Why do government systems fail? That is essentially the question raised by MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough following word that IRS data got hacked. MSNBC’s Morning Joe on government IT problems The short but exceedingly provocative discussion that followed spurred me to think: How would I answer that question? What are the big obstaclesRead… Read more »
If you’re anything like me, every two weeks you look at your paycheck and hope for just a few more dollars to magically appear. In reality, the number stays the same. For state and local government employees, salaries have been stagnant for years. “Our whole country has been stunned by the difficulty we’ve had inRead… Read more »
On February 2nd, the President unveiled his new $4 trillion proposed budget for FY 2016. Obviously the federal government was paying close attention, but state and local governments were also on high alert. The reason? Simple: the President’s budget also provides funding to states and localities in several different areas like transportation, education and infrastructure.Read… Read more »
Our top budgeting, forecasting and business analytics posts for the public sector from the week of September 12th!
The White House’s Open Government initiative encourages citizens to become more actively engaged in budget decisions in their communities. How does this work in practice? Do busy citizens actually get involved? Inspired by successful efforts in Brazil and other countries around the world, several U.S. communities have undertaken pilot efforts to allow citizens to directlyRead… Read more »
A coffee, a run, meditation…. We all need one thing to get our brains working early in the morning. For me, it’s a long, scalding hot shower. But as a native of California, which is experiencing one of the most severe droughts in the state’s history, my long morning shower is a thing of theRead… Read more »
Every year Arkansas Chief Technology Officer, Claire Bailey and her team, create an IT strategic plan. It’s sort of like the wish list kids leave in their stockings for Santa Claus. It contains all the priorities and initiatives the state wants to tackle in the upcoming year and where they are going to need help.Read… Read more »
With the stagnant economy, cost control has become the new mantra of every business. Businesses are deploying various strategies to contain costs and maintain profitability. Amongst such strategies is control and visibility into spending with external suppliers. Spend analytics is the process of aggregating, cleansing, and analyzing corporate spending data for the purpose of reducingRead… Read more »
Improper payments are always an area of concern for the federal government. These include overpayments, underpayments, payments made to ineligible recipients, or even payments that weren’t properly documented. While fraudulent payments are considered improper, not all improper payments are the result of fraud. For example, improper payments can be a result of mismanagement, errors, orRead… Read more »
It was great to see the recent blog of US General Services Administration (GSA) CIO Sonny Hashmi in which he establishes “open source first” as an agency policy: “Simply put, any solution developed using taxpayer dollars should be in the taxpayer’s domain (open source). At GSA, we believe that all code we developed should beRead… Read more »