July 2, 2009 by John Kamensky
This is our 250th blog entry! Thanks to our many readers and contributors. Here’s an updated index of the highlights of the past couple of years since we started this effort to track the 2008-2009 presidential transition effort.
Blogs on “The Big Picture” — Where Is Government Reform Going?
Blogs on What the Campaigns Said About Government Reform
Blogs on the History of Transitions
Blogs on the 2008 Transition: Pre-Election
Blogs on the 2008-2009 Transition: Post-Election
Blogs on The Bush Administration’s Transition-Out Activities
Blogs on the Obama Transition: The First 100 Days
Post-100 Days: Staff Transitions
Blogs on Recovery Act Implementation
Blogs on Open Government Implementation
Blogs on New Administration Management Initiatives
Blogs on Management Ideas for the New Administration
a. Getting Results/Governance
b. Workforce
c. Technology/Web 2.0
d. Managing/Improving Performance
e. Engaging People
f. Government Contracting
Blogs on Advice for the New Team
Blogs on What Other Groups Are Doing
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June 30, 2009 by John Kamensky
As promised, federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra (described by the Washington Post as “King of Geek“) launched an “IT Dashboard” today that provides the public an accessible view of how individual agencies in the federal government are spending their technology dollars. Now this is transparency with a purpose! Previously, this kind of information was available only annually, buried in an obscure table in the OMB budget (see Fiscal Year 2010 supplemental tables for an example).
Federal Computer Week reports that the website will allow users to embed charts and other information on their own websites and that agencies are responsible for updating cost, schedule, and performance information on a monthly basis.
Tags: Washington Post
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June 24, 2009 by John Kamensky
The White House continues to pioneer a new approach to crafting policy by actively seeking public input. The media seems a bit skeptical about how it is going, though, calling it “not so presidential” in part because of the many off-topic comments. However that hadn’t deterred the pioneers!
Background. Back in January, President Obama directed the development of an Open Government Directive that would guide agencies in being more transparent, participative with citizens, and collaborative. That effort began in earnest in late May with the launch of a three-phase effort
to develop this policy with broad citizen input.
Phase I, which invited citizens to “brainstorm” on what should be covered by the directive, resulted in more than 4,100 ideas with thousands of citizens voting more than 210,000 times on their favorite ideas . . . but these included off-topic ideas not related to drafting a directive but rather releasing UFO files, JFK assassination files, President Obama’s “real” birth certificate, etc.
Phase II invited citizens to participate in a blog-based “dialogue” on key (on-topic) ideas that surfaced from the brainstorming phase. And there were plenty, including videoing all public meeting and posting them on line, as well as creating a “citizen’s portal” that individuals could customize based on where they lived and their interests.
And now citizens are being invited to participate in Phase III, the “drafting” phase, to jointly craft recommendations that would be used by the White House to actually draft the final Directive.
Progress to date. In each of the three phases, the White House relied on a different technology platform to engage with citizens. This meant that participants had to re-register for each phase. But it also served as a filtering process. While thousands participated in the brainstorming phase, only about eight dozen have registered so far to participate in the final drafting phase.
The White House notes that the Drafting Phase run through midnight, Sunday, June 28th. That wiki-based effort is organized around 16 sets of topics related to transparency, participation, and collaboration. So if you want to participate, do it soon! They recommend engaging earlier so others can review and vote on the best draft under each topic.
Open Government Blogging. Probably the most interesting elements of this process, to date, have been a series of explanatory blog entries posted on the White House site “Open Government Blog” (really the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is coordinating this initiative within the White House). They provide a rich context for what is unfolding:
- Open Government Initiative: Phase II (May 28, by Beth Noveck)
- Wrap-Up of the Open Government Brainstorming: Transparency (June 2, by Beth Noveck)
- Open Government Initiative Discussion Phase: Transparency Principles (June 3, by Beth Noveck)
- Open Government Brainstorm: Collaboration in Action (June 5, by Beth Noveck)
- Transparency: Open Government Operations (June 8, by Robynn Sturm)
- Data Transparency vs. Data.Gov (June 8, by Vivek Kundra)
- Wrap-Up of the Open Government Brainstorming: Participation (June 10, by Beth Noveck)
- Enhancing Citizen Participation in Decision-Making (June 10, by Beth Novek)
- Transparency: Access to Information (June 10, by Michael Fitzgerald)
- Strengthening Civic Participation (June 11, by Sonal Shah)
- Improving Online Public Participation in Rulemaking (June 12, by John Moses)
- New Technologies and Participation (June 12, by Vivek Kundra and Katie Stanton)
- Wrap Up of the Open Government Brainstorming: Collaboration (June 16, by Beth Noveck and Michael Baldwin)
- Enhancing Online Citizen Participation Through Policy (June 16, by Vivek Kundra and Michael Fitzpatrick).
