Boosting American Scientific Brain Power

The new legislation adds to a loosely organized network of continuing federal efforts to boost Americans’ engagement in STEM education.  In fact, President George W. Bush placed a governmentwide emphasis on STEM education in his State of the Union address in 2006 as a part of his national competitiveness agenda.

Open Data Can Make a Difference!

Selecting a college can be one of the most expensive choices in life.  But until recently, the information sources to make an informed decision were scattered and of varying quality – rankings in national magazines, word of mouth, brochures from campuses, and the perennial college tours. 

Beach Reading for Performance Wonks

A newly-released book by a trio of authors, Performance Management in the Public Sector, (available August 2nd) takes a strategic and theory-based look at performance approaches. The authors – Wouter Van Dooren, Geert Bouckaert, and John Halligan – are well-known academics in the field from Belgium and Australia. Their book provides useful context for people new to the field

Should We Create a Performance Management Framework?

OMB last month released a memo on its next steps on improving agency performance.  Rather than defining a government-wide, all-encompassing framework, it focuses on defining a framework for agency “high priority performance goals” and tra

Making Performance Reporting Useful

“OMB to transform performance reviews,” reports Federal News Radio writer Meg Beasley. She writes that: “OMB will work with the Performance Improvement Council (PIC) to shift from a performance assessment approach that focuses on simply gathering information to an approach that focuses on using that information to improve agency functioning.”
 
According to the

Checklist of Obama Cost-Cutting Initiatives

It may be hot in Washington this summer, but agency leaders -- especially budget officers -- are facing a blizzard of memos from the White House on actions they are expected to undertake to pare back spending. Last week, Tim Kauffman and Tom Spoth wrote an article in Federal Times listing out some of the directives, but more were added before the week was out. Here’s a handy checklist (and if you have more, please add them!):

Using Open Gov to Identify Low-Priority Programs

As a separate exercise from the Budget Guidance for FY 2012 released earlier this week, OMB director Peter Orzag issued additional guidance asking agencies to identify low priority programs:
 
“Your agency is required to identify the programs and subprograms that have the lowest impact on your agency’s mission and constitute at least five percent

OMB's FY 2012 Budget Guidance

OMB released specific guidance to agencies on how they should prepare their budget submissions to OMB, which are due September 13. The key element being that agencies should submit requests that would be 5 percent below what was estimated for FY 2012 when OMB submitted the president’s FY 2011 budget in February. There have been good stories on this in the Washington Post and

Weekly Roundup: April 17-21, 2017

John Kamensky

Weekly Roundup May 19, 2017

Michael J. Keegan

 

$500M IT modernization bill passes House. The Modernizing Government Technology Act passed the House of Representatives on a voice vote, but the Senate outlook is less certain.

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