Yearly Archives: 2012

Voting is a Sacred Trust, Coveted By Billions Who Cannot

Politics are terrible… Voting doesn’t matter… It’s only the primary… I’m too busy… These are commonly heard sentiments of people who don’t vote. Unfortunately, those who choose not to vote are putting their rights, business, property, community and even freedom at risk! Politics can be terrible. But to quote Winston Churchill, who led England toRead… Read more »

Meet the new Cyber Czar (a Putin pal who fights to limit US Cyber interests)

Friend and writer Noah Shachtman has produced a nice piece for Wired Magazine titled “Russia’s Top Cyber Sleuth Foils US Spies, Helps Kremlin Pals” Most all in the cyber security and national security communities have heard about Kaspersky and I imagine you have familiarity with his software and company and connections to Russian intelligence services.Read… Read more »

Book Club Week 7: Sustaining Public Engagement

For this week’s NCDD book club discussion on Democratizing Deliberation, Jan Inglis offers a summary of the chapter Sustaining Public Engagement: Embedded Deliberation in Local Communities by authors Elena Fagotto and Archon Fung. Jan has a background in applying research in adult development and complexity science to designing public deliberation and decision making processes inRead… Read more »

How to Sharpen Your Job Search

Been hunting for a new job for awhile? Or thinking of starting a job search? Summer is a great time to ‘sharpen your saw’to quote an old proverb. Too many people just update an old resume, tell all their friends that they need a new job, and look at ads online. Not the best methods!Read… Read more »

Reforming the Procurement System

Over the last two weeks, three events have highlighted the need for fundamental reform of procurement processes, procedures, and regulations in order to deliver a more efficient and effective procurement system. On July 11th, Joe Jordan, Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy, and Dan Tangherlini, Acting Administrator of the General Services Administrator, briefed the President’s ManagementRead… Read more »

July Legal Corner

GSA Schedule Option Extensions – A Time of Risk and Opportunity Guest Bloggers: Bill Bressette & Jeff Clayton, Baker Tilly Many contractors don’t fully understand the disclosures that form the basis for the negotiated prices on their GSA Schedule contracts, but a company’s failure to keep those disclosures current may expose it to audit riskRead… Read more »

Leadership Without the Ego

Wired magazine just published a cover story on whether Steve Jobs’ leadership style should be emulated. I have my own thoughts on this which I will save for another posting but the article did remind me of a recent book on leadership that would be a great read for public sector leaders. In J. KeithRead… Read more »

Traffic Optimization

Most of what I read about SEO, metatags, website tuning, is aimed at attracting citizens of a global web. That certainly sounds impressive, but I haven’t had much use for it. Most of my web promotion is targeted to a specific community, for a limited time, a specific event. The web destination delivers the experience,Read… Read more »

Get Your Public Works Questions Answered Here!

Have you ever had a question about something related to public works? Sewers, roads, water, garbage, engineering, GIS, general government, or anything else related to what we do? Well, we’re trying out a new service that would allow anyone to post or answer a question related to public works. Maybe you work in the fieldRead… Read more »