Last week, the Department of Veterans Affairs terminated its $36 million cloud computing contract with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services. The five-year agreement, which was set in November of 2012, would have migrated 600,000 VA employees to Microsoft cloud email and calendar services. A spokesperson for the agency stated, “VA has decided to terminate the cloud emailRead… Read more »
Yes! I just returned from the Association of Government Accountant’s (AGA) annual Professional Development Conference (PDC). With all the scrutiny on conference spending, I thought it would be interesting to go through a quick run down of what’s new and what’s changed since the last AGA PDC in order to help address the question ofRead… Read more »
Freezes, furloughs, sequestration, budget cuts, increased scrutiny on conferences and trainings – government managers are dealing with quite a plate of challenges these days. Amongst these issues, how can government leaders inspire their teams to provide great public service? On yesterday’s DorobekINSIDER Live, Chris Dorobek discussed the climate of government management with a line-up ofRead… Read more »
How to Accelerate New Employee Productivity Accelerating a new employee’s productivity rate is a goal that every agency strives to achieve. The onboarding process involves many time consuming elements. Everything from preparing new-hire paperwork, to ensuring equipment is ready on time, and reducing the onboarding cycle from days to minutes can help your agency saveRead… Read more »
By Tom Kuhn, PhD, Fellow Do not assume anything when you are writing a task order against an Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract. Why? Ever write a task order and miss something or miss ensuring the proper contract language rigor is included? For example, what happens when a task order is written against anRead… Read more »
Earlier this week the President unveiled his new management agenda, part of the process involves a renewed emphasis on creating metrics to evaluate an agency’s programs and goals. That focus falls under the GPRA Modernization Act. The new legislation provides the government with the foundation for strengthening agency efforts to use strategic planning and performanceRead… Read more »
Often times it seems like the government’s answer to a problem is to add more regulations or requirements. To pile on the problem rather than really look for a solution. AGA and six national associations of government officials released a call-to-action guide designed to help promote trust in government by limiting government requirements to thoseRead… Read more »
After working on information technology projects for many years, I’m here to declare what may be obvious — it’s not the technology that’s the problem, it’s the constraints. Software and hardware technology keeps improving, and offers many innovations that can dramatically change how government and business work. But the constraints remain intractable. Project management literatureRead… Read more »
–Sometimes our own comments in response to a comment made about something we said surprise us. And, sometimes we like our response. I like this one response to a comment on The Anatomy of a Trainer. Hope you do, too. It’s short and sweet: I think you misunderstood my basic premise. Sorry that it hasRead… Read more »
Big data is a big task. Of the many agencies dealing with massive amounts of data is the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (RATB). As an independent agency within the federal government, RATB is focused on providing extensive transparency insights to federal programs as well as preventing waste, fraud and abuse of Recovery Act funds.Read… Read more »