Weekly Round-up: May 09, 2014

Submitted by on Tue, 01/23/2018 - 22:39
Friday, May 9, 2014
Gadi Ben-Yehuda
Articles from across the Web that we found interesting, the week of May 05, 2014.

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

We Are Living in the Future.  We don't have jetpacks or robot-dogs, but in some ways we're living in the future.  For example, Alex Howard reports that "United States federal government use of crowdsourcing grows six-fold since 2011" (as an example, NARA is crowdsourcing video captioning).  And in this future, there are seven things that Government Technology Magazine would like you to know about the White House Big Data Report.  State Tech Magazine is offering "A Mobile Strategy Guide for Local Governments" and NARA is urging  agencies to adopt email management practices.  FedScoop is wondering where, in this future in which we live, is the wearable tech in government.  And Pew, never satisfied in this present-future, is looking ahead into the future-future: 2025, to be exact, and what the internet will look like. 

 

Dan Chenok

  • Treasury moves forward on building capability to support financial management shared services across government:http://www.federalnewsradio.com/533/3618450/Treasury-begins-shared-services-quest-to-educate-integrate-

 

John Kamensky

  • A Shifting Emphasis in Obama’s Management Agenda.  Charlie Clark, Government Executive, reports “President Obama’s second-term management agenda is more focused on improving government’s proactive effectiveness for businesses and taxpayers compared with his first-term’s emphasis on curbing waste and fraud,” according to new OMB official Lisa Danzig.
  • Public Service Recognition Week.  Steve Watkins, editor of Federal Times, writes an uplifting piece on how “we must remind ourselves of how important the work of federal employees is to all of us.”
  • Low Morale in the Federal Workforce.  Andy Medici, Federal Times, covered a Senate hearing held during Public Service Recognition Week, on the state of the federal workforce, where senators decried “that many politicians are using federal workers as a punching bag during budget negotiations.”
  • Bonuses Drop in Half.  In another Federal Times article, Shannon Mullen writes that “Bonus pay for 1.3 million federal workers fell off a proverbial fiscal cliff last year, dropping nearly 50 percent as a result of draconian budget cuts tied to a partial government shutdown and recent caps on employee awards.”
  • DOD Management Leadership Exodus.  Amber Corrin, also with Federal Times, reports: “The recent departure of Defense Department CIO Teri Takai is just the latest in a series of high-level executives leaving behind prominent IT-focused positions . . . And beyond the CIO organization, the top two roles at the Pentagon’s deputy chief management office, which oversees business management and a number of critical DoD IT systems, also were vacated late last year.”
  • The SES Isn’t Happy.  Sean McCalley, Federal News Radio, reports that a new survey of senior career federal executives concludes:  “More than half of the SES members who answered the survey are simply not happy with their jobs anymore. About 51 percent said their morale is either "low" or "very low. . . . A main cause is a perceived slap in the face from both the current administration and Congress.” . . . A related story is headlined: “House passes bill banning SES bonuses at the VA.”
  • OMB on FY 2016.  Jonathan Lutton, Federal Computer Week, reports: “OMB released a memo May 5 instructing departments and agencies to reduce their discretionary spending requests by 2 percent for fiscal 2016 unless “given explicit direction otherwise.’” In government parlance, this is OMB’s Spring Guidance for FY 2016 budget preparation for the budget to be submitted to Congress in February 2015.
  • Shared Services Providers Named.  Charlie Clark, Government Executive, writes: “the Office of Management and Budget has named four departments that will seek to save the government money through shared services in financial management.”  The agencies are:  Agriculture, Interior, Transportation and Treasury.

 

 

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