Telework Yields $32 Million in Snow Day Savings – Plus The 7 Gov Stories You Need To Know

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER:

• If you imagine government in its ideal form, it would have very few overlapping programs and departments. It would be a lean, mean, efficiency driven machine. But that government ideal is difficult to create. We look at how to optimize shared services with Deloitte.

But up front: The Obama administration’s fiscal 2015 budget

The Obama administration released its budget for fiscal 2015. As we mentioned yesterday, there are questions about whether the president’s budget even matters.

That being said, here are the initial highlights:

• The budget is available at the OMB Web site.

• The Washington Post: Obama budget seeks new spending, new taxes to boost economy, tame debt

• The Washington Post: 2 charts to help explain Obama’s new budget: Obama’s 2015 proposal might set a new standard for budgetary Pollyannaism.

• Federal News Radio: Why the budget process isn’t the budget problem by David Wessel, Director, Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, The Brookings Institution

GAO: Navigating the Complexities of the Federal Budget: They include a budget glossary, agency level questions, long-term fiscal outlook

The SEVEN stories that impact your life

1. Washington Post: Hard-hit federal training gets attention in Obama’s 2015 budget proposal – “When President Obama presents his 2015 fiscal year budget proposal Tuesday, he’ll serve an appetizer to a crucial area of government that has been on a starvation diet — federal employee training.”

2. NextGov: Telework Yields $32 Million in Snow Day Savings – “Global Workplace Analytics estimates that agencies could have saved an additional $68 million over those four days if all employees who were eligible or wanted to telework actually did so.”

3. Federal News Radio: Education bucks the cyber trend, brings capabilities in-house – “The Education Department decided the outsourcing approach to cybersecurity is no longer working. So, it brought a host of enterprise capabilities back in-house — something that is rarely done in the government.”

4. Federal News Radio: Air Force to accelerate headquarters staff cuts – “The Air Force will not only meet but exceed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel edict to the military services and Defense agencies to cut back their headquarters-level spending by 20 percent over the next five years. And the service will do so more quickly than required.”

5. Military Times: DoD official: Asia pivot ‘can’t happen’ due to budget pressures – “Officials have previously insisted that the pivot, or “rebalance,” would proceed regardless of funding levels due to strategic needs.”

6. GovExec: Shutting Down National Parks Last Year Was Bad For Local Communities – “Every dollar of emergency funding states ponied up for 14 national parks before the end of the shutdown generated an estimated $10 in visitor spending in local restaurants, hotels, gas stations and outfitting stores, according to an agency report on the economic impact of the 2013 shutdown released Monday.”

7. Politico: The Texas tea party’s best days may be behind it – “In the five years since the tea party was born, Texas has been a hotbed of the movement: It was tea party activists who powered Gov. Rick Perry to a crushing reelection win and catapulted Sen. Ted Cruz to national fame. But as voters go to the polls Tuesday for the state’s primary election, it’s clear the tea party’s heyday in the Lone Star State — at least for the moment — has passed.”

DorobekINSIDER water-cooler fodder… yes, we’re trying to help you make your water-cooler time better too…

• The New York Times: The Monuments of Tech: The workplaces of Facebook, Twitter and Google may look whimsical. But each design is calculated to mirror its company’s values and culture.

  • Discussion point: What does the government workplace say about the value and culture?

• The New York Times: Big Data Means Big Questions on How That Information Is Used: At a workshop at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, academics and government officials addressed tricky questions posed by the harvesting of large quantities of information.

• The Wall Street Journal:Actor Damon Wayans is among those pursuing alternatives to an old-economy artifact: the business card