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Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told a panel of agency IGs that she's currently drafting legislation that would pool together resources and establish an IG office specifically for the dozens of small agencies that fall outside the scope of the 1978 IG Act.
Jerry Williams, the CIO of FSA, said he's reorganizing his office to establish customer service representatives to help the mission areas use IT more successfully. April 10, 2014
The Obama Administration has tried to infuse a love of data and evidence into the federal bureaucracy with mixed success. It's also pledged to give agencies more flexibility in hiring to bring people with fresh ideas into the government. For perspective on the management agenda, Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Emily Kopp spoke to Shelly Metzenbaum, who served as Office of Management and Budget assistant director for performance. She now is president of the Volcker Alliance. Metzenbaum recently testified on Capitol Hill about the problems she sees in federal management and performance.
The Naval Air Systems Command's acquisition practices are laden with so much unnecessary costs that its commander worries about its ability to meet its mission to the fleet a few years from now. NAVAIR's commander said it's time to rethink the way it engages the acquisition system and with industry.
In part 3 of our special report, Shared Services Revisited, Federal News Radio explores the administration's plans to ensure success in consolidating and standardizing financial systems this time around. Beth Angerman, director of Treasury's Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation (OFIT), said the goal is creating a repeatable, sustainable process for agencies to move to federal financial management providers. Over the next six months, Treasury and OMB must answer many of the outstanding questions about how this initiative will truly work.
Absent significant investment in developing the leadership abilities of supervisors, the federal government is going to have morale and performance issues for years to come, says Jeff Neal, former CHCO at Homeland Security.
From health records to rubber gloves, the Defense Health Agency is streamlining health care at the Pentagon. In this week's Agency of the Month radio show, host Lauren Larson speaks with Navy Capt. James Poindexter, acting division chief of Medical Logistics Shared Services, and Dave Bowen, director of health care IT and chief information officer at the Defense Health Agency.
The rapid acquisition policy the Army uses in Afghanistan could be moving too quickly. The department can customize how it uses the Defense Acquisition System to make sure war fighters get what they need. But the Army's information technology systems might need a slower approach. Christopher Pernin, director of the Force Development and Technology Program at the RAND Arroyo Center and a senior physical scientist and professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, tells In Depth with Francis Rose they believe the Army can use acquisition policies it already has to improve its IT systems.
Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, will discuss the status of the SES, and Nicole Johnson and Andy Medici from the Federal Times will talk about cloud computing and the likelihood that feds will get a pay raise. April 9, 2014
A customer service representative at the IRS who repeatedly greeted taxpayers calling a help-line with a chant urging President Barack Obama's re-election in 2012 could now be facing significant disciplinary action, according to the Office of Special Counsel. It's one of three cases of improper political activity at the agency recently uncovered by OSC. Meanwhile, three career officials at Customs and Border Protection are under fire by OSC for allegedly manipulating the hiring process to install job candidates favored by political leadership into career appointments.
Three years after the Government Accountability Office first reported that federal agencies were managing a maze of potentially duplicative federal programs, the watchdog agency has added nearly a dozen more areas to its tally of duplication and overlap. GAO's latest report identifies a total of 26 areas for potential cost-savings, ranging from fragmented operations to out-and-out copycat programs being run by multiple agencies.
One way to measure success of federal shared services is to see how many agencies are actually using them. Financial management shared service providers are facing an uphill battle to meet that metric. The ability of the federal providers to ramp up quickly is one of their biggest challenges. In part 2 of his special report, Shared Services Revisited, Federal News Radio Executive Editor Jason Miller explores the long-standing capacity challenges that current and new financial management shared service providers will have to overcome. Read Federal News Radio's related article.
The latest edition of the Defense Department's effort to buy more capability without more money will emphasize the idea of bringing outside innovation into the military acquisition process.
In our special report, Shared Services Revisited, OMB still must solve long-standing challenges to ensure federal providers are capable of bringing on large, cabinet level agencies. The role of the private sector is leaving some vendors unhappy, but officials say history shows their success rate with financial management system implementation to be poor.