Shelley Metzenbaum, OMB’s associate director for performance and personnel management, issued a memo on performance management today that didn’t seem to say much beyond previously announced plans to meet with agencies on their high-priority goals and set up a website to track agencies’ performance. One interesting line, though, was this one: “Agencies should consider this year a transition year during which OMB and the [Performance Improvement Council] will move to a more dynamic performance planning, management, improvement, and reporting framework that is useful, streamlined and coherent.” This seems to indicate that OMB is going to establish some kind of performance-management…
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The Office of Management and Budget is going to announce today that it’s halting all financial systems modernization projects across the government. That means 30 projects worth $20 billion are now effectively on hold until OMB can come up with a way to improve the procurement process in this area. The most well-known failure in this area is the Veterans Affairs Department’s CoreFLS project (since replaced by a new program called FLITE that hasn’t gone much better). The department has spent a total of about $300 million on this boondoggle over 10 years and has seen no tangible benefits. Jeff…
First Peter Orszag. Then Gen. Stanley McChrystal. And CNN just reported that Kal Penn, better known as Kumar, has officially left the White House. It’s hard to tell which will be the most devastating loss to the administration. Seriously, though, the Washington Post’s Al Kamen has a roundup of potential Orszag replacements here, including current Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry. But whoever ends up replacing Orszag will face the thankless task of reducing the nation’s deficit, as Slate’s Christopher Beam details here.
Office and Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag will step down next month, Bloomberg News reported last night. No official word yet on why Orszag may be leaving. OMB spokesman Ken Baer said “At this point, we are not confirming anything,” when Federal Times reporter Tim Kauffman asked about Orszag’s expected departure. But Orszag is getting married in September, which may have something to do with it. And the New York Times said that Orszag has told associates that “having worked on two budgets, a stimulus plan and the health care law, it is time to leave while he is ahead.” Orszag’s…
I reported yesterday on the Office of Management and Budget’s plan to review agencies’ progress toward their high-priority performance goals and post that information on the Web. I spoke with Peter Grace at HUD this morning and he said the site will be called USAperformance.gov and he expects it to be live by July. Shelley Metzenbaum of OMB would only say yesterday that it would be up this summer or this fall, so perhaps July is the goal, but they’re hedging their bets on when it will actually go live. Right now, the USAperformance.gov URL exists but is password protected.
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…
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.”
The Office of Personnel Management really pulled out all the stops at today’s event announcing President Obama’s reforms to the federal hiring process. Held in an auditorium at OPM’s E Street offices, it had the feel of a campaign event, with U2’s “Beautiful Day” playing on loudspeakers before the event as media, special guests and OPM employees took their seats. Marvin Carraway, one of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency officers credited with stopping a gunman at the Pentagon subway station March 4, was on hand as one example of an exemplary federal employee. He got a standing ovation. OPM director…
Cass Sunstein, the Obama administration’s “regulatory czar,” gave a speech at the Brookings Institution this afternoon. Regular readers are probably familiar with most of its content — the open government directive, OMB’s dashboards for transparency and IT projects. But Sunstein made a couple of interesting points on the limits of open government initiatives.
OMB deputy director Rob Nabors held a conference call with reporters a little while ago to talk about President Obama’s proposed three-year “non-security discretionary spending freeze.” As we mention over on the homepage, the freeze only affects a fraction of the federal budget: $447 billion, or about 17 percent of total spending. Nabors clarified that it exempts Defense, Homeland Security, the VA, and the entire State/international affairs section of the federal budget. He also emphasized that the cuts aren’t uniform. It’s not an across-the-board cut. We have honored the president’s commitment and gone line-by-line through the budget trying to find…