OMB director Peter Orszag sent an 8-page memo to agencies today outlining new performance management guidelines. Here it is (pdf). Thoughts to come later this morning once I’ve actually had a chance to read it…
Browsing: OMB
It’s official: Daniel Gordon, the acting chief counsel of the Government Accountability Office, is President Barack Obama’s pick to lead the Office of Federal Procurement Policy inside the Office of Management and Budget. Gordon has a long history in procurement law since he joined GAO in 1992. From 2000 through 2006 he led GAO’s procurement law division, which hears bid protests on government contracts. GAO’s bid protest decisions frequently set precedent for government contracting officers. In 2006, he was named GAO’s deputy general counsel and has served as GAO’s acting general counsel since May. As administrator of OFPP, Gordon will…
Federal employees have submitted more than 10,000 money-saving tips to the Office of Management and Budget’s SAVE Award contest in the last week, OMB director Peter Orszag announced today. OMB launched the SAVE Award contest on Sept. 23 to gather cost-cutting and performance-improving ideas from the people who know government best: the employees. So far, you have responded with 10,266 entries. And that number is growing as we speak. If you haven’t submitted an idea yet, don’t delay. The contest ends on Oct. 14. You can enter at www.SaveAward.gov. Once submissions close, an OMB panel will review the ideas and…
As a runner and general fitness nut, I was pleasantly surprised to find a press release in my inbox from the Office of Management and Budget this morning announcing a new mandate for OMB staff: wear a pedometer. OMB Director Peter Orszag launched the “OMB Pedometer Challenge” today to improve employee health by having everyone wear a pedometer to track their physical activity throughout the day. Employees will enter their daily steps on an internal Web site and compare their activity levels to Orszag’s activity levels and their division’s levels. They’ll also be able to enter health statistics like body…
The Senate voted 57-40 Thursday to approve the nomination of Cass Sunstein to be administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, ending a months-long debate over Sunstein’s writings as a professor and his ideological views. At least two senators had placed holds on Sunstein’s nomination, due to concerns about his opinions on gun control and animal rights. Sunstein, a Harvard University professor, met with the senators, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and John Cornyn of Texas, and assured them he respected the Second Amendment and would not limit hunting or impose stricter gun control. The holds were then lifted.…
I’m skimming over a conference report from the Senate Financial Services and General Government appropriations committee (really a fun way to spend your Wednesday afternoon!), and I came across this passage on the Postal Service: Because some experts, including OPM, have expressed concerns about the assumptions made in the Postal Service IG report, the Committee directs the Postal Service, in coordination with OPM and OMB, to develop a fiscally responsible legislative proposal to grant a limited measure of relief from the PAEA requirements to pre-fund retiree health benefits. If I’m reading this right, the Senate is not going to move…
Accenture, OMB Watch and the Georgetown Public Policy Institute have a new report out (.pdf) on improving the government’s performance management system. If you’ve been following the Obama/performance management discussion for a while, you’ve probably heard many of the recommendations before: modify PART to focus on outcomes rather than numerical outputs; encourage federal managers to use the results; give Congress more input into the process. But it’s nice to see those ideas compiled into one report — particularly now that OMB has a chief performance officer who might act on them.
The nation has its first chief performance officer. The Senate confirmed Jeffrey Zients’ nomination Friday. Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag welcomed his new deputy for management with this blog post. Now we wait to see what changes Zients will bring to federal performance management. He’s had a successful track record imbuing positive performance into private sector companies through his work at the Corporate Executive Board Company and the Advisory Board Company.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted unanimously Monday to approve the nomination of Jeffrey Zients as the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget. If confirmed, Zients would also serve as the government’s first chief performance officer, tasked with improving agency operations and preparing the federal government for a wave of employees eligible for retirement in the coming years. Zients’ nomination now goes to the full Senate for consideration. The vote has not yet been scheduled.
I’m at the release event for the Partnership for Public Service’s 2009 “Best Places to Work” report, which measures employee satisfaction at agencies across the government. We’ve got a quick summary of the results, and you can view the whole survey (which contains lots of interesting data) here. One interesting point: OMB director Peter Orszag just gave a quick speech, and he said this about the survey results: We will be looking to include the results in the fiscal year 2011 budget process, because we should not just let this be a report that generates a one-day news story. It…