Posts Tagged: budgeting

Staycations

In this dark time of economic downturn I keep reading that many folks are not travelling. They are taking “staycations”. This is where they take their vacation leave and just stay home or do day-trips around their region to save money. If that is your thing, then ok, but really, travel can be done withoutRead… Read more »

Dealing with SPIN – the four horsemen

Nicholas Gruen, leading the Australian Government 2.0 task force proposed a new theory of SPIN (Serial Professional Innovation Negation); the theory outlines the very strong political incentives against greater risk taking, which in turn holds up the adoption of Web 2.0 approaches – and indeed quite a few Web 1.0 approaches. I cross-post my commentRead… Read more »

Defense Acquisition Reform Needs Common Sense

From the Acquisition Corner: An interesting piece on defense acquisition reform came out by Scott Reynolds, a professor of program management for the Defense Systems Management College at Defense Acquisition University on how we can come to see poor performance in the defense acquisition process as a matter of fact rather than something that isRead… Read more »

Where are the Performance Metrics in the Recovery Act

About a month and a half ago, OMB released the Federal reporting requirements for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It’s taken me a little while to look through the requirements, and I had read that the focus was on job creation, but I was still a little surprised at the lack of Federal interestRead… Read more »

“Cash for Clunkers” Doesn’t Have to Be a Lemon

Over the weekend my father-in-law decided to take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program and went car shopping. Unfortunately the Dodge dealer he went to in his home town of Paris, Illinois informed him that they had put the program on hold. Apparently they had sold five cars and had yet to be paidRead… Read more »

Federal Eye: Personal Data Mishandled at Commerce Dept.

The names and Social Security numbers of at least 27,000 Commerce Department employees were exposed to a risk of identity theft following an inappropriate transfer of the personal information in mid-July, according to a letter sent to department employees last week. An employee with the National Finance Center mistakenly sent an Excel spreadsheet containing theRead… Read more »

The Promise of Going Lean: It’s the latest, buzziest trend in government management. Just don’t call it a fad.

Ken Miller (author of “We Don’t Make Widgets” and monthly columnist for Governing Magazine) recently wrote an article discussing the impact of Lean in government. With budget constraints and travel restrictions across the board, times are tough for many federal, state and local government agencies. In these times, we need to focus more than everRead… Read more »