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 →
transparency
The federal government’s Recovery Board has a lesson for every federal agency that distributes taxpayer money – stay transparent and make sure that recipients do, too.
The Recovery Board, which oversees the $840 billion economic stimulus program and $276 billion in federal contracts, has figured out how to get compliance from companies and state and local government agencies that fail to file their required reporting showing where taxpayer money is going every three months. Keep reading →
The combination of social media and transparency in federal spending adds up to boatloads of data. But what impact do these forces have on federal policy? Perhaps more to the point: Is policy driving change, or is change driving policy?
Social media experts John Crupi, chief technology officer for JackBe, and Gov20LA founder Alan Silberberg joined host Eric Kavanagh on the latest episode of Federal Spending — an online radio broadcast designed to follow the money, not the politics — to discuss how social media and the push for transparency are shaping government policy and process. Keep reading →
The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board’s new leader took the reins just a few weeks ago, but has already moved full speed ahead using cutting edge strategies for tracking federal spending, increasing government transparency and doggedly pursuing fraud detection and mismanagement.
Kathleen Tighe, who took over as board chair of the young agency Jan. 1 after Earl Devaney’s retirement, brings her experience in government accountability as Inspector General for the Education Department to the task of overseeing $840 billion in stimulus funds unleashed in 2009. Keep reading →
Becoming a whistleblower is often a risky and difficult path for federal employees, and so is finding the truth and protecting those who have exposed wrongdoing from being fired, punished or harassed.
Dan Meyer, director of civilian reprisal investigations with the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Defense (DOD), took the job of protecting whistleblowers to new and often perilous territory — the Pentagon’s intelligence and counterintelligence communities and the murky world of top secret or “black” programs. Keep reading →
This is the final installment in a series of columns by Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney on the lessons he has learned from his work on the Recovery Board, which oversees the $787 billion Recovery program. The column originally appeared at Recovery.gov.
Having spent nearly four decades in the federal government before taking this job in February 2009, I thought I knew pretty much everything about how the government works. Keep reading →
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) data mining systems need additional oversight, review and evaluation to protect privacy rights, ensure transparency to the public and enable effective counterterrorism efforts, stated the General Accountability Office (GAO) in a report released last week.
Of six component agency data mining systems evaluated, “none performed all of the key activities associated with an effective evaluation framework…Only one program office performed most of the activities related to obtaining executive review and approval,” said the report. “Until such reforms are in place, DHS and its component agencies may not be able to ensure that critical data mining systems used in support of counterterrorism are both effective and that they protect personal privacy.” Keep reading →
Despite a broad push for transparency, our government has a long way to go to get there, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Issa, R-CA. spoke about his vision Wednesday for improving open government and federal spending transparency at the O’Reilly Media 2011 Strata Summit, a day after President Obama renewed a call for transparency globally. Keep reading →
Whether the government’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan has actually worked may be the stuff of contentious political debate, but even partisans seem to agree that the processes and systems designed to track that money are helping to lay the foundation for better transparency and accountability in government spending.
Case in point: Rep. Darryl Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and a vociferous advocate of transparency and accountability in federal spending, said that while he continues to have concerns about “the effectiveness and prudence” of President Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board [RAT Board] has provided “a commendable model of transparency…the tremendous success of the RAT Board is worthy of replication throughout the federal bureaucracy.” Keep reading →