- Prizes as Incentives for Public-Private Partnerships (June 17, by Thomas Kalil)
- Collaboration – Achieving Better Results by Working Together (June 19, by Michelle Heffner)
- Open Government Directive: Phase III Drafting (June 22, by Beth Noveck)
Tags: Beth Noveck, chief technology officer, citizen participation, collaboration, John Moses, Katie Stanton, Michael Baldwin, Michael Fitzgerald, Michelle Heffner, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Open Government Directive, OSTP, Robynn Sturm, Sonal Shah, Thomas Kalil, transparency, Vivek Kundra
Posted in Obama, Transition 2009, government, management, presidential transition | Leave a Comment »
June 23, 2009 by John Kamensky
The Washington Post reports today that a new survey shows citizens’ confidence is slipping in their belief that the Recovery Act will boost the economy.
Whoever was surveyed clearly has not been reading OMB guidance on expectations for how these monies will be tracked!
The complexity of implementing the Recovery Act is becoming clearer over time. In fact, this was the focus of the feature article in this month’s Government Executive magazine, “Untangling the Recovery.” In that article, author Robert Brodsky notes: “For the nation’s 2.7 million federal employees, the stimulus plan represents a more personal mission. It is a chance for redemption, to convince the rest of the world that the government still can operate as an efficient and effective management organization.”
Even the Washington Post notes: “Tracking Stimulus Spending May Not Be as Easy as Promised,” and cites how a private website, www.recovery.org, is reporting seemingly more complete information, faster. But this private site doesn’t have to develop guidance for, and document, how many jobs are being saved or created!
Government Executive’s Katherine Peters notes that tracking the number of jobs will be tricky and “documenting that number may take some fancy footwork.” Federal Times’ Gregg Carlstrom wrote a couple weeks ago that the Office of Management and Budget would be coming out with guidance last week. But it was delayed; when circulated to agencies for comment, OMB got more than 700 comments to resolve. So it was released late yesterday.
The new OMB guidance, dated June 22, finally clarifies the two streams of data (money going out vs. reporting back on dollars spent, project results, and jobs created or saved). It also creates a distinction between what it does vs. what the Recovery Board does by creating a new, separate website. The new website, federalreporting.gov/, is to be used by grant, contract, and loan recipients and sub-recipients to report back to the federal government. The new guidance explains how they are to report information on this new website. It also promises: “Additional guidance to Federal government contractors will be forthcoming. . . revised guidance on lobbyist communications is also forthcoming.”
The guidance also includes a supplement which, for the first time, lists all 306 federal programs that receive Recovery Act funds and are included in the reporting system. Some of these are listed here, along with their Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance number, to provide some flavor of the diversity of this effort:
The variety suggests the complexity of reporting back data in a consistent manner. But the guidance also asks for help: “The general public and non-governmental entities interested in “good government” can help with data quality, as well, by highlight problems for correction.” They’ll be able to do this via a feedback mechanism on the soon-to-be re-designed Recovery.Gov website.
UPDATE: Robert Brodsky and Elizabeth Newell at Government Executive, wrote a good summary of the guidance in “Stimulus Guidance Calls for More Detailed Reporting.”
