training


Government agencies and departments are learning to live with travel restrictions and discovering innovative alternatives amid an anti-conference trend brought on by budget restrictions and well-publicized abuses.

But some managers fear the trend will inhibit federal workers’ ability to stay current with new technology field advancements or to consult with experts in the private sector via site visits, professional seminars and annual conferences. Keep reading →

When the White House announced which of more than 700 applicants would become Presidential Innovation Fellows last month, it also gave a subtle endorsement to a concept pioneered by a small, but growing nonprofit organization called Code for America.

Founded by Jennifer Pahlka in 2009, Code for America has been helping to bring experts and entrepreneurs from the private sector to work together with public sector leaders and inject a dose of innovative ideas into government services. Keep reading →

Keeping track of telework is about to get a lot easier for telework managing officers (TMOs) – and a lot more valuable.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has worked with the Federal Shared Service Centers to automate the collection of telework data via the Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI) HR and Payroll data feeds. OPM will begin piloting the automated method this fall, with an eye on mandating government-wide participation next year when agencies collect data for the 2014 Telework Report to Congress.
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This article originally appeared in The Teleworker. For more news and insights on innovations at work in government, please sign up for the AOL Gov newsletter. For the quickest updates, like us on Facebook.

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Competitive pressures have increased the demand for superior performance by employees in every setting imaginable. Yet with a tight budgetary environment as well as workforce shifts, the challenge for federal agencies is how to bring employees’ knowledge base up to the required levels of excellence with the least disruptive impact on operations and cost.

That is particularly true as successive generations move into positions of responsibility. Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, account for 26% of the total U.S. population. Although many are postponing retirement, nationally, 10,000 Boomers retire each day – taking with them years of work experience and institutional knowledge. Keep reading →

NIH’s Dr. Donald A.B. Lindberg, pictured in front of a display of the National Library of Medicine’s Visible Human Project.

This is the second in a series of articles examining how NIH, among other government agencies, is infusing innovation into the federal workplace. Keep reading →

The virtual worlds operated by federal agencies are evolving in several directions and many of them — including more than 20 government virtual world projects — will be on display this week, May 16-18, at the 6th Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds (FCVW) Conference.

Established by the Information Resources Management College (iCollege) of the National Defense University in July 2007, the consortium was created to explore multi-agency and intra-agency collaboration using the robust capabilities of virtual worlds. Keep reading →

The Swiss Army Knife is a novel invention, a single pocket-sized device that includes everything from a standard knife blade and scissors to corkscrews and laser pointers. What it makes up for in versatility, however, it lacks in effectiveness – the functions themselves are never as good as actual scissors or laser pointers.

The same rule applies to federal systems administrators (sysadmins), who now serve agencies as a professional “Swiss Army Knives.” Thanks to budget cuts and decreasing staffing levels, federal sysadmins have been pushed into more and more roles, including security specialist, storage manager, virtualization manager and many more. Keep reading →

For those tasked with managing risk throughout the enterprise, and who follow my blog postings, you’re familiar with a theme I stress often regarding information security best practices: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

For practitioners and managers tasked with enterprise risk management, you can apply this approach to all your decision-making, whether you’re looking to make new technology purchases, implement new policies, and, perhaps most importantly, hiring new people. Keep reading →


As we enter a new year, with new challenges and opportunities, The American Management Association (AMA) Enterprise Government Solutions has noticed certain trends and recurring topics of interest among our government customers. We’d like to share our top five training tips for 2012 for government training and development organizations:

Government organizations have been moving at different paces to implement telework programs since the passage of the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010. As we move through the winter months, many organizations are implementing lessons learned from last year’s ‘Snowmageddon,’ when telework often made the difference in an organization’s ability to continue to support its mission. An added bonus: surveys confirm that effective telework programs increase employee satisfaction. Keep reading →

The Army, eager to get Federal Aviation Administration permission to fly unmanned aircraft in civilian airspace near its U.S. bases for training, has issued a new directive on the subject and will apply for an FAA Certificate of Authorization to operate drones near Fort Stewart, Georgia.

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