education

White House Showcases Cool Tools For Public Safety

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It’s not easy following Todd Park, the federal government’s chief technology officer, and his breathless on-stage enthusiasm for promoting technical innovation in government and the virtues of collaboration.

Park clearly found an avid proponent, however, in Seth Harris, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor, who made a persuasive case last week in describing the inherent logic for government and the private sector to work jointly in turning information into useful tools for the American public and the U.S. economy. Keep reading →

Published September 17, 2012 at 2:00 PM

Commission Recommends Technology Efforts To Enhance Education

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The TechAmerica Foundation announced key recommendations on Friday for research initiatives and policies to enhance education across the nation through technology.

The recommendations came from a report compiled by the Recommendations for Education and Advancement of Learning (REAL) Agenda Commission, made up of leaders in science and technology in government and industry. Their intent is to advance the goals of Digital Promise, a national center founded to spur breakthrough technologies that aims to transform the way teachers teach and students learn. Keep reading →

Published April 27, 2012 at 4:00 PM

Transforming American Governance

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Our nation faces a large — and growing — long-term fiscal imbalance driven by an aging population, which will dramatically increase health care and retirement costs. And while it is just one of many challenges, it is central to a question of whether the nation’s government will adapt new approaches to the management of government itself.

“The government is on an unstable path,” says the recently released Federal Government’s Financial Health. This report, prepared by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Office of Management and Budget (with the assistance of the Government Accountability Office), puts the challenge in stark terms: Keep reading →

Published April 17, 2012 at 10:02 AM

Graduate Degrees: Are They Worth the Risk for Public Sector Professionals?

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‘Investing in your future’ is a catch phrase you have heard before as a professional seeking to advance your career — and it begs the question: what should you be investing in? One of the common responses is ‘education.’

Some say that without a degree, it’s much harder not only to get a high-paying job, but any job at all. Maybe they’re right. Keep reading →

Published February 1, 2012 at 8:29 AM

Breaking Tradeoffs: The Power Of Disruptive Innovation In The Public Sector

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Ten years ago, if you wanted to see a 1950s art house classic, you had to drive to the nearest video store, search the movie stacks, hope they carried the movie, and hope it wasn’t checked out — not a terribly convenient process.

Most of the time there was a tradeoff to make: either you enjoyed the convenience of watching whatever what happened to be on TV that night or you took the journey to the rental store and then had the satisfaction of watching exactly what you wanted.
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This article is adapted from a new Deloitte GovLab study, “Public Sector, Disrupted: How disruptive innovation can help government achieve more for less.” For more news and insights on innovations at work in government, please sign up for the AOL Gov newsletter. For the quickest updates, follow us on Twitter @AOLgov.
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Published January 31, 2012 at 1:02 PM

Get Used To The Word VMO

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You might be hearing it a lot. Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel is calling for departments and major agencies to create vendor management organizations, or single-office gateways for managing contractors.

He comes at this in the context of the 25-point IT reform plan. He’s vetting the idea through the President’s Management Advisory Board (PMAB.) Industry uses VMOs widely. Basically VMO is modern parlance for purchasing department. Keep reading →

Published December 2, 2011 at 12:33 PM

Innovation Won’t Bring Back Jobs, Certainty Will, Says Greenspan

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Innovation is an essential ingredient to growing economies and living standards, but not for growing jobs, former Federal Reserve System Chairman Dr. Alan Greenspan said at a conference on innovation and technology in Washington this morning.

In a wide-ranging set of remarks, Greenspan also said that he did not think the U.S. economy would slip into a double-dip recession, but that underlying uncertainty among corporations and households and mounting concerns about the ability of European banks to deal with sovereign debts is having a direct effect on productivity growth. Keep reading →

Published August 23, 2011 at 11:56 AM