News and updates on federal IT initiatives from the 2011 Executive Leadership Conference.

‘Fast 50’ to give GSA more complete green building picture

WILLIAMSBURG, Va.-The General Services Administration is connecting 50 federal buildings to measure their energy usage and gather data to figure out how best to find savings.

Martha Johnson, GSA’s administrator, said the “Fast 50” project is one of several ways the agency is leading the effort to green the government.

“Federal buildings are 22 percent more efficient than the average private-sector building,” Johnson said during her keynote speech at the 21st annual Executive Leadership Conference sponsored by ACT and IAC. “We are more intensely gathering micro data about federal buildings to see how they are performing and what we can do to improve the efficiency of their energy use.”

Johnson said GSA could save $1 per square foot in energy usage with this approach.

Along with smart buildings, GSA bought 116 electric cars and installed charging stations at government agencies in an effort to green the federal fleet.

GSA also is focusing more on electronic waste, Johnson added.

“The government sheds 10,000 computers a day, and that’s just desktops computers,” she said. “This is a naughty, wicked problem and we need to better understand it.”

Innovation.gov is back?

Dave McClure, GSA’s associate administrator in the Office of Citizen Service and Innovative Technologies, once again is pushing the idea of an innovation platform for agencies to share ideas and best practices.

McClure said he’s talked to Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel about the idea as well as the innovation council.

McClure said there is a lot going on around innovation between open government, the implementation of the Government Performance and Results (GPRA) Modernization Act and cloud computing that agencies need a place to connect.

He pushed for a similar idea in May, but it got little traction.

The Obama Administration has encouraged agencies to innovate. It launched Challenge.gov to promote the use of challenges to solve problems and several agencies, including the Health and Human Services Department, NASA and the Food and Drug Administration held challenges.

In addition, McClure said more than 1,000 apps have been built off of information from Data.gov.

OPM to develop competencies for COOs

Under the GPRA Modernization Act, Congress instructed the Office of Personnel Management to create competency models for agency performance improvement officers (PIOs) and chief operating officers.

Patsy Stevens, the manager of OPM’s Systems Innovation Group, said her office is just getting started defining the requirements.

“We are thinking about what PIOs need to do,” she said. “We are working through the CXOs, CIOs, CFOs, chief human capital officers to figure out what skills PIOs need to have.”

One area OPM is considering is how to link the competencies to performance management goals, Stevens said.

DHS resuscitating HSIN

The Homeland Security Department failed at developing the 2011 Executive Leadership Conference.

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