Word around town is that Joseph Jordan, an associate administrator at the Small Business Administration, has been tapped to replace outgoing Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Dan Gordon. The Office of Management and Budget won’t confirm that Jordan is the nominee for Gordon’s job, which requires Senate confirmation. But Jordan has been named as a senior adviser to Jeff Zients, the federal Chief Performance Officer and OMB’s deputy director for management. Jordan will start advising Zients and his senior staff on policy and procurement matters this month. Jordan did not respond to requests for an interview. Being brought on as a senior…
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When the Veterans Affairs Department launched a program in 2009 to monitor the progress of its information technology projects, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker thought he had set the bar high. Baker challenged the IT staff to deliver 80 percent of all VA IT project milestones on schedule. At the time, less than 30 percent of IT projects were delivered on schedule, according to VA estimates. In less than two years, VA has exceeded Baker’s goal. Last fiscal year, 89 percent of IT project milestones were delivered on time, the agency said. The agency delivered 212 of 237 project…
No surprise here, but the U.S. Postal Service and two of its unions failed to agree on new contracts by yesterday’s deadline and have agreed to keep talking at least through Dec. 7. Existing agreements with the National Association of Letter Carriers and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union officially expired at midnight Sunday. “The parties continue to discuss a host of important and complicated issues,” NPMHU officials said in a news release posted on the union’s web site. “The negotiations are at a very delicate stage, and of this writing, it still is impossible to tell whether an overall…
A little leadership shuffle is under way at the U.S. Postal Service’s Board of Governors, as Thurgood Marshall Jr., the current vice-chairman, was elected chairman at Tuesday’s meeting, according to a news release. Marshall is replacing Louis Giuliano, who has chaired the board since January 2010 and will remain a member. Taking Marshall’s slot as vice chairman is Mickey Barnett. The two men assume their new roles at the next board meeting in December. Both were elected unanimously, a Postal Service spokesman said. Marshall is a Washington lawyer. Although he worked in the White House during the Clinton administration, he…
The Bureau of Land Management spends between $20.8 million and $33.3 million on computers for its employees. By replacing computers with Apple iPads, the bureau expects it would have to spend far less — between $8 million and $12 million, according to internal documents obtained by the website governmentattic.org. The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. It isn’t clear if the bureau’s current hardware costs are annual or over its five year technology refresh period, when it periodically replaces technology. Transitioning to the iPad would require “very little maintenance” over its lifespan, the bureau said. Currently,…
There’s some apparent good news coming from the White House this afternoon on the improper payment front, according to a news advisory. At 2:30 p.m., Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew and three other top administration figures are holding a conference call “to discuss the administration’s progress cutting wasteful improper payments by nearly $18 billion’’ the advisory says. FedLine had asked about this last week and was told the data was being finalized. Presumably these are figures for fiscal 2011 versus fiscal 2010. Not clear is whether the nearly $18 billion figure is a cut in absolute terms…
NASA has named Cornell University Professor Mason Peck its new chief technology officer, the agency announced this week. As CTO, Peck will be NASA’s chief advisor and advocate for technology policy and programs, according to a news release. His office is responsible for coordinating, tracking and integrating NASA’s technology investments and communicating the impact of those investments on society. Peck, who starts his new position in January, will replace former CTO Robert Braun. Braun resigned in September and has since resumed his teaching and research positions at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Peck’s new assignment is through an “intergovernmental personnel…
The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has reopened public access to information on malpractice settlements and discipline taken against poor performing doctors. But under its new data use agreement, publicly available information from the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) cannot be reposted or used in combination with other information to identify a doctor. HRSA took down its online public file of the NPDB Sept. 1, after a Kansas City Star reporter used the information to track down the identity of a doctor who had a long record of malpractice cases against him but was never disciplined by the state. Now, if HRSA learns that data…
Yes, the U.S. Postal Service is serious about unloading some of its excess real estate and now has the website to prove it. Launched two weeks ago, uspspropertiesforsale.com lists 90 commercial properties and some three dozen land parcels. Better hurry: some of these babies are already in contract, the site indicates. Still available, however, are a 10,200 square-foot post office building in Fairfield, Ct. for $4.425 million, a historic 1904 structure in Yankton, S.D. for $395,000 and a 17-story Art Deco “special purpose” facility in St. Paul, Minn. (no price given). Not clear whether any of these would be considered…
Some noteworthy news on the postal front: A bipartisan group of senators is unveiling compromise legislation tomorrow that—by one lawmaker’s description—is intended to pull the U.S. Postal Service back “from the brink of financial failure.’ The official release is set for an 11:30 a.m. news conference, featuring four top members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which could vote on the bill as early as next week. According to various folks on and off Capitol Hill, one key provision would give the Postal Service some major relief on the “pre-payment” schedule for its retiree health care fund…