GSA

At least 77 General Service Administration employee conferences that totaled more than $6.7 million in costs are under review by the agency’s inspector general, according to published reports.

The news came at a hearing before a House panel on Wednesday. Keep reading →


Innovation seems to be this decade’s buzzword. It’s what “synergy” was to the 1990s, but what does it really mean?

Put simply, innovation is the process of improving, adapting or creating a product, system or service. According to federal employees, some agencies do it better than others. Keep reading →

FedStats.gov provides links to government data at http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/

Data.gov has been around for about three years now and is touted as the prime example of the Open Government Data Initiative based on its growth in number of data sets and communities using them. However, there have been two activities that have been around much longer, with more high-quality data sets, and a larger community, namely FedStats.gov and FedStats.net, which deserve continued attention in the government data community.

I was part of the FedStats Team that built FedStats.gov and led the FedStats.net Team. (You can read more about that team in a related story.) We received the Gore Hammer Award for that work to “Reinvent Government.” While Data.gov has helped focus attention on available government data, I see trying to reinvent that reinvention without the expertise that we had across the government at that time. The Data.gov Agency Points of Contact are not the same as the Federal Statistics Community. Keep reading →


The Defense Department has launched a barrage of programs across the services to provide its civilian and uniformed personnel with mobile devices. Overseeing this vast and varied process is the Defense Information Systems Agency, which is responsible for running many of the department’s mobile pilot programs and setting up the infrastructure to provide applications and services to warfighters.

The head of DISA and top technology officers outlined how individual agencies fit into those efforts at the Defense & Security Mobile Technologies Symposium in Washington, D.C. last week. Keep reading →


When the GSA dropped an economic bomb on St. Louis by canceling sponsorship of the GovEnergy Conference, it may have opened the door for other government agencies to cancel major events if the move goes unpenalized, experts said.

New rules governing conferences may in fact give GSA a legal escape clause from the contract. Keep reading →

GSA Acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini announced this afternoon that the General Services Administration is instituting a hiring freeze and cutting senior executive performance awards this year by 85%.

The announcement reflected what Tangherlini described in a blog post as a comprehensive, top to bottom review of all agency operations, following the disclosure of abusive travel spending patterns that led to the resignation of former GSA Administrator Martha Johnson and the departure of several GSA executives. Keep reading →

GSA has now launched the Digital Services Innovation Center, a key piece of the White House’s new digital government strategy released in late May. The strategy was designed to ensure federal agencies use emerging technologies to serve the American people as effectively as possible through improved web services and mobile applications.

Over the next 10 months, the center is charged with meeting a number of specific digital strategy milestones to deliver digital services and government information anywhere, anytime and on any device.
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The Center will engage agencies across government by serving as a virtual hub to accelerate innovative digital services. Initial efforts are underway establishing shared solutions and training to support infrastructure and content needs across the federal government, and identifying and providing performance and customer service satisfaction measurement tools to improve service delivery. Keep reading →

The Defense Department’s release of a new mobile device strategy late last week provides a revealing snapshot of how much work lies ahead for Defense officials in rationalizing the rapid adoption of smartphones, tablets, and mobile devices across the Department. It also highlights the urgent challenge to secure the use of those devices on Defense networks – even if it fell short of describing how and when DoD planned to tackle ongoing security concerns.

While the new strategy is seen as “a huge step forward,” as Jeff Sorenson, former U.S. Army/G-6 CIO and now partner at AT Kearney, sees it, it also also reflects the continuing gap that exists between DoD’s ability to integrate commercial mobile technology compared to other, faster-moving organizations. Keep reading →


The benefits of cloud computing are too compelling and numerous for agencies not to take serious adoption steps in this budget-constrained fiscal environment. Some estimate the government can save as much as $14.4 billion through cloud adoption.

Looking ahead, cloud will provide a platform for integrating mobility and BYOD into agencies’ day-to-day operations. The benefits of an increasingly commoditized IT world will be passed along quickly to taxpayers in the form of better and more cost-effective government services delivery. Sooner than expected, the government will be in the “Everything as a Service Era” with the vast majority of IT services being provided virtually via the cloud. Keep reading →


While government insiders applauded the General Services Administration’s move to cut back contracting schedules to save $24 million, some caution against what could become a “slippery slope.”

GSA said it will stop adding new contractors to schedules – the shopping catalog for the government to get bargains and discounts – as the first step toward streamlining its contract offerings. After a year, officials will review the schedules to see if there is still demand for them. GSA plans to eliminate contract agreements that are rarely or never used. Keep reading →

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