A perennial lament by advocates of the use of performance measures is that Congress seems to rarely use them in making decisions. Here’s a guide prepared by GAO, along with three examples of how congressional committees have used performance information to make decisions. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) works for Congress and is a bigRead… Read more »
Here is today’s federal cybersecurity and information technology news: The Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team within the Department of Homeland Security reports a a 20-fold leap in the number of incidents since the team was created in 2009. More here. The Homeland Security Infrastructure Program gave Colorado authorities fighting deadly wildfires access toRead… Read more »
Protests are back in the news, although they never really left. I have been writing about this issue for some time (here and here), but the problem has only exploded in the last five years with the economic implosion, and now sequestration and budgeting Armageddon possible on the horizon. A recent report from IBM’s CenterRead… Read more »
Here’s a terrific checklist of questions managers should be able to answer as they undertake a consolidation of infrastructure or management functions. It is buried in a new report by the Government Accountability Office. Sometimes GAO does terrific work but couches it in ways that its value may not be immediately obvious to busy readers.Read… Read more »
This month, the Department of Energy, in working with the White House, Department of Homeland Security, and power companies, will test a voluntary reporting model to discover cybersecurity gaps in electricity delivery systems. More here. A researcher at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed a cyber sensor to track how networkRead… Read more »
Are there legislative options beyond (or in addition to) presidential reorganization authority that could encourage collaboration and not just move boxes? Typically, the cultural, administrative, and legal barriers to working together collaboratively inside the federal government are too high and they discourage efforts to collaborate (more on this in a future post). The Obama AdministrationRead… Read more »
Should government use Legos to inspire its reorganization approach? Structural reorganization initiatives – like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security — are slow, take an enormous amount of effort, and require years to become effective. Ultimately, the new structure becomes rigid and needs to be revisited. Many observers advocate creating more adaptable approachesRead… Read more »
Would “virtual agencies” be an effective alternative to traditional structural reorganization initiatives? If so, what needs done to make them happen? When Vice President Gore’s reinventing government team was being formed in the early 1990s, he encouraged it to not focus on reorganizing agencies and programs, but rather to fix what’s inside the agencies. HeRead… Read more »
The political winds are blowing favorably for government reorganization for the first time since Jimmy Carter’s efforts in the 1970s. As a result, the conversation on government reorganization is shifting from “should we” to “how do we” reorganize. What are some of the lessons from past efforts? At one point, the advice was: don’t doRead… Read more »
President Obama asked Congress for authority to reorganize government in his 2012 State of the Union address. Several weeks later, he proposed legislation to do so. What is in that bill? What Is Presidential Reorganization Authority? Beginning in 1932, presidents were periodically granted authority by Congress to submit plans to reorganize agencies. Over time, itRead… Read more »