While President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner continue to push ahead with negotiations over federal revenues and spending, federal workers have also been offering up ideas to curb government spending.
And the ideas of four federal employees are up for a public vote this week, the White House announced today. (The public has until noon, Dec. 21, to vote.) Keep reading →
Using analytics to make better decisions is taking root in agencies across the government, notes a new report, which explores how a dozen pioneers did it. The report, by the Partnership for Public Service and the IBM Center, also offers advice from leaders of some of those organizations that shows how others can make better decisions using analytics as well.
Investing in, and using, program evaluation has been a hard sell in many agencies for years. While evaluation is important for long-term program assessments, it can be expensive and take years to complete. But with new technology and greater availability of data, many agencies are beginning to take advantage of the value of existing real-time administrative data. This movement is called “data analytics.” And the immediacy of results is appealing to many executives. Keep reading →
The IRS, FEMA and a growing number of other federal agencies are turning the art of analytics into an increasingly powerful workplace discipline that is helping agencies and their employees improve their collective performance. Keep reading →
When the Department of Homeland Security hired Chief Information Officer Richard Spires three years ago, he became the seventh CIO in eight years tasked with bringing rationality to DHS‘s unwieldy IT fiefdoms – and delivering on a mandate for sharing information across the department.
Spires, a former IRS deputy commissioner in charge of operations, quickly set his sights beyond technology matters, persuading the department’s top officials that to succeed, it would take a functioning governance board and the commitment of top leadership to support that governance if DHS was to achieve those goals.
That effort, followed by a systematic portfolio review of every major IT program across the DHS, is clearly paying off, according to a Congressional report from the Government Accountability Office. The report, issued Sept. 18, generally praised the Department of Homeland Security for making progress in achieving its information-sharing mission. But it also cautioned DHS that further steps should be taken to continue that progress and improve its efforts.
The GAO auditors reviewed information obtained from customers of DHS’s information sharing efforts, including 10 of 77 fusion centers, where states and major urban areas collaborate with federal agencies to improve information sharing; 1 of 7 DHS operational components who participate in the DHS Intelligence Enterprise, ICE; and 2 of DHS’s 16 intelligence community customers, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).Investigators concluded DHS’s governance board is proving effective in enhancing collaboration among DHS components. The board has also developed and documented a process to prioritize some of the initiatives for additional oversight and support.
However, GAO said DHS needs to do more to sustain its progress: specifically updating its processes for identifying information-sharing gaps and the results; and analyzing root causes of those gaps. It also said DHS lacks an institutional record that would help it replicate and sustain
those information-sharing efforts.
The report also noted that funding constraints appear to be having a significant impact on DHS’s key information-sharing initiatives.
“Progress has slowed for half of the 18 key initiatives, in part because of funding constraints,” the investigation found, noting five of DHS’s top eight priority information-sharing initiatives
currently face funding shortfalls.
The governance board has not been able to secure additional funds for these initiatives because they ultimately compete for funding within the budgets of individual components, although the board’s involvement has kept some initiatives from experiencing funding cuts, according to DHS officials.
DHS’s eight priority information-sharing initiatives, as of September 2012, include:
Establishing the level of capabilities programs must implement could help DHS prioritize programs, and track and assess progress toward its vision, the report said.
DHS responded to GAO’s report, saying department officials concurred with GAO’s recommendations.
New austerity is here to stay – coupled with more demand for user-friendly citizen engagement from our government workforce. And cybersecurity concerns are growing as well, as our enemies become more sophisticated and inventive. How can Federal agencies meet all three pressures – lowering costs while improving services and keeping data safe?
More than ever before, innovative technologies are needed across government, to keep the government workforce engaged while also helping them to effectively deliver support for the mission. Government is working hard today to implement the infrastructure needed to deliver more services, increase and enhance interaction and enable greater workforce mobility and citizen engagement. Mobility is growing in importance, even as cybersecurity becomes a bigger issue. Despite the promise of mobility to bring greater productivity and flexibility, 78 percent of federal IT professionals said mobility also brings greater security risks, according to a recent VMware survey. Keep reading →
This is one in a series of profiles on the 2012 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal finalists. The awards, presented by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, recognize outstanding federal employees whose important, behind-the-scenes work is advancing the health, safety and well-being of Americans and are among the most prestigious honors given to civil servants. This profile features a finalist for the Justice and Law Enforcement medal Shauna Henline, senior technical coordinator for the Frivolous Return Program at the Internal Revenue Service in Ogden, Utah.
Year after year, thousands of people try to avoid paying federal taxes by making outlandish claims, including that wages are not income, or that taxes are voluntary, are only paid by federal employees, can be avoided because of religious beliefs or can be exempted as reparations for slavery. Keep reading →
This is one in a series of profiles on the 2012 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal finalists. The awards, presented by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, recognize outstanding federal employees whose important, behind-the-scenes work is advancing the health, safety and well-being of Americans and are among the most prestigious honors given to civil servants. This profile features a finalist for the Citizen Services Medal, Michael A. McBride, Supervisory Financial Analyst at the Internal Revenue Service in Atlanta, Georgia.
Millions of low-and moderate-income residents have their tax returns completed and receive refunds from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) without paying a fee to third-party tax preparers, thanks to the skills and savvy of Michael A. McBride. Keep reading →
If the goal is to make the IRS’s interaction with its customers more like the interaction between customers and a credit card company, Terry Milholland seems like the guy to do it. He used to be executive vice president and chief technology officer for Visa International.
IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman recruited Milholland from Visa in 2088 and installed him as IRS’s Chief Technology Officer. Prior to his service at Visa, Milholland was CIO and CTO for Electronic Data Systems Corp., and before that CIO for The Boeing Company. He brought more than 30 years experience to the IRS. Keep reading →
When unusual activity shows up on a credit card, the company calls the holder – generally the same day. That kind of time frame will soon apply to routine Internal Revenue Service audits – which now happen years after you file your taxes.
IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman imagines a day in the not-too-distant future when, on the same day a tax return is filed electronically, IRS software can detect missing income or stock dividends. Keep reading →
Taryn Guariglia, an unassuming but relentless Internal Revenue Service (IRS) special agent, led the complex investigation that resulted in the indictment, guilty plea and 50-year prison sentence of South Florida lawyer Scott Rothstein, the flamboyant mastermind of a Ponzi scheme that fleeced investors of an estimated $1.2 billion.
Within days after Rothstein fled to Morocco on a private jet in 2009 , just as his massive swindle was unraveling, Guariglia worked closely with prosecutors and a team of IRS and FBI agents to quickly amass the necessary evidence to charge Rothstein with racketeering, money laundering, and mail and wire fraud. Keep reading →