Weekly Round-up - September 30, 2011
John Kamensky:
- Defense Department’s Business Transformation Agency Hits “Vanish” Button. After a valiant effort to cut internal Defense bureaucracy, the agency leading the transformation is being shuttered. . . to reduce bureaucracy. Federal News Radio reports that BTA’s strategic initiatives are being absorbed by different parts of the Department and that there will continueto be top-level leadership from the Department’s Chief Management Officer – a position that did not exist at the time BTA was originally set up.
- GAO’s E-Gov Status Report. GAO issued a report: Electronic Government:Performance Measures for Projects Aimed at Promoting Innovation and Transparency Can Be Improved. The report examines the use of the $34 million E-Gov projects fund and, according to Federal Computer Week, “GAO Gives Lukewarm Review to Obama Transparency Initiatives.”
- Crowdsourcing Earthquakes. Here’s a cool story from NextGov’s Joseph Marks about how the US Geological Survey is using Twitter to crowdsource the intensity and the scope of earthquakes. His story, of course, features the August 23rd earthquake on the East Coast! While the USGS’s “Did You Feel It?” effort has been in place for a decade via the web, only when Twitter came on the scene did it become more widespread . . . and useful.
- DATA Isn’t Cheap. The Congressional Budget Office released its cost estimate for the proposed Digital Accountability and Transparency Act -- $575 million over the first five years after the bill is enacted. The bill would require the tracking of all federal dollars down to the sub-recipient level, modeled after the successful Recovery Act’s recovery.gov effort.
- Open government is either dead or becoming an international movement. Believing in the latter, the White House releases the National Action Plan for Open Government (PDF download). http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/us_national_action_plan_final_2.pdf
- Remember Net Neutrality? Turns out that's not dead yet either. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/fcc-net-neutrality-official-nov-20-lawsuits-expected-to-follow/2011/09/22/gIQARXdWoK_blog.html?tid=wp_ipad
- What if radical approaches to education turned out to be cheaper than building and maintaining more prisons? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/opinion/blow-it-takes-a-village.html?_r=1
The Business of Government Radio Show: Beth McGrath, Deputy Chief Management Officer, U.S. Department of Defense
The Business of Government Hour features a conversation about management with a government executive who is changing the way government does business. The executives discuss their careers and the management challenges facing their organizations.
The show airs fives times a week on two radio stations in the DC Metro Area
Broadcast Schedule: Saturday, October 1 at 9:00 a.m & Friday, October 7 at 2:00 p.m on CBS Radio 1580AM on For those outside of the Washington, D.C. area, you can listen to our live webstream on CBS Radio 1580AM. Monday, October 3 at 11 a.m., Wednesday, October 5 at Noon, and Thursday, October 6 at Noon on Federal News Radio 1500AM WFED
If you can't wait, though, you can listen to it or download our interview with Beth and all our interviews a businessofgovernment.org and by searching our audio archives.