, technology was obsolete, the officials wrote. The guidance is meant to show IT, acquisition, finance and…
Monthly Archives: June, 2012
The Defense Department’s mobile device strategy released Friday outlines key priorities for speeding secure adoption of government-issued and employee-owned smarthphones and tablet computers. In the strategy, DoD chief information officer Teri Takai said the department will: – Improve wireless access and capabilities to support voice, video and data sharing via mobile devices. This includes evolving DoD’s virtual private network technologies and addressing bandwidth limitations. – Create mobile policies and standards. DoD will define acceptable use of personally-owned devices and acceptable personal use of DoD’s devices. – Promote the development and use of DoD and web-enabled mobile applications. “This strategy provides the foundation…
An online petition to extend federal health care benefits to seasonal wildland firefighters is spreading like … well … wildfire. John Lauer, a temporary firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, and thousands of his colleagues aren’t eligible for the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan because they only work for the government six months out of each year. But those six months are extremely busy — Lauer and other firefighters usually work 16-hour shifts each day — and dangerous. And when medical misfortune strikes a firefighter’s family, it can be devastating. Lauer said his godson Rudy — the son of a…
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., is confident the Senate will consider his controversial cybersecurity bill within the next month. Whether he has garnered enough support among divided lawmakers is another issue. “I’m as confident as I can be that this will come up no later than July,” Lieberman told reporters at one of two cyber briefings by the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday. Lieberman echoed intentions by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to bring cyber legislation to the Senate floor as soon as possible. The House passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), HR 3523, in April,…
In one of the least-likely team-ups imaginable, heavy metal band Metallica is working with the FBI to solve a murder. The FBI today launched a multimedia campaign — including a video PSA with Metallica singer James Hetfield — to try to find the suspected killer of Virginia Tech student and aspiring teacher Morgan Harrington. Harrington disappeared after attending an October 2009 Metallica concert at the University of Virginia. She was last seen trying to hitch a ride after the show, and her Pantera t-shirt was found nearly a month later, the FBI said. Harrington’s skeletal remains were found in a…
What lies ahead for the U.S. Postal Service if nothing is done to brake its financial slide? Postmaster General Pat Donahoe tossed out an attention-getting benchmark today. “This is Greece,” Donahoe told participants at the PostalVision 2020 conference, as he highlighted a slide showing the Postal Service with $92 billion in debt by 2016 (up from about $12 billion last year), assuming that Congress doesn’t act on pleas for relief from the requirement to pump billions of dollars annually into a health care fund for future retirees. Greece, he said, has a debt-to-gross domestic product ratio of 1.6 to one.…
For the U.S. Postal Service, the words “digital” and “opportunity” are two words that don’t normally go together. After all, the mail carrier has lost billions of dollars in revenue to customers’ growing fondness for Internet bill-paying, electronic greeting cards and so forth. Last month, however, Postmaster General Pat Donahoe announced the launch of a “digital solutions group” intended to sniff out potential money-makers in the online sphere. More recently, the USPS inspector general has singled out one in particular: Putting the agency in the digital authentication business. You can read the IG’s full report here, but in a nutshell,…
It’s transition time at the IBM Center for The Business of Government, where Executive Director Jonathan Breul is retiring at the end of the month. On deck to replace him is Dan Chenok, a senior fellow at the center whose forte is information technology. Before joining the center a decade ago, Breul had been a top official at the Office of Management and Budget, where he handled government-wide management issues and oversaw implementation of the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, according to a news release. He started at the center as a senior fellow, becoming executive director in 2007.…
In anticipation of the government’s annual small business procurement scorecard this summer, a group of small business advocates and watchdog groups has asked top federal procurement officials to stop practices that inaccurately reflect how close agencies have come to meeting their goals. The scorecard measures the percent of federal prime and subcontract dollars awarded to small businesses, including women owned small businesses, small disadvantaged businesses, service disabled veteran-‐owned small businesses and small businesses operating in Historically Underutilized Business Zones. The federal government’s goal is to award 23 percent of its contract dollars to small businesses each year. During fiscal 2010, the federal government…
American Federation of Government Employees National President John Gage’s right-hand man and his leading rival in the last election will vie for control of the largest federal employee union this August. Gage, who has run AFGE for nine years, announced yesterday that he will not run for a fourth term as president. The office of AFGE National Secretary-Treasurer J. David Cox, the union’s second-highest ranking officer, confirmed today that he will run for president in the union’s August election. Alex Bastani, president of AFGE’s Local 12, which represents Labor Department employees, told Federal Times he also is running for president.…