Despite some notable improvements over the past year by the Office of Personnel Management to streamline the process for federal hiring, federal job seekers are still often frustrated with, overwhelmed by or puzzled over the complex federal hiring process.
Agency recruiters and prospective job seekers may find at least some insights in how to more successfully navigate that process in a new book, “Find Your Federal Job Fit.” Keep reading →
This year’s #SAVEAward: one small step for @NASA; one giant leap for #cuttingwaste twitter%20username
Not long after Sheila Bair was appointed to chair the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2006, senior officials at the FDIC sat down in a series of meetings to discuss what to do about a disturbing statistic.
“We couldn’t figure out why our agency was 25th in the rankings” of employee satisfaction, recalled Ira Kitmacher, manager for culture change and senior adviser at FDIC. Keep reading →
A lack of institutional knowledge in developing IT systems was believed to be a leading cause behind the Office of Personnel Management’s troubled launch of its new government jobs search site, OPM’s inspector general testified at a House subcommittee hearing yesterday.
“I cannot stress how important it is to have the correct processes in place at the beginning of any project,” said Patrick McFarland at an Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing that looked into whether OPM is meeting its mission. Keep reading →
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) is no stranger to the government technology community. As founder and managing director of Columbia Capital, a venture capital firm, he helped found or invest in a number of technology companies, including Nextel.
So it was a logical leap when Warner reached out to the Northern Virginia Technology Council in 2010, asking for recommendations for remedying the major record-keeping deficiencies discovered at Arlington National Cemetery. Keep reading →
The White House Office of Management and Budget declared today that it had made genuine progress in cutting wasteful and improper payments to the tune of $17.6 billion in fiscal year 2011, with significant decreases in payment errors coming from Medicare, Medicaid, Pell Grants, and Food Stamps.
Combined with the improper payment cuts in 2010, administration officials said agencies avoided making over $20 billion in improper payments in the two years since President Obama issued an executive order initiating an aggressive campaign against wasteful payment errors.
OMB Director Jack Lew, in a press briefing today, attributed the progress to “an unparalleled commitment” by the White House, and the use of “forensic technologies” in rooting out sources of improper payments. Keep reading →
Three chief technology officers from the government contracting community were singled out for their innovation at the 20th annual TechCelebration event sponsored by a leading trade association, the Northern Virginia Technology Council.
The CTO awards, presented jointly by NVTC and Washington Technology magazine last night, recognize chief technology officers for their critical contributions to achieving results for their government customers and their leadership within their own companies. Keep reading →
Mistakes happen. Whether you are a politician or a plant manager, you will slip up and make a mistake at work from time to time. The key is knowing how to handle your gaffes to get past them as quickly as possible.
In the past couple of weeks we have seen some excellent examples of crisis management play out in front of us. Republican presidential candidate hopefuls Herman Cain and Rick Perry have both made some serious negative headlines recently, but they have handled their situations quite differently. Keep reading →
President Obama signed an executive order today directing federal agencies to limit the number of electronic devices issued to federal employees, expand their use of teleconferencing in lieu of travel and reduce the volume of documents the government prints each year.
Agencies have within 45 days to develop plans to reduce by 20 percent the combined federal spending associated with these and other expenses, including what agencies spend on vehicle fleets and the production of “non-essential items” for promotional purposes. Keep reading →
As Federal Computer Week‘s Alice Lipowicz notes in her ongoing coverage of the troubled relaunch of USAJobs.gov, “It is unusual to see a federal IT story that generates the kind of strong emotions that the USAJobs 3.0 launch has done in the past several weeks.”
Officials at the Office of Personnel Management have come under withering attack for failing to anticipate the initial surge in user demand or the need for greater system and help desk capacity that followed. Keep reading →