UPDATE: It’s a 2 year freeze. UPDATE: It is a federal pay freeze. The White House’s website said it will stream Obama’s statement “on the federal employee pay freeze” at 11:35. More to come. ORIGINAL POST: Something major is brewing. The White House announced this morning that President Obama will make a statement to the press at 11:35 a.m. this morning. The White House also announced that OMB Deputy Director Jeff Zients and White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer will hold an embargoed conference call “to discuss federal employee issues” in advance of the president’s announcement. There are rumors floating…
Browsing: White House
My cover story in this week’s Federal Times details the federal government’s new goal to cut indirect greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent during the next decade. The bulk of the story explains the impact on federal workers — more telecommuting, fewer business trips out of state, increased recycling and energy conservation efforts. But as I mention in the article, this is just part of a much larger undertaking to measure and shrink the government’s entire carbon footprint, including the energy used in federal facilities and vehicles. Under an October executive order from President Obama, all agencies must undertake their…
The Obama administration has yet another dashboard on the way. Dan Gordon, head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, told Federal Times in a statement that the administration will launch a dashboard to track agencies’ progress on acquisition reform later this summer. The administration has had its much-ballyhooed IT dashboard up and running for about a year, and is working on another dashboard to track agencies’ progress toward “high priority performance goals.” Dave McClure at GSA is also working on something called a “citizen dashboard” that we probably won’t see until sometime next year. Some agencies, apparently realizing that…
The fireworks might come a week early for President Obama’s interagency task force on small business contracting. The group, formed in April, will hold a public meeting June 28 to discuss ways to get small businesses more involved in federal contract opportunities. Given the recent grumbling about Obama’s acquisition reforms and their impact on smaller firms, some might see this as an opportunity to vent their frustrations. The public meeting announcement emphasized “removing barriers to small business participation” as one of the task force’s goals, but there’s a strong argument to be made that the administration has added significant barriers…
So let’s say you’re sitting around on a Saturday afternoon, thinking, “Well shucks, I’d sure like to finally get around to solving America’s national debt problem today, but I’m really starting to get a little soft in the middle … maybe I should go outside and get some exercise instead.” We’ve all been there, right? Well, worry no more: Budgetball is here! Budgetball is, no lie, “an active sport of quick passes, tough defense, and bold comebacks designed to increase awareness of the national debt and reward strategic thinking and collaborative problem-solving around the issues of fiscal responsibility.”
The Office of Personnel Management tends to look askance at agencies’ requests for direct hire authority to fill critical needs. OPM asks for reams of information and has some quite specific guidelines for agencies that want to sidestep the normal federal hiring process. The Homeland Security Department, looking to hire federal employees to fill jobs currently done by contractors as part of the government “insourcing” initiative, is trying to tweak the system a bit in order to fill critical needs, DHS chief human capital officer Jeffrey Neal said yesterday at a congressional hearing. DHS is asking OPM for something it…
Old habits die hard. The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy reprimanded deputy federal chief technology officer Andrew McLaughlin for using Gmail and Google Buzz for work-related communication, rather than his official government e-mail account. McLaughlin was Google’s director of public policy and government affairs before jumping to the public sector. OSTP decided McLaughlin’s off-the-books conversations didn’t have any impact on policy decisions, and the reprimand reportedly is no more than a slap on the wrist.
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…
President Obama delivered a commencement speech Saturday that turned into a passionate defense of the role of government in our society and, partially, the civil servants and military service members who make it run. His whole speech to the University of Michigan’s graduating class is worth reading, but here are some passages well-suited for Public Service Recognition Week: For when our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it conveniently ignores the fact in our democracy, government is us. We, the people, hold in our hands the power to choose our leaders, change our laws, and shape our own…
I’m at the General Services Administration’s Government Web and New Media Conference today, listening to administration officials talk about open government, social media, and how to best use technology to reach the public. And one point keeps coming up: When it comes to websites and other programs, keep it simple, stupid. OK, so White House CIO Vivek Kundra and GSA Administrator Martha Johnson didn’t use those words exactly. But their message was clear: The public is increasingly using iPhones and other mobile devices that have trouble with overly-complex webpages. And if the federal government wants to reach citizens through those avenues,…