The General Services Administration said today that it’s awarded $4 billion in contracts for hundreds of building construction and renovation projects through the Recovery Act. More than 500 companies across the country have received contracts for the 391 projects GSA has funded so far since the Recovery Act was passed in February 2009. GSA overall received $5.5 billion in stimulus funds for construction projects, including $4 billion to improve the energy efficiency of existing federal buildings. Vice President Joe Biden praised GSA for stretching its Recovery Act dollars further than originally planned. Due to the slumping economy, bids came in lower than anticipated,…
Browsing: White House
President Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao, and other world leaders are scheduled to meet in Washington next week to discuss Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs. For feds and other Washingtonians, that’s going to mean several closed streets around the Washington Convention Center, restricted parking, detoured buses, and the temporary closure of the Mount Vernon Square Metro station. Check out the Washington Post’s Dr. Gridlock here for more information, and start planning for your commutes next Monday and Tuesday to take longer than usual. Even if you’re not planning to go near the convention center, Dr. Gridlock notes that traffic problems will…
One of the Obama administration’s more … um … unusual appointments is rumored to be leaving the White House this summer. Kalpen Modi, AKA Kal Penn, AKA the perpetually high Kumar from the Harold and Kumar movies, will reportedly quit his job soon to start shooting the third in his series of stoner comedies: A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas. The White House and Penn are not confirming these rumors, but his co-star John Cho said the movie is pretty much a done deal. Kumar is currently the associate director of the White House’s Office of Public Engagement. He’s kept a low profile since…
The General Services Administration is replacing more than 5,600 of its least fuel-efficient cars and trucks with hybrids, the agency announced today. The move effectively doubles the federal government’s inventory of hybrid vehicles, which pair an electric motor with a traditional gasoline-powered engine. The new hybrids will be leased to agencies that are replacing vehicles this year. The Energy Department already said it will take 753 of the 5,603 new vehicles, bringing the total number of hybrid vehicles in the department to 888. The purchases announced today are in addition to the 3,100 hybrid vehicles agencies received last year as…
The White House held a modernizing government forum earlier this year, inviting more than 50 private-sector chief executive officers to share best business practices with government officials. The White House recently released a report of its findings from the forum — to view the full report, click here. The results reported aren’t too surprising. The best practices shared by the CEOs were pretty clear — be more transparent, plan your IT projects better, and don’t let IT projects drag on for five years. Do things quickly and implement IT projects in stages to test whether they’ll work, the CEOs said.…
Just leave it to Joe Biden to find a way to embarrass himself in his administration’s moment of triumph. (FYI, the following video contains a half-mumbled profanity, in case your co-workers are sensitive to that kind of thing.) There’s only one proper way to respond to that:
If there’s one phrase I’m tired of hearing over and over from senior White House leaders, it’s their desire to “make government service cool.” An occasional quip would be one thing. But it’s become a mantra for the Obama administration, included in everything from official bios to speeches to interviews to strategic plans. And what’s worse, it’s a meaningless catch phrase. If the government is having a hard time attracting and retaining talented young people, it’s probably because it takes five months to hire somebody and because hard workers don’t feel properly rewarded and think slackers aren’t dealt with — not because of…
Cass Sunstein, the Obama administration’s “regulatory czar,” gave a speech at the Brookings Institution this afternoon. Regular readers are probably familiar with most of its content — the open government directive, OMB’s dashboards for transparency and IT projects. But Sunstein made a couple of interesting points on the limits of open government initiatives.
The White House has declassified much of a cybersecurity initiative developed during the George W. Bush administration. The release of Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative’s 12 key goals is part of the Obama administration’s quest for transparency, said Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt in a March 2 White House blog post announcing the declassification. Bush created the initiative in 2008 and few details were available about it before the March 2 release. Schmidt wrote: We will not defeat our cyber adversaries because they are weakening, we will defeat them by becoming collectively stronger, through stronger technology, a stronger cadre of security professionals,…
A senator has placed a secret hold on the confirmation of a gay woman and other nominees to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, apparently in violation of a 2007 law that cracked down on such anonymous holds, Keen News Service reports. Many conservative groups have oppposed the nomination of Georgetown University law professor Chai Feldblum as an EEOC commissioner because she is gay. Nevertheless, Feldblum’s nomination was reported out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in December along with three other EEOC nominations, clearing the way for a vote by the full Senate. Since then, however, an unnamed senator has…