It’s a big day in politics: Voters in Florida are casting ballots in their hotly contested GOP presidential primary; voters in Oregon’s 1st Congressional District are picking a replacement for ex-Rep. David Wu, a Democrat. Here in Washington, we’ll be hovering over computer screens hitting the refresh button in hopes of learning who is tryingRead… Read more »
Last year, GovLoop hosted more than a half dozen online training events designed to help you advance your government career. In 2012, we’re kicking off another series of valuable events and programs that we hope will vault your career. The first one is coming up next Thursday and will be titled “Extreme Makeover: Government ResumeRead… Read more »
“Ninety percent of a project manager’s work is communication.” You have probably seen this commonly quoted statistic but what you don’t see is a statistic that tells you how much of the 90% is devoted to listening. Why is that important? Because, poor communication is at least one of the three causes for failed projects.Read… Read more »
The Twitter network below was created by Marc Smith, Social Media Research Foundation. He used it in a recent workshop on Social Media Network Analysis that I organized here at Syracuse University on January 19-20. I picked it up and posted it here on my Social Media in the Public Sector blog, because it relatesRead… Read more »
A key element in organization (and work units within an organization) success is its structure – how its work activities are organized; and how responsibility and authority are identified. Structure affects how employees – even at the very top of the organization – execute their responsibilities and authority, coordinate and work with others and achieveRead… Read more »
American City and County Magazine ran an article recently titled Trimming the fat-or-not with Lean Six Sigma by Stephen Ursery. The article refers to the success of Lean Six Sigma in Irving Texas and its failure in Erie County, New York, according to Mark Cornell spokesperson for Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. In Irving Texas,Read… Read more »
GEAR. The Performance Management Pilot you’ve never heard of. In November 2011, the Employee Performance Management Workgroup put forth a set of recommendations to help catapult our federal government into the arena of 21st century performance strategy. The five key goals they’d like agencies to address are as follows: Articulate a High-Performance Culture Align EmployeeRead… Read more »
We have previously provided a Quickstart guide to standing up Rackspace cloud servers (and have one for Amazon servers as well). These are very low cost ways of building reliable, production ready capabilities for enterprise use (commercial and government). And Bryan Halfpap has provided a Quickstart guide which shows you how to build a HadoopRead… Read more »
Updated to include Dan Chenok’s contributions. Gadi Ben-Yehuda The Metaphor Edition! Is Identifying-information Radioactive? Cory Doctorow makes the case that it is in the Guardian article, “Personal data is as hot as nuclear waste.” Great sub-head: “We should treat personal electronic data with the same care and respect as weapons-grade plutonium – it is dangerous,Read… Read more »
Nextgov is reporting that the forthcoming 2013 budget for the Department of Defense will include increased investment in cyber capabilities. This comes amid plans to reduce the overall DOD budget by $487 billion over the next ten years. The top-line “Defense Budget Priorities and Choices” paper released by the Pentagon “highlights the increasing importance ofRead… Read more »