Weekly Round-up: December 14, 2012

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

• The State of Social Media. The Socialnomics video on the state of social media has been updated for 2013. There’s also a non-Fat Boy Slim version. Biggest changes I noticed: Facebook now tops one billion members, and 92 percent of children under two have a “digital shadow.”
• The Governor of the State of Social Media. Wyatt Kash of Gov.Aol and Camille Tuutti of FCW report on a Meritalk study (behind a register-wall) on the federal CIOs who are most active on social media. Here is a video précis.
• The King under the Mountain + Eye of Suaron? Yes, it’s a stretch, but the Hobbit is coming out just in time for NORAD to start tracking Santa and these stars don’t align that often.

Dan Chenok

• Chief Data Officer — the next agency leadership role?
• Strong Leadership key to agency performance as seen by employees.
• Recommendations to overhaul the classification system.
• The IT Dashboard is on hold, pending a budget.

John Kamensky

• Performance.gov 3.0 Is Up! Jason Miller, Federal News Radio, reports that OMB’s Performance.gov website now has the first round of quarterly progress updates for each of the 103 agency priority goals and 14 cross-agency priority goals.
• Test Before You Buy. An op-ed column in The Washington Post by Dylan Matthews advocates that policy makers commission pilot programs and test whether a policy works before launching it nationwide. He points to similar efforts by academia and foundations, such as the Jameel Poverty Action Lab, are worth replicating. He suggests the creation of a relatively independent policy-evaluation office to test out new policies to see if they work before expanding an initiative nationwide.
• GSA Proposes Massive Space Shuffle. Federal Times reports that GSA plans to move up to 15,000 federal employees into new offices in coming years by redeveloping 3 million square feet of office space in the Federal Triangle area. Employees most affected would be in Homeland Security, FAA, and Energy.
• Issa’s “Chiefs” Bill. Federal News Radio’s Jared Serbu reports that there are 243 chief information officers across the government and that Congressman Darrell Issa thinks that’s too many. So Cong. Issa is drafting legislation to reduce the number, but give the remaining CIOs more authority over their agency’s IT budgets and programs. Federal Times reports that the draft bill would also include the designation of Centers of Excellence to consolidate contracting responsibilities and encourage greater use of open source software.

Michael Keegan

• ‘Best Place to Work?’ — Not so much – NASA and the Intelligence Community led the pack in employee satisfaction at large agencies in the 2012 edition of The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government, which was released today by The Partnership for Public Service. Governmentwide scores dropped from 64 out of 100 points in 2011 to 60.8 points this year — a 3.2 point decline. That is the greatest change in the annual rankings since the Partnership began publishing them in 2003.
• BYOD: Not so inevitable after all – So far, the debate over bring-your-own-device policies has focused on device management, security and trustworthy apps for accessing and sharing agency data. But there’s an even more fundamental question: Once you have a BYOD environment, what is it good for?
• Calls to overhaul classification system grow louder – Many in the security community have argued that the government’s current processes for classifying and declassifying information is outdated, but now an advisory committee established by Congress is calling on President Barack Obama to fix the broken system.
• Sequestration worse than thought, Pentagon frets – When it comes to describing the consequences of sequestration on national security, Defense Department leaders haven’t held back on strong adjectives over the past year: Pentagon officials have said automatic budget cuts would be “draconian,” “devastating” and “deeply destructive.” The assumption until recently has been that the Defense Department would be liable for an immediate cut of $52.3 billion from its 2013 ledger. But planners now are grappling with the possibility that the actual tab may be as much as $62 billion.
• Agency collaboration founded in personal relationships – The interagency National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center had a major problem on its hands back in October. It had evidence that counterfeit air bags not only didn’t work properly, but they could engulf the driver in flames. The center had to figure out how to get word out to the public, auto mechanics, car companies and law enforcement authorities in a coordinated, but fast way.
• Award-winning Excellence in Federal Financial Management – James L. Taylor, CFO, U.S. Dept. of Labor has received the Donald E. Scantlebury Award for Excellence in Federal Financial Management, and the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive. He’ll be my guest on The Business of Government Hour beginning next Monday, Dec 17 at 11 AM on Federalnewsradio.com, WFED 1500AM (see below).

The Business of Government Radio Show: James L. Taylor

Federal News Radio 1500-AM
Mondays at 11 a.m., Wednesdays at 12 p.m.

The Business of Government Hour features a conversation about management with a government executive who is changing the way government does business. The executives discuss their careers and the management challenges facing their organizations.

James L. Taylor was confirmed by the United States Senate as the Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Labor on June 22, 2010. Prior to this position, he served as Deputy Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, where he assisted the Inspector General in managing over 600 auditors, inspectors, and investigators. Mr. Taylor has received the Donald E. Scantlebury Award for Excellence in Federal Financial Management, and the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive.

Broadcast Schedule: The show airs Monday, December 17, at 11 a.m., and Wednesday, December 19, at noon, on Federal News Radio 1500AM WFED

If you can’t wait, though, you can listen to (or download) this week’s program and all our previous interviews at businessofgovernment.org and by searching our audio archives.