Want to attend a truly awesome virtual event? Sign up for GovLoop’s free 4th Annual Government Innovators Virtual Summit on April 22nd. We live in a golden age of professional development. Gone, or at least really dimished are time-wasting travel misadventures, rubbery hotel chicken dinners, and awkward run-ins with people you’d rather avoid. Virtual conferences and trainings solve a lot of problems. They provideRead… Read more »
Is your agency’s training budget lean this year? Want to brush up on a few skills without having to shell out major bucks on your own? Check out these free resources below – a mix of my personal faves and some I haven’t used personally, but look promising. Then let me know in the commentsRead… Read more »
The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Shaun Donovan, put agencies on notice last week that the Administration is doubling down on the implementation of its priorities and tracking progress more closely. This memo indirectly adds some urgency to the relatively new “agency annual strategic reviews” which are currently underway in agencies acrossRead… Read more »
Hacks are no laughing matter. The U.S. government and the American population have lost billions of dollars as a result of IT system hacks. The threats come from all angles – insiders, thieves, terrorists, and your run-of-the-mill bad guys. Cybersecurity is not just a national issue – it’s a national battle. And it’s certainly beenRead… Read more »
This blog post is an excerpt from GovLoop’s recent research brief, Simplicity, Scalability, Efficiency: The Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. To read the full brief, head here. Simplicity and Ease of Operation As explained earlier, hyper-converged infrastructures are modular systems intended to scale out by adding modules. Their simplicity comes from the fact that a user can leverage improvementsRead… Read more »
Mandates for better federal customer experience (CX) have been piling up for more than 20 years. The trend began way back in 1993, when Executive Order #12862 required federal agencies to create basic CX standards. The strongest and most recent mandate is last year’s “customer service” cross-agency priority goal, which requires federal agencies to provide theRead… Read more »
Leaders teach more than they tell, and they pay knowledge forward without hoarding information. Effective leaders stand in front of their teams and demonstrate the organization’s desired norms.
Internal customer surveys are a good way to find out how support services are functioning, and they can yield valuable insights that promote innovation, help retain talent, increase job satisfaction and encourage continuous improvement. They can also increase the overall performance of the government, because an organization that cares about its employees’ opinions and acts… Read more »
There aren’t a ton of professional, work-place issues in which women currently have a clear advantage. (We’re trying to change that, which is why we have GovFem!) However, when it comes to getting dressed for a 100-degree workday, we are the clear winners. In most professional settings, men have to wear pants and a button-down, maybe even aRead… Read more »
Perceptions When you think of New Zealand, what probably comes to mind is what you’ve seen in movies like The Hobbit trilogy: lots of wide, green vistas and many, many sheep. Which is true for the most part, especially the bit about the sheep. But no orcs. Maybe you’ve come here on vacation. After all,Read… Read more »