Weekly Round-up: July 11, 2014

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

Social Media in Government: How it works, it's successes and shortcomings, and what it costs us.

• FedTech reports on "How Social Media Is Revolutionizing Emergency Response" with "social media guidance for first responders."
• Treci Johnson writes in DigitalGov on "Trends on Tuesday: Maximizing Your Mobile Moments," teasing out the awareness, selling, workforce, product, and loyalty moments.
• Governing covers an aspect of social media in its Management & Labor section with "Governments Struggling to Get Social Media Right" 
• And the New York Times has an article and a video about the costs of digital living (and how to reduce them).

Dan Chenok

• Shaun Donovan confirmed as OMB Director.
• DOD Acquisition reforms focus on people first.
• Ideas for improvements in the security clearance process.

John Kamensky

• Performance Budgeting in States.  The National Association of State Budget Officers has “released a report that highlights some key themes and lessons learned related to performance budgeting, as identified by state budget officers. Additionally, NASBO completed case studies of eight states from different regions and at different points in the process of implementing performance budgeting, including Connecticut, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Virginia and Washington.
• Creating a DHS “One” Vision.  Here’s an insightful assessment by former Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen for Government Executive, which examines the latest effort to forge “one” Department of Homeland Security.  New DHS secretary Jeh Johnson’s April 22 memo to staff is, according to Allen, “a broad, comprehensive, ambitious directive that called for a more cohesive and integrated operating model in two specific areas.”  Significantly, Secretary Johnson offers a specific governance structure and timeline, not just hortatory statements. 
• On the Importance of Program Architecture.  Here’s another insightful assessment, by former DHS CIO Richard Spires, who is writing a series of columns in Federal Computer Week “presenting the five key elements of major IT program success. One key is having a solid business architecture supported by a solid technical architecture.” 
• Make Government Work Better.  In a pre-Fourth of July cabinet meeting, according to Tom Shoop, Government Executive, President Obama tells cabinet members: “I expect every agency to look and see how we can get more bang for the buck in the agencies that we operate.”
• Managing Risks in Government.  Jack Moore, Federal News Radio, sums up a panel discussion on risky areas for federal agencies that “range from high-profile mission areas, such as responding to natural disasters, to lower-key, day-to-day federal management issues that only become more widely known when things go haywire — such as project-management and federal IT.”
• Assessing the CAP Goals.  The Office of Management and Budget released the first quarterly assessments of progress for the 15 newly announced Cross-Agency Priority Goals.  Charlie Clark, Government Executive, provides a good overview of the goals, but more interesting, Federal News Radio has dedicated a series of articles by interns Stephanie Wasko and Ariel Levin-Waldman assessing the mission-support improvement goals in more depth:

1. CAP Goal:  Improving Customer Service
2. CAP Goal: Increasing Strategic Sourcing
3. CAP Goal:  Shared Services
4. CAP Goal: Benchmark and Improve Mission Support Operations
5. CAP Goal:  Expanding Availability of Open Data
6. CAP Goal: Speeding Innovations from Lab-to-Market
7. CAP Goal:  Streamlining Federal Hiring

• OMB’s A-Team.  Jack Moore, Federal News Radio, reports that OMB is on track in creating a digital services A-Team that: “When fully operational, the office would be staffed with about 25 tech professionals — from outside the government — who would parachute into agencies on two-to-four-year rotations to help get new IT projects off the ground and help get wayward projects back on track.”

Michael Keegan

Pentagon acquisition reform focused on people, not processes 
Undersecretary Frank Kendall sees cultural change taking root among the Pentagon's 150,000-strong acquisition workforce.

Race to finish fiscal 2015 agency budgets hits snag
The appropriations process in both the House and the Senate appears to have largely stalled. Congress has fewer than 30 working days to hammer out a deal on spending levels before the Sept. 30 deadline.

Congress puts pressure on OPM to release final phased retirement rule
The Office of Personnel Management's delay in solidifying a phased retirement program draws scrutiny from Congress. 

Administration wants more lab-to-market innovation
The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Department of Energy are encouraging more private sector involvement in federally-funded research and development.

OPM stays on track in reducing retirement claims backlog
The Office of Personnel Management received fewer retirement claims in June, but it continued to whittle away at its claims backlog.

The Business of Government Radio Show: Conversations with Authors: Professors Jack Gansler and Bill Lucyshyn

The Business of Government Hour features a conversation about management with a government executive who is changing the way government.

In an era of fiscal austerity, DoD must continue to maintain operations and modernize forces in order to support national security. What acquisition challenges are facing the U.S. Department of Defense? What actions can be taken to improve defense acquisition and the Defense Industrial Base? Join host Michael Keegan as he explore these questions and more with Profs. Jack Gansler and Bill Lucyshyn, authors of the IBM Center report, Eight Actions to Improve Defense Acquisition. That's next week on The Business of Government Hour.

Broadcast Schedule: The show airs Monday at 11 a.m., and Wednesday at noon, 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 and by searching our audio archives.