Round Up, December 12 - 16

Okay, so we weren’t going to publish a Round Up this week since several of us are on vacation, but here are three stories I didn’t want to sit on since they are long and you might want to read them during leisure moments during your holiday vacation!

• This is a detail-rich case study of what happens when you try to transform a huge benefits processing system by trying to outsource its operation: “Overcoming a backlog: How Texas conquered a mountain of food stamps applications,” by Melissa Maynard, in Stateline.org.

• Here’s a great story on identify management, a key element in using e-commerce approaches in government, entitled: “Trust but Verify,” by Aliya Sternstein, in Government Executive magazine.

• A terrific story on Medicare fraud that brings alive the OMB goal of “ reducing $125 billion in improper payments” to make it read like Miami Vice, in “Cracking Down On $70 Billion Worth Of Medicare Fraud”, by Tristram Korten, in Fast Company magazine.