Tags: aquaculture assistance, ARRA speinding, Commerce, Education, Elizabeth Newell, Energy, Government Executive, HUD, Interior, Justice, NASA, NEA, OMB guidance, Recovery Act, recovery.gov, recovery.org, Robert Brodsky, stimulus funding, USDA, Washington Post
Posted in Obama, Recovery Act, government, management, presidential transition | Leave a Comment »
June 20, 2009 by John Kamensky
This entry is short enough to qualify for a Tweet! The Senate confirmed Jeffrey Zients on Friday afternoon to be the deputy director for management at OMB, and President Obama’s chief performance officer!
Tags: Jeffrey Zients
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June 17, 2009 by John Kamensky
People have been asking me why I’m still doing a transition blog: “Isn’t the transition over?” Well, no.
It’s five months into the Obama Administration and according to the Washington Post’s Head Count, only 23 percent (146) of the top 492 jobs have been filled. There’s yet to be an orientation of new incoming appointees, either. Just last week GSA identified the Hay Group to organize and run the orientation. This may not have been on the fast track in part because there wasn’t a critical mass of appointees in place to orient! And the President’s Management Council – largely comprised of departmental deputy secretaries – hasn’t convened yet (to my knowledge) because there isn’t a quorum of deputy secretaries.
When visitors from foreign government come through our office asking about the transition progress of the new Obama Administration, I try to explain this to them. They seem baffled. How can the U.S. Government be fighting two wars, address a major economic crisis, pursue healthcare reform, combat climate change, and have less than a quarter of its top government executives in place?
I explain how Don Gips, the head of the president’s selection and appointment process, and his deputy, David Jacobson, have now both been selected for appointments as ambassadors. These critical vacancies have the potential to slow the selection process.
I also explain how top level appointees need to be confirmed by the Senate. I also share with them how this process isn’t always based on assessing the qualifications of the appointees, either. For example, the hardcopy version of this week’s Federal Times notes that Senate floor votes on at least 25 nominees are being held up by some Republicans because they are miffed that the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor is scheduled for mid-July, which is sooner than they would like. This hold up includes positions such as the chief lawyer for the State Department, an undersecretary for Homeland Security, and I guess Jeff Zients as well, whose nomination was voted out of committee a few days ago.
I get a blank look from these foreign visitors. I just shrug. I can’t explain it either! But they better understand why more power and authority is being centralized in the White House, where most appointees do not need to be confirmed. There, positions have been filled quickly and they are able to move forward on the president’s agenda.
Tags: David Jacobson, Don Gips, Federal Times, Hay Group, Homeland Security, Jeffrey Zients, President's Management Council, presidential appointee orientation, Presidential Appointees, Sonya Sotomayor, State Department, Washington Post
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June 16, 2009 by John Kamensky
People have been asking me: What’s the Obama performance management agenda? I keep saying, “you’ll have to wait until his chief performance officer gets on board.”
Well, that may be true in some respects, but the agenda is steadily being fleshed out. The President’s FY 2010 budget, according to Federal Times, laid out a set of specifics that agencies will have to develop in the coming months:
• Establish a comprehensive measurement system to link programs with agency and governmentwide performance goals.
• Reform program assessments to report on and explain performance trends, risks and improvement plans.
• Identify agency officials who will ensure performance improvement plans work.
• Revamp the Bush administration’s ExpectMore.gov to make performance data agencies submit easily accessible to the public, Congress and other stakeholders.
• Launch a governmentwide research program to compare the effectiveness of different program strategies to ensure programs achieve their goals.
And last week, the Office of Management and Budget released guidance to agencies in developing their FY 2011 budget and performance plans. There, it said “Over the next several months, OMB also will work with Congress, interagency management councils, experts in Federal management policy, Federal employees, and other key stakeholders to craft a broad management and performance framework” that will address both presidential priorities as well as long-standing management challenges.
The guidance went on to require agencies to identify, by July 31st, a set of “high-priority performance goals” where there will be “regular reviews of the progress agencies are making.” The guidance offers criteria for what the goals should look like and directs the Performance Improvement Council to work together to develop a common template for their agencies to report their goals and measures of progress.
NOTE: It’s interesting how this OMB guidance memo was described by different media outlets. The memo covered several topics and different media covered different aspects. Government Executive’s Elizabeth Newell covered the performance element; Federal Times’ Stephen Losey focused on the budget element; the Washington Post’s Joe Davidson emphasized the hiring reform element; and Federal Computer Week’s Alice Lipowicz highlights the memo’s emphasis of IT investment goals around transparency and collaboration.
