The Republican-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is starting over on postal reform legislation and taking as its template a surprising source — the White House's fiscal 2015 budget request. Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told members of the committee and the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget that he intends to "embrace to the greatest extent possible" the entire slate of legislative proposals for overhauling the Postal Service included in the President's budget request.
The Office of Management and Budget makes a second attempt to move agencies to financial management shared services. The agency faces stubborn obstacles: lack of competition, the uncertainty of whether the federal providers are able to handle the increase in business and how to best ensure agencies are satisfied with its services. But OMB believes the second time around will be different. The administration says budget concerns and technology advancements will help overcome these long-standing challenges. In part one of his special series, Shared Services Revisited, Federal News Radio Executive Editor Jason Miller looks at whether unanswered questions would doom shared services again. Read Federal News Radio's related article.
In part 1 of Federal News Radio's special report, this second attempt by OMB to move agencies to financial management shared services is fraught with the same obstacles of a decade ago. But OMB believes this attempt at shared services is different. The administration says budget concerns and technology advancements will help overcome these long-standing barriers.
The White House is looking for a few great thinkers for round 3 of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, which will focus on data innovation, crowdsourcing and digital projects. Applications are being accepted through April 7, with work scheduled to begin on the projects this summer. In part three of Federal News Radio's special report, Solving Our Nation's Toughest Challenges: The Presidential Innovation Fellows, we get a behind-the-scenes look at what's ahead in round 3 of the program.
From saving lives to saving hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Presidential Innovation Fellows program is already making a difference in its short two-year existence. In our special report, Solving Our Nation's Toughest Challenges: The Presidential Innovation Fellows, Federal News Radio gets an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the fellows program and examines some of its greatest success stories.
What is program evaluation? What can be done to better integrate evidence and rigorous evaluation in decision-making? How can federal agencies conduct rigorous program evaluations and data analytics on a tight budget? How can federal agencies increase and enhance their evaluation capacity? Join host Michael Keegan as he explores these questions and more with Kathy Stack, advisor for Evidence-Based Innovation at the Office of Management and Budget.
In this week's Inside the Reporter's Notebook, Executive Editor Jason Miller explores how DoD is developing its cloud security standards and Treasury is filling a financial management void.
Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the oversight committee, and John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the Government Operations subcommittee, want OMB to provide data to the committee on excess federal properties valued at $50 million or more. The committee has been seeking this information for more than two years, "yet these requests have consistently gone unfulfilled," Issa and Mica wrote in a March 24 letter to OMB Director Sylvia Burwell.
Horace Blackman, a long-time Veterans Affairs IT executive, also leaves for the private sector, joining Lockheed Martin.
GSA, NASA and NIH are providing agency customers more insight into what they are buying, how they are buying it and what prices they are paying. OFPP plans to launch the Prices Paid Portal later this year. But others say it's not about the data, but the outcomes agencies are trying to achieve.
In this week's edition of Inside the Reporter's Notebook: USPS' cloud exchange is almost ready to fly; GSA faces a flood of contract protests; and technology chairs shuffle at DHS and GSA.
What's the secret to meeting 100 agency performance goals in the next two years?
In the fiscal 2015 budget request to Congress, the White House detailed 15 cross-agency priority goals and almost 100 agency-specific goals. The goals and new strategic plans are laying the groundwork for agencies to continue to improve mission delivery and operations over the next two years.
An update for your agency's performance management to-do list.
Legislation newly introduced in the Senate proposes to scrap hundreds of unneeded, outdated or repetitive reports. The House, meanwhile, is marking up its own version of the bill.