Yearly Archives: 2014

Are You Ready For Some Football?

The GOV LOOP NFL Pool for the 2014-2015 season is officially open! No buy-in, no pay-out, no money involved, just bragging rights for the week and a beautiful metal water bottle prize for most correct picks over the season. While I post the picksheets in the BREAK ROOM group’s NFL POOL discussion, you might wantRead… Read more »

Phased Retirement Annuity

Phased Retirement Annuity One of the incentives offered to gain employee participation in the Phased Retirement program is the more generous annuity at full retirement. Federal annuities are calculated based on years of creditable service and the high-three average salary. Therefore, the longer you work the better things might look in the end for you.Read… Read more »

Duo of Doctors Heal Veterans

Duos Come in all forms and across all trades. Batman and Robin. Simon and Garfunkle. Ben and Jerry. Mork and Mindy. Lewis and Clark. Bert and Ernie. Bauman and Spungen. Haven’t heard of the last duo? Well under their leadership the two doctors have collaborated to study medical consequences of spin cord injuries for overRead… Read more »

Digital Engagement Strategy Series

By John Simpson, Engagement Consultant What should go into your digital engagement strategy can be a complex and organizationally challenging question. The specifics of your own strategy are usually discovered with some internal “soul searching” and by nailing down exactly what public engagement is for you and your leadership. Yet, there are a few basicRead… Read more »

Who Won GovHack’s National Prizes?

I’ve done some work analysing who actually won the National awards at GovHack based on the official results at govhack.org/2014-winners/, and this is what I’ve discovered… There were 87 National GovHack awards given out to Projects and Teams, with one GovHack subcategory (Best Science Reporting) unawarded. Of these, 66 awards were awarded to Teams forRead… Read more »

When Comm is Not Enough

Citizen engagement operates with a lot of fancy titles like consumer education, consumer protection, client-centered services, outreach, or prevention and preparedness. In a prior life as an independent consultant, it was called community-based participatory research, and in my current role it is dubbed Community Engagement. (I must note, “citizen” explicitly denotes a legal status thatRead… Read more »

Meet the Defense Health Agency Head

Across the country healthcare systems are focused on ways to reduce variation in care, improve patient safety and more effectively use health information technology to improve clinical decision-making and outcomes. The Military Health System isn’t immune to such changes. In fact, within the military, there are additional imperatives for designing an integrated health system whichRead… Read more »

Transforming Federal Data Into Smart Business Analytics

Transforming Data Into Smart Business Analytics Check out my in-studio Tech Talk interview with John Gilroy at WFED Federal News Radio in Washington, DC. Learn how Federal agencies can achieve more by leveraging Tableau Software to see and understand all sizes and types of data. The segment titled Transforming Data Into Smart Business Analytics airedRead… Read more »

What We Should Learn from Apple

It’s been about 10 years. Apple went from creating one of the most interesting and successful media playing devices, the iPod, to generating the flagship mobile experience for consumers. Of course, I’m talking about the iPhone. The iPhone is simple, elegant, user friendly, and it just works, but the trick in the iPhone and theRead… Read more »

VA Referrals to Private Doctors

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER: In government, we often talk about the importance of building public-private partnerships. In San Jose, they aren’t just talking about building partnerships – they’re actually doing it. We talk to the woman making it happen, Lea King. You can find all of our programs online: DorobekINSIDER.com and GovLoop Insights at http://insights.govloop.com.Read… Read more »