Tags: Alice Lipowicz, chief performance officer, Elizabeth Newell, expectmore.gov, Federal Computer Week, Federal Times, FY 2011 budget, Government Executive, hiring reform, Joe Davidson, OMB, Spring Guidance, Stephen Losey, Washington Post
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June 12, 2009 by John Kamensky
Jeffrey Zients
Earlier this week, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held a confirmation hearing for Jeff Zients, President Obama’s choice to be the first Chief Performance Officer and deputy director of management at the Office of Management and Budget. Who is he and what did he say?
Who is he? Elise Castelli, Federal Times, profiled Zients a few weeks ago: “From 1999 to 2004, Zients was chairman of Advisory Board, a successful health care consulting firm. From 2000 through 2001, he also was chairman of Advisory Board’s sister company, Corporate Executive Board. Under his leadership, the two management consulting firms went from making millions of dollars to making billions.” She went on to note that he was seen by his peers as “very analytical” and developed a collaborative business model. While he’s not had government experience, his approach may well be effective in a government environment.
What did he say? Here is Zient’s formal statement to the committee and some excerpts from media coverage of that hearing:
Rebecca Neal, Federal Times:
- Zients said he is concerned the government doesn’t have hiring and succession plans in place to replace the large numbers of baby boomers who soon will be eligible to retire.
- He pointed particularly to the need to expand and strengthen the acquisition workforce.
- Zients said he will work to return inherently governmental work to civil servants but does not discount the value of contractors in certain fields.
- Zients said improving federal Web sites and improving transparency is one of his priorities,
- “I believe leadership starts with putting the right team together and measuring the goals for the organization,” he said.
Max Cacas, WFED Radio:
- Zients’ management philosophy: “As a CEO, I’ve always focused on three areas: leadership, measurement and a motivated workforce. I believe leadership starts with putting the right team together, and articulating the right goals for the organization. Measurement means translating these goals into an operating plan with clear metrics. A motivated workforce means creating an environment to attract and keep the best talent. I believe these three are the keys to strong performance.”
- Zients says he favors a more collaborative approach involving all stakeholders to create a better system than PART.
- He supports President Obama’s call to redefine “inherently governmental work,” to determine what jobs need to be brought back into the federal service and which jobs are more appropriately outsourced to outside contractors.
Elizabeth Newell, Government Executive:
- Zients “provided a long list of priorities he would address if he becomes deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget. These included developing a usable set of performance metrics, improving the effectiveness of government according to those measures, revitalizing the federal workforce, and increasing transparency and accountability across government.”
- “The test of a performance management system is, is it being used to make important resource allocation and budget decisions,” Zients said during the hearing. “I’m looking forward, if confirmed, to taking a collaborative approach, working with all the stakeholders, to develop a system.”
- “With Recovery Act reporting from recipients and subrecipients . . . . we should be planning on a broader deployment of the recovery solution so that transparency of federal spending extends to all taxpayer dollars.”
Tags: chief performance officer, deputy director for management, Elise Castelli, Elizabeth Newell, Federal Times, Government Executive, Jeffrey Zients, Max Cacas, OMB, Rebecca Neal, Recovery Act, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, WFED Radio
Posted in Obama, Recovery Act, Transition 2009, government, management, presidential transition | 1 Comment »
June 11, 2009 by John Kamensky
The Presidential Transition Act sets aside funds so the incoming Administration can conduct orientation training for incoming appointees. According to Federal News Radio, the General Services Administration announced that they have chosen the Hay Group to be the deliverer of the training for the Obama Administration. In 2000, and before, the Council for Excellence in Government had been the organizer of these orientation sessions, and with its demise earlier this year many thought it would be run by one of the other good government non-profits, so some saw the selection of a for-profit company as surprise.
Related, but not directly, the Office of Personnel Management is conducting an orientation session for new career and non-career senior executives from June 24-25. Its website notes that this will be an opportunity to “learn about the President’s agenda, his vision and values, and to discuss the unique challenges you face with your new responsibilities.” There is also a swearing-in ceremony scheduled, as well.
