President-elect Barack Obama just held his first news conference, and I was struck by how much attention is focused on him — and how little on President Bush. Obama had to remind reporters a half-dozen times that “I am not the president until Jan. 20.” Any sitting president is a lame duck between the election and the inauguration, but it seems Bush has become especially marginalized. How does this impact your agency? Do you feel like the focus on the next administration means a lack of direction at the end of this administration?
Browsing: Transition
The trickle of Bush administration officials headed for the door is likely to become a flood now that the election’s over. Immigration and Customs Enforcement head Julie Myers today became the first major appointee to resign after Barack Obama’s victory. Her last day will be Nov. 15. Myers’ nearly three-year tenure at ICE has been dogged by controversy, though she eventually won over some skeptics.
The General Services Administration, which provides logistical support for the presidential transition team, turned over the keys to the 120,000 square foot office space it has leased for President-elect Obama’s team today. But GSA is remaining tight lipped about where the space is. A press release issued by GSA just says the office space is somewhere in downtown D.C. Yesterday, Diane Merriett, a GSA spokeswoman, refused to tell yours truly where the office was located, stating that GSA decided to leave it up to the president-elect’s team to release. This FedLine found funny because the new boss is a transparency…
Make sure you check out our latest stories on Barack Obama’s agenda for the federal work force. I just filed a story on some of his personnel and contracting plans, and Gregg Carlstrom has some interesting details on Obama’s plans for the Program Assessment Rating Tool, ethical rules, and other government reform ideas. Keep an eye on www.federaltimes.com for more updates.
All the things we’ve been moaning about for the last eight years, now we have to correct. – A noticeably hoarse John Gage, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, in a Nov. 5 conference call with reporters. Gage spoke from Chicago, where he and other supporters of President-elect Barack Obama celebrated the Democrats’ Nov. 4 victory.
President-elect Barack Obama won what can only be described as a resounding victory yesterday: More than 62 million popular votes and at least 338 electoral votes. His victory caps off a grueling two-year campaign that overcame the well-funded Clinton machine, a popular Republican opponent and a series of domestic and foreign crises. That was the easy part. Obama now faces the most difficult presidential transition in a century: The economy is stagnating. The country is still fighting two wars. The national debt has ballooned past $10 trillion. The American people do not trust their government to serve the public good.…
Happy Election Day Feds! It is finally here. The day you get to pick your new boss. We here at FedLine cast our ballots this morning and can report turnout is heavy at the polling stations inside the Beltway. This reporter stood in line for 62Â minutes to make her choice, which seemed pretty speedy given the fact that there were 210 people ahead of her when she started. If you’ve headed to the polls today, or are on your way later, we want to hear from you. Did you choose McCain? Obama? A third party candidate? How will your choice…
The Congressional Research Service has an interesting report out (pdf) on the presidential transition. CRS found that the president’s “lame duck” status between Election Day and Inauguration Day leads to all kinds of interestingly named activities, everything from “midnight rulemaking” to “burrowing in.” We’ll have a longer look at “midnight rulemaking” in next week’s Federal Times, which comes out on Nov. 3. Basically, though, agency heads push through all kinds of last-minute regulations. November-January is usually a quiet time for regulatory agencies, but their output doubles during a transition year — and many of the regulations are approved without proper…
Many jobs in federal government have what are lovingly termed “other duties as assigned.” But acting General Services Administration chief Jim Williams has discovered that his “other duties” may be the most important of all. In a speech during the GEIA Vision Conference today, Williams mentioned that one little known duty of his office is to declare an apparent winner of the presidential election on Nov. 4. Since the Electoral College won’t meet to officially declare a president-elect until Dec. 15, GSA needs to name an apparent winner so the agency can move forward quickly with its transition duties in the slim 77-day time…
FedLine is attending the INPUT FedFocus today getting an outlook on Federal IT spending for 2009. GEIA Group of the Information Technology Association of America will give a similar briefing later this week. There’s lots of talk at INPUT’s event today about the economy and how that’s going to change the environment of the federal marketplace. The government’s Wall Street bailout could be a boon for contractors in the coming years if the government makes money off the deal, said Kevin Plexico, INPUT’s senior vice president. The bailout creates a rare scenario where the government will get a monetary return…