Project Management

Crowdsourcing Solutions, One Competition at a Time: TopCoder Profiled – 2

Last week we told you about TopCoder. (You can access the entire interview here). But basically TopCoder is member based group of more than 460,000 coders from around the world, that harnesses the power of crowd-sourcing to achieve goals. It seems fairly straightforward right? But, Mike Lydon, the Chief Technology Officer, told Chris Dorobek onRead… Read more »

Congress BUILDs Support for Local Revitalization

Every city has them, the unusable old buildings and empty lots that remain cut off from the public sphere. They’re former factories or disposal areas where hazardous substances, pollutants, or other contaminant is hanging around for one reason or another. They’re undeveloped, contaminated, usually abandoned, and they’re a thorn in the side of any communityRead… Read more »

Sequestration – An Inordinate Waste of Time

The sequestration rollercoaster continues to chug along. “So now it’s time to buckle up.” “Now that everyone has to implement sequestration, it is taking an inordinate amount of time, because they have to figure out what it (sequestration) is, because we’ve never really done it before. And a lot people who are in charge ofRead… Read more »

Sequestration Management Tip: Level With Your Employees

Sequestration is here, and it’s here to stay for at least a little while. And this new reality has created some major management challenges for government leaders. So how do you manage through the uncertainty? Tom Fox is the Vice President for Education and Outreach at the Partnership for Public Service. He told Chris DorobekRead… Read more »

Seven Steps to Successful Supervision

Whether you’ve been a supervisor for years or are new to managing people, the relationship between you as a supervisor and those you supervise is one of the most important. But between long, busy workdays and stressful situations, that relationship can get ignored or thrown out the door entirely. Elisa Ortiz, deputy director of governmentRead… Read more »

Is Government Just Pockets of Excellence?

Government is full of the best and the brightest, in fact, you might argue that the world’s foremost scientist, engineers, topic experts all reside in government. So why is it so difficult to make progress? “It’s a pocket of excellence issue,” said Richard Spires, CIO, DHS, ” he told the crowd assembled at the Excellence.GovRead… Read more »

Sequestration Fixes Could Still Hurt Feds? What Are They?

Sequestration carries the threat of widespread furloughs of many federal employees, but the alternatives could amount to a case of pick your poison for those same feds. Eric Yoder is a staff writer at the Washington Post. He told Chris Dorobek on the DorobekINSIDER program that, “many of the alternatives are the same things thatRead… Read more »

Why Don’t Any Big Cities Have Municipal Broadband?

I haven’t written a post in a while, but reading an interesting article in Atlantic Cities today, Why Are There No Big Cities with Municipal Broadband Networks?, I was reminded of some past posts and wanted to take the opportunity to bring some thoughts together. The largest city in the United States with its ownRead… Read more »

Can You, Should You Telework?

More than 109,000 people have pledged to stay home this week. It’s all part of National Telework Week. The 3rd annual experiment allows agencies to test telework strategies for one week. Dan Kent is the Federal CTO and Director of Solutions at Cisco. He told me that Telework Week is growing, already this year’s pledgesRead… Read more »

Sequestration & Your Retirement – How the Cuts Effect Your TSP? Plus Your Weekend Reads

DorobekINSIDER’s Issue of the Week: No surprise, it’s sequestration. You can see some of the top GovLoop sequestration stories here: We Answer Your Sequestration Questions – The What, Why, When of Furloughs Know your rights if you’re furloughed So that means furlough notices could go out as early as Monday. Furloughs would obviously cause aRead… Read more »