Tags: Council for Excellence in Government, Federal News Radio, General Services Administration, Hay Group, Office of Personnel Management, political appointee, Presidential Transition Act, SES
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June 9, 2009 by John Kamensky
The 2008 Obama presidential campaign laid out a series of exciting ideas for the use of technology in government and proposed the creation of both a Chief Technology Officer and a cybersecurity czar. This was accompanied by the campaign’s own successful use of technology. During the Transition, the “Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform” working group had its own video.
The opening months of the new Administration has seen top talent being recruited to help lead these initiatives, including Vivek Kundra as the government’s chief information officer (CIO) and Aneesh Chopra as its chief technology officer (CTO). Via the fiscal year 2010 budget and a series of speeches and initiatives, they’ve begun to lay out their priorities. Here’s what I’ve gathered so far. If there is more, feel free to add in the comment section:
FY 2010 Budget. According to the NextGov blog, the budget proposes increases in the federal government’s technology investment by 7 percent, to nearly $76 billion.
CTO Chopra. CTO Chopra laid out his priorities at last week’s Management of Change conference in Virginia Beach. Here’s Federal News Radio and Federal Computer Week’s snapshots of Chopra four priorities:
- Invest in technology-based innovation to transform the nation’s economy. This includes relooking at the federal research and development agenda and figuring out how to drive innovation through policy.
- Use “innovation platforms” to bring game-changing ways to address the President’s priorities such as health care, climate change, energy, economic improvement and education. These include: (1) creating a culture of open standards that can be shared and easily replicated so as to accelerate innovation; (2) re-directing federal R&D investments to be more applied, and more toward the middle ground “south of procurement and north of R&D;” and (3) expand the use of “crowdsourcing” to gather new ideas and fuel innovation.
- Deliver a reliable, resilient and trustworthy infrastructure. Chopra will focus on helping to develop a broadband plan by February 2010 and act on a cybersecurity initiative that will emphasize “game changing research and development, and collaboration with the private sector” to improve critical infrastructure and create bug-free software.
- Create a culture of open and innovative government. Chopra says he will continue to work with federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra, the General Services Administration and others to “build capacity in the federal government for a culture of openness transparency,” to help advance the executive order Obama issued Jan. 21 that “commits the government to greater transparency, citizen participation and collaboration.”
Government Computer News also noted that Chopra “suggested one possibility of working with the General Services Administration to develop an ‘innovation sandbox’ where project ideas could be tested and shared across the government.”
CIO Kundra. Vivek Kundra, in his maiden speech in March before the FOSE 2009 conference described the Administration’s “four pillars:” transparency via Web 2.0 tools; engaging citizens more effectively in their government; lowering the cost of government operations; and finding and exploiting innovations.
In addition, he has launched several initiatives:
- Data.gov. Kundra quickly moved to replicate an initiative he sponsored in the DC Government, which he has called “data.gov.” This entails posting raw government data on the internet and allowing it to be downloaded and used by citizens and businesses. When it was launched on May 21st, there were under 100 data sets. Kundra hopes to have 100,000 up by the end of this week.
- IT Project Dashboards. Another DC Government innovation was the monitoring of individual IT projects to ensure they were on track. He says he will replicate that effort across the federal government and release a beta version of the dashboard by the end of June for the 25 largest federal agencies.
- Cloud Computing. The FY 2010 budget includes an ode to cloud computing (see section 9 of OMB’s Analytical Perspectives), lyrically noting: “Cloud-computing is a convenient, on-demand model for network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”
Currently, the General Services Administration has a “request for information” out to industry to help define the parameters of cloud computing, hopefully in more understandable terms!
Tags: ACT/IAC, Analytical Perspectives, Aneesh Chopra, CIO, cloud computing, CTO, cybersecurity, data.gov, Federal News Radio, FOSE, FY 2010, Government Computer News, GSA, IT Project Dashboards, Management of Change, NextGov, OMB, Vivek Kundra
Posted in Obama, Transition 2009, government, management | 1 Comment »
