Whatever your take on the Obama administration, it has undeniably created a lot of web sites. Enough, in fact, that the White House has launched a new portal to help you find your way to all those other sites. The portal, www.whitehouse.gov/goodgovernment, debuted yesterday and is billed as an online path “to tools and data that connect citizens to their government and improve their everyday lives.” On it, you can easily find all your old favorites: White House visitor logs, the IT Dashboard, and data.gov, along with new offerings like FOIA.gov. It also includes the public schedules for both President…
Browsing: Uncategorized
Attentive (and we mean really attentive) Fedline readers might remember a post from last month about the apparent disconnect of the Office of Personnel Management’s charging the U.S. Postal Service more for its current pension contributions at the same time the Obama administration is proposing a big refund to the Postal Service on past contributions. We’d asked OPM for comment and finally received an answer yesterday. So, in the interest of thoroughness, we’re rerunning the original Feb. 22 post, with the OPM response appended verbatim. Here’s an intriguing nugget from the U.S. Postal Service’s latest quarterly report: Even as the Obama…
After a five-year stint at NASA, Chris Kemp is stepping down as the space agency’s chief technology officer. In a blog post Monday, Kemp said “deciding to leave NASA has not been easy, and is something I’ve been struggling with for the past few months.” About a month ago, I mentioned to one of my mentors that “it’s a very difficult time to be an entrepreneur at NASA.” She responded “is it ever a good time to be an entrepreneur at NASA?” Reflecting on this, I realized that most of my accomplishments at NASA were not at Headquarters, but out…
Federal executives from across government are reaching out to younger feds through an online video project launched this week by Fedscoop. Chief information and technology officers from the Veteran Affairs, Justice and Agriculture departments are among the IT executives who will appear weekly on fedscoop.com/fedmentors in a series of one to two-minute videos. In the video interviews, executives offer career advice, insight about their first government jobs and updates on their current work. This week’s featured mentor is Dave McClure, associate administrator for the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services & Innovative Technologies. McClure said among his office’s top priorities are expanding…
Whether the event is a dinner party or a rock concert, everyone knows that seating arrangements can be a touchy subject. But at a congressional witness table? That, though, was a not insignificant issue at a House oversight subcommittee hearing Friday. The session, dedicated to open government efforts, featured two panels. The first was made up of transparency advocates and federal departmental officials; the second featured just one person, Office of Management and Budget Controller Danny Werfel. The reason–as an agency spokeswoman later confirmed–is that OMB will not allow its staff to testify alongside people from outside the government. While…
Apparently, there is much spin going on in the wake of our story on Wednesday that the Postal Service is cutting its workforce by 30,000 positions this year. The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe said he was told by postal officials that this is not correct. Let’s be clear: There was nothing incorrect about our coverage and I stand by it. Not only that, you can see for yourself exactly what was said. Federal Times reported this story directly from an editorial board meeting we held with Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe on March 9. Donahoe said his goal is to downsize…
Contrary to popular report, Jeffrey Zients is not leaving the Office of Management and Budget for a top job in the Commerce Department, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. “Jeff is staying here,” the OMB representative, Moira Mack, said in an email. President Obama asked Zients, she said, “to take a hard look at how we can better organize federal programs and functions to boost our nation’s competitiveness and that is where he is focused.” Zients has been OMB’s deputy director for management since mid-2009, and also carries the title of federal chief performance officer. But his name has lately hit the…
Lt. Gen. Susan Lawrence has officially taken the reigns as Army’s chief information officer. In her new role, Lawrence oversees Army’s $10 billion information technology budget and supports network operations, information management and other IT functions. “Right now, the network is the Army’s number one modernization effort,” Lawrence said in an online announcement. “We want a network that can provide Soldiers and civilians information of all categories and forms, as well as a means to collaborate in real-time, at the exact moment required, in any environment, under all circumstances.”
Well, chalk one up for congressional bipartisanship: Democrats and Republicans alike agree that lawmakers should have a say in the Obama administration’s government streamlining agenda. “Reorganization of the executive branch is a shared responsibility,” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., the respective chairs of the main House and Senate government oversight committees, said in a Friday letter to Jeffrey Zients, one of the White House management officials leading the effort. Issa and Lieberman go on to ask for “a tentative timeline for development and implementation of the reorganization proposal, as well as regular updates during the review.”…
President Obama will reveal a plan March 2 to accelerate the sale of federal property by forming an independent board that would recommend ways to dispose of unneeded federal buildings. According to an administration official, the board would be a mix of public and private sector representatives and could save the government $15 billion in its first three years. The official said it was an attempt to remove “red tape and politics” from the process.