President Obama is urging the Senior Executive Service to embrace his accountability agenda, according to a memo released today. “As the most senior managers in the federal government, you know how essential the work you and your colleagues do is to the nation,” Obama told more than 7,000 SES members. “You also are aware what happens when your best efforts are thwarted by outdated technologies and outmoded ways of doing business. “You understand the consequences of accepting billions of dollars in waste as the cost of doing business and of allowing obsolete or under-performing programs to continue year after year.”…
Browsing: Government reform
Politico is reporting that federal chief performance officer Jeffrey Zeints will be the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget until Peter Orszag’s replacement, Jack Lew, is confirmed by the Senate. Rob Nabors, a former Orszag deputy who has been serving as senior adviser to President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, will return to OMB as acting deputy directo, Politico reports. When Lew is able to take over, he’ll face a tough road trying to advance the administration’s budget-cutting efforts, as my colleague Steve Losey reported recently.
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…
So yesterday at the GSA Expo, Administrator Martha Johnson was walking around in a black and white outfit, if I remember correctly. But by the time she arrived at the Coalition for Government Procurement dinner to announce GSA’s new goal of eliminating the government’s carbon footprint (good luck with that, by the way), she had changed into — you guessed it — a green jacket. Johnson’s speech received what sounded like polite applause last night, from a crowd made up mostly of vendor representatives. And CGP president Larry Allen was fairly critical of Johnson today, even after he’d had a…
To follow up on Gregg’s earlier post… The White House is also hosting an online discussion about how it should revise the policy governing classified national security information. Until Wednesday, the Public Interest Declassification Board will host a “Declassification Policy Forum” through the White House Open Government Blog to take comments on President Barack Obama’s May 27 memo ordering a review of the executive order outlining classification policy. Through the discussion, the White House hopes to answer the following: “Are you satisfied with the current executive order? What has worked? What hasn’t worked? What should a new executive order include…
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.
Want a chance to meet President Barack Obama? Come up with a way to save a lot of money at your agency. The president laid out a challenge to federal employees this weekend in his weekly blog/radio address, calling for new thinking and creativity among the federal workforce: “That’s why we’ll establish a process through which every government worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform better. We’ll put the suggestions that work into practice. And later this year, I will meet with those who come up with the best ideas to hear firsthand…