Craig Fugate has always been a man with a mission- and all the more so this week as the nation’s leading emergency responder, as the head of Federal Emergency Management Agency, tries to get 60 million people on the East Coast ready for Hurricane Irene. Keep reading →
Three recent studies, one of which was reported here last week, confirm what many of us have long suspected: leadership in the federal government is overdue for a major overhaul.
If the administration is serious about cutting costs and driving innovation, then rethinking how supervisors, managers, and executives are selected, developed, and promoted must become a top priority. Keep reading →
How do you tell the difference between when government programs overlap and duplicate each other versus when they complement and reinforce each other in a collaborative network? Is this just a difference in rhetoric or in reality?
This is the underlying theme of a new report by Congressional Research Service specialist Fredrick Kaiser, in “Interagency Collaborative Arrangements and Activities: Types, Rationales, and Considerations.” Given the recent big push by Congress to deal with overlapping programs, and recent reports by the Government Accountability Office, it is quite timely. Keep reading →
While many government leaders might give lip service to the merits of creativity and innovation in the public sector, few actually put the idea into practice, according to a recent survey and ranking of innovation in federal workplaces.
Beyond that, the survey might actually offer some motivation. Keep reading →
The federal government’s long road to cloud computing owes its beginnings in part to the ill-fated “Cash for Clunkers” program and the failure of the IT systems that were were supposed to support it, said Vivek Kundra in his first published reflections about his time as the nation’s first formally appointed federal chief information officer.
Kundra, who retired from the White House Office of Management and Budget on Aug. 12 to begin a fellowship at Harvard University, recalled his impressions arriving in America as an 11-year old son of immigrants, his career in public service, and much of the government’s dysfunctional IT programs he inherited and tried to fix over the past two and half years.
The Cash for Clunkers program proved to be a seminal moment for the young CIO:
“With the economy facing the worst recession since the Great Depression, one program – Cash for Clunkers – provided rebates to people who traded in older cars for new, more fuel-efficient ones. But just three days after its launch, the system for processing these rebates collapsed under the weight of an unexpectedly large wave of applications.
“Lacking the ability to scale rapidly, the system was overwhelmed. For a month, we rode a roller coaster of unplanned outages and service disruptions, leading to delays in processing rebates.
“One hot DC August night during the height of this mess, I emerged at 4 a.m. from the Department of Transportation after 14 straight hours working with the system architects and database engineers as they struggled to keep servers online and the site operational. As I wandered the streets of DC, I was frustrated that I couldn’t catch a cab, but I was even more frustrated that technology was complicating the lives of thousands of Americans. I knew that if Cash for Clunkers had used cloud services, the site would have easily been able to scale in response to the rising demand.
“That’s what drove home my belief that we had to move the government to the cloud.”
That decision ultimately led to Kundra’s office instituting a “Cloud First” policy, intended to prod federal agencies to accelerate “the safe and secure adoption of cloud computing” as well as take advantage of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reduce the government’s costly reliance on legacy computing systems. His office later calculated that up to $20 billion worth of federal IT spending could be shifted to cloud-based solutions.
Kundra also restated his astonishment in discovering how many data centers the federal government operated:
“When I was Director of Infrastructure Technology in Arlington County, I knew down to the street address where each of our data center facilities was located and what was in them. Yet when I asked how many data centers the Federal Government had, nobody could give me the answer.
“It took agencies eight months to produce an initial inventory of their data centers. All told, the number of Federal data centers has more than quadrupled since 1998, from 432 to more than 2000. Yet on average, they are only 27 percent utilized. This means that 73 percent of our computing power is doing nothing for the American people. That’s why the Federal Government is actively shutting down 800 data centers by 2015. Already, 81 have been shut down and a total of 373 will be closed by the end of next year.
“A great example is right here in our backyard – the Department of Health and Human Services operates 175 data centers. They recently shut down one in Rockville, Maryland, that was approximately 15,000 square feet and cost taxpayers $1.2 million annually in electricity costs alone. It’s one of 12 they’re shutting down this year.”
Kundra also recalled his personal road to public service. Born in New Delhi, India, he lived in Tanzania until he was eleven, before his parents moved to the U.S. when Kundra was 11.
“I couldn’t speak English when I first arrived. I recall my first days at school in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and seeing a couple of African American kids around my age. They reminded me of my friends in Tanzania, so I walked up to them and starting speaking in Swahili. I was promptly met by strange looks, so I started speaking even louder to make sure the beaten up. Not the warm welcome I was expecting!”
Prior to taking the U.S. CIO post, Kundra served as the chief technology officer in Mayor Fenty’s cabinet in Washington, DC; as the assistant secretary of Commerce and Technology in Governor Kaine’s cabinet in Virginia, and as the director of infrastructure in Arlington County.
Once a fortress a stone’s throw from the White House, the Department of Veterans Affairs is using social media to open its doors and windows and let the sun shine in and becoming a model for other agencies in the process.
Leading the charge into the social media world are two veterans: Brandon Friedman, 33, director of online media and editor of the VA’s blog VAntage Point, and Alex Horton, 26, senior blog writer. Both served in Iraq. Friedman also served in Afghanistan. Keep reading →
Is your organization still bogged down in ‘government-speak’? Isn’t it time you get with the ‘plain language’ program – and get back to clear, simple, direct communication?
Plain language is communication that your target audience can understand the first time they hear or read it. Use clear, direct language to say what you mean, so your audience can understand your message, and find what they need. Keep reading →
Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, is the ability to understand and use emotions in a positive and constructive way to manage your emotions and the emotions of others. It is gaining traction as a crucial tool in corporate and government offices around the globe, and as a required workplace skill for government leaders, supervisors and managers.
This movement is supported by numerous studies by workplace and efficiency experts who note an important value of EQ: though intellect is static, EQ can be learned and developed, accelerating productivity and advancing career paths for those who master this valuable skill. Keep reading →
The Government Accountability Office has identified a number of leading green IT practices used by federal, state, and local government and private-sector organizations that could save millions of dollars if implemented by additional agencies.
According to a GAO report released last week, several agencies have taken steps to implement federal green IT requirements but aren’t able to effectively measure the results of those efforts.
GAO recommended the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, in conjunction with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, direct agencies to implement the leading practices as well as develop baselines for their green IT-related goals and, where possible, targets that measure energy or cost savings or other quantifiable benefits. Keep reading →
Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright has a long history of commandeering technology before it was ready for the military.
So few were surprised, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Lynn, when Cartwright–better known in defense circles as Hoss Cartwright–was soon brandishing a specially-secured iPad capable of accessing classified military information otherwise off limits to iPad devices. Keep reading →