Weekly Roundup: August 8 - 12, 2016

John Kamensky

When Congress and Administration Agree to Save Billions. According to Federal News Radio, Congress gave a boost to the Administration’s IT category management initiative by passing the MEGABYTE Act (Making Electronic Government Accountable By Yielding Tangible Efficiencies) that requires agencies to inventory their software licenses and consolidate them where possible.

Can You Unlock Talent in Your Agency? Federal Times video interviews OPM’s Kimya Lee who “talks about how the analytics website is giving managers more insight into the employee engagement of their agencies.”

Career Workers Vital During Transition.  The Washington Post reports: “to govern effectively, any administration needs to consider civil servants, particularly during the transition, when they will play an enhanced role until new political appointees are in place. Max Stier, president and chief executive of the good-government Partnership for Public Service, calls career federal employees the ‘vital engine’ that keeps government going.”

Transition Handbook for Career SES Leaders.  The Senior Executives Association releases a timely guide for senior career executives and their roles during a presidential transition.  It provides insights from experiences executives who have been through numerous transitions in the past

Pivotal Moment for SES.  The Partnership for Public Service releases a report that describes: “practices to strengthen the SES; provide baseline metrics on the health of the SES for stakeholders to use to assess whether e orts to strengthen the SES are proving successful; and encourage innovation by highlighting examples in each area of the executive order [on improving the SES] where good work is already being done.” The report is supplemented with a dashboard of SES statistics and case studies.

A Bot Wins Bidding War.  According to NextGov: “A bot managed to clinch the final bid on a recent federal cloud contract, offering to work with an Amazon Web Services broker on an aspect of Cloud.gov for $2,866. . . . Sixty-nine offers from seven bidders in—and seconds before the bid closed—the bot named the lowest price in what may be the General Services Administration's first auction with significant bot activity.”

CyberSecurity 101.  Steve Kelman commends in his FCW column: “a report by Deloitte's Bill Eggers called Government's cyber challenge: protecting sensitive data for the public good . . . . I can recommend it without hesitation to people up your management chain who need a basic cyber education. I am also guessing that even a cyber pro might learn a thing or two.”

Michael Keegan

How DoD holds service leaders accountable to ‘back to basics’cyber program. The Defense Department says it’s seeing a noticeable cybersecurity culture change from its service commanders. Under DoD’s Cybersecurity Implementation Discipline Plan, service leaders meet weekly with the department’s CIO to discuss their performance on 10 basic cyber measures.

A great primer on cyber. Steve Kelman suggest some summer reading for those seeking to understand "the new normal" of cyber threats.

‘Superstar’executives lend advice to career SES on upcoming transition. The Senior Executives Association has a new guidebook for SES members who might not have a specific role on an agency transition team as their organization prepares for the upcoming change in administration. Several highly successful executives who have been through the experience before say even career executives have a role to play in the presidential transition.

VA mulls commercial EHR The Department of Veterans Affairs is rounding up options for potential off-the-shelf health records software to replace its homegrown VistA product.

DeSalvo exits ONC. HHS has named a new national coordinator for health IT, giving Karen DeSalvo an opportunity to ease out of her dual-hatted role at the agency.

Darcie Piechowski

After two years, what has the USDS accomplished?

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Next Week’s The Business of Government Radio Show.  The newest edition of the Business of Government magazine highlights strong leaders with the right talent who are charged with executing the business of government. Join host Michael Keegan as he tells the stories of such leaders as Anne Rung, Admiral Paul Zukunft, Dr. Reggie Brothers, Dr. David Bray, and LaVerne Council, outlines their collective challenges, illustrates their respective successes, shares the lessons they have learned – and ultimately, explore how best to help these leaders be effective.

Broadcast Schedule: The show airs Monday at 11 a.m., and Friday at 1 p.m. on Federal News Radio 1500AM WFED.

If you can't wait, though, you can listen to (or download) this week's program and all our previous interviews at businessofgovernment.org.