Medium: Is It The Perfect Fit for Government?

This week, the popular self-publishing platform Medium becomes officially available to federal agencies. Hold up. Medium is not just a publishing platform. It’s social media. It’s a community. It’s a writing tool. It’s a story distribution network. It’s a content management system, or CMS. It’s not a CMS. It’s journalism. It’s a blog. It’s a magazine. It’s a publication. It’s aRead… Read more »

Courageous Followership & Intelligent Disobedience

In the Next Generation of Government Training Summit session, “Courageous Followership and Intelligent Disobedience: What the Best Leaders Expect from their Teams,” Ira Chaleff used three fun examples: dancing, more dancing (the tango), and guide dogs, to illustrate the concepts of his two books, “The Courageous Follower” and “Intelligent Disobedience.” To explain “followership,” Ira openedRead… Read more »

How Small Data Can Improve Your Government’s Fiscal Health and Services

“It comes from everywhere. It knows all. … [It] lives in the cloud. It knows what we do.” That’s how big data is described in a “Dilbert” comic strip. While that might sound funny, it’s true that while everyone talks about big data, many people don’t know what it is or does. But it’s actuallyRead… Read more »

4 Ways to Build Better Tech in Government

All of us engage with technology on a day-to-day basis. Whether you are responsible for IT operations or a budget analyst who faces daily struggles with antiquated software, we have all experienced the frustration of technology not working the way that it should. So how can you take take the lead in bringing new technologyRead… Read more »

Better Data, Better Decisions

In the Next Generation of Government Training Summit session, “Analyzing Data to Make Better Decisions,” Kirsten Dalboe, MGMT Cube Program Manager at DHS, and Gray Brooks, Senior API Strategist at GSA, shared their successes with using data to improve performance and efficiency. Kirsten was the “data scientist” behind the DHS Management Cube, which integrates financial,Read… Read more »

Take the Unexpected Detour … and Connect

Connect. That was the word author and storyteller Greg Neri started off with this morning during the second day of the 2015 NextGen Conference here in Washington, D.C. Neri has traveled around the country and has written several books inspired by true life. He has worked with inner city middle and high school students andRead… Read more »

5 Tips for Making the Most of Your Government Career

Latonia Page and Rachel Dorman facilitated a discussion on how to Make the Most of Your Government Career at the Next Gen 2015 Conference. Here are their top five tips that you can start using today to further your career in the public sector, whether at the local, state or federal level. Consider your careerRead… Read more »

Networking to Build Coalitions

Do you have anyone in your life that will speak the truth to you? I’m speaking of unfiltered, unadulterated facts…Well NextGen speaker, Mary Abbajay of the Career Stone Group experienced a dose of “truth serum” when her sister explained, “ No one offers you anything because you’re not nice.” This pivotal moment became the startingRead… Read more »

Moving Forward by Working Backward: From Overall Strategy to Daily Tasks

In the pages of management books and in the bottomless sea of online materials, there is no shortage of five-part frameworks and six-step plans for devising and executing organizational strategy. But Joshua J. Marcuse, Senior Advisor for Policy Innovation within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, has accomplished the feat of sifting through muchRead… Read more »