Nextgov/FCW - Authors - Tom Shoop

That time one agency shut down for one day and changed government forever

Tom Shoop — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:59:00 -0400

The latest in an intermittent series looking back at groundbreaking, newsmaking, appalling and amusing events in government history.

The Federal Trade Commission, like other federal agencies, posted a simple notice on its website at the start of fiscal 2026: “The FTC is closed as of midnight Wednesday, October 1, 2025, due to the lapse in government funding.”

What the notice did not say was that the announcement came during the year of a grim anniversary for the FTC: Forty-five years ago, it became the first government agency ever to shut down due to a lack of appropriations. The closure, affecting only the FTC, lasted just one day, but would, sadly, become a common occurrence in government. And future shutdowns frequently wouldn’t be resolved so quickly.

Before 1980, shutdowns simply never happened. The operating assumption in government was that Congress would never have intended for agency operations to grind to a halt because of its failure to resolve funding disputes in a timely fashion. Such scenarios had in fact unfolded on several occasions in history, and all were expeditiously resolved. When agencies technically ran out of money, they simply continued normal operations until lawmakers provided new funds.

Then, on April 25, 1980, along came then-Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti with a landmark opinion: Continuing to operate an agency without official appropriations, he ruled in response to a lawmaker’s query, constituted a violation of an obscure law called the 1884 Antideficiency Act.

It was all downhill from there.

Just five days later, the Civiletti opinion got its first test, when the FTC ran out of funds. At the time, the agency received its appropriations independent of and on a different cycle than other federal agencies.

Members of Congress had delayed extending appropriations for the FTC, because they were mired in a battle over the agency’s enforcement powers. That battle was poised for a resolution, with the House Appropriations Committee taking up a measure providing $55 million in funding for the agency. But some representatives dug in their heels, insisting on withholding funds until President Jimmy Carter signed a measure sharply limiting the FTC’s authority to regulate businesses.

Ordinarily, that would have meant business as usual until the dispute was resolved. But not in the wake of Civiletti’s decree. "We are in the absurd situation of having to follow the attorney general's opinion," an FTC official told the Washington Post. "We intend to follow it. People who come to work will have the obligation of shutting down the FTC."

Very few of the agency’s 1,600 employees fell into that category, so almost all of them were furloughed. Eventually, a laundry list of employees excepted from furloughs would evolve, including those whose work involves the protection of life and property. (These are not, as is commonly assumed, “essential” workers.)

Today, the FTC’s shutdown guidance document runs to 14 pages, detailing which agency operations will continue during a shutdown. More than 400 of the agency’s 1,200 employees are excepted from furloughs. They are defined as those who “meet the demands of law enforcement actions to protect against immediate harm to life or government property interests or protect the commission’s excepted personnel, property and IT infrastructure.” That includes 200 employees at the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, which oversees major company mergers, and 77 at its Bureau of Consumer Protection.

In 1980, by contrast, very few exceptions were made to the rule that employees had to stop doing the FTC’s business.

Federal marshals showed up at FTC offices on April 30 to ensure that nobody was working. The General Services Administration’s Federal Protective Service, which provides security at government buildings, sent a message to its field offices that the FTC had been “terminated,” and that it would secure FTC sites. A series of hearings, a major court appearance and all agency travel plans were canceled.

The self-defeating nature of shutdowns became apparent immediately. "It's basically idiotic," then-FTC Chairman Michael Perschuk told reporters. "It's a waste of taxpayers' dollars."

Lawmakers quickly recognized the absurdity of shuttering even a single federal agency. They quickly passed an authorization bill for the FTC, and then provided emergency funding so it could continue operations. The whole process unfolded in the course of a single day.

But that day would mark the creation of a political tool that would be weaponized to bedevil government and traumatize its employees for decades to come.

]]>

Trump’s plan to slash the federal workforce isn’t the first, it’s just the worst

Tom Shoop — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:24:00 -0500

This president summarily fired tens of thousands of federal employees. This one cut more than 400,000 federal jobs, implementing a hiring freeze and dangling buyout offers to a vast swath of employees. This one opened thousands of government jobs to competition from the private sector. This one went so far as to issue an executive order requiring that all applicants for government jobs pass a loyalty test.

Now, in just a few weeks on the job, President Trump—via Elon Musk and his team of federal raiders—has found a way to outdo all of them. (Them being, in order: Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush and Truman.)

Musk and his squad at the United States Department of Government Efficiency Service—a name that even the most talented satirist couldn’t make up—have found a way to do what was once thought impossible, or illegal, or at least irrational: unload federal employees en masse. They have done so with a triple-meat-cleaver approach: a near-total hiring freeze, a buyout (sorry, “deferred resignation”) offer that may or may not be legal or affordable, and mass firings of workers without regard to their individual job performance or the importance of the work they do.

Most recent presidents have taken office having made promises to cut the fat out of the bureaucracy. But none have begun to do so in the absence of a rational plan, or even any consideration of the implications of what they were doing. That is, until now.

Musk has gone so far as to declare the federal workforce “unconstitutional,” so it’s no surprise that he and his team are taking a “fire first and ask questions later” approach to workforce reductions.

Their effort is radically different from the one taken by the previous Republican president: Trump himself. Back in 2017, federal management wonks were actually excited by a Trump initiative requiring agencies to develop restructuring plans aimed at reducing redundancy and improving efficiency in federal operations. Now that Trump has outsourced government reform to Musk and company, the emphasis is on simply slashing jobs, regardless of the consequences. The result is chaos.

Agencies have had to scramble to try to rehire employees in critical roles who were summarily fired. Other employees were let go after they accepted the deferred resignation offer, and are now left wondering if the promise of full pay through September still stands.

Very few of the jobs Musk and Trump are eliminating are filled by poor performers, or disloyal deep-staters, or involve operations that have been identified as unnecessary. And the monetary savings involved are trivial. After all, you could eliminate the entire federal workforce, and the reduction in spending would barely register in the