Green is the color of sustainability…and money. The Federal Green Challenge honors agencies that take big strides to reduce waste and conserve energy. The 2013 winners were announced recently. One of the agencies to come out on top in multiple categories is the U.S. Postal Service. Thomas Day, the chief sustainability officer at the U.S. Postal Service, spoke with Francis about what his agency is doing to make a difference on the environment.

Sharing lessons learned is a two-way street — there’s the learning part and then the teaching part. Gwynne Kostin, director of the Digital Services Innovation Center at the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies within the General Services Administration, talked about sharing lessons learned at the Management of Change conference recently. Francis asked her to join him for an interview to further examine that topic.

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy wants to cut the amount of money the government pays to contractor executives. The proposal would set the ceiling at $400,000 per year, about half the current amount. Lee Dougherty, a partner at Fluet Huber and Hong, recently wrote a column on the plan for the Washington Business Journal. He spoke to Francis about his thoughts on the topic.

Veterans looking for business opportunities can get some new help from the Small Business Administration. The SBA Veteran Pledge Initiative will bring together national, regional and community banks to help jump start aspiring veteran entrepreneurs. Rhett Jeppson, associate administrator of the Office of Veterans Business Development at SBA, joined Francis to discuss the new program.

On today’s edition of Industry Chatter, Francis speaks with Brian Garr, CEO of LinguaSys. LinguaSys is a provider of human language technologies, producing multilingual text analytics and natural language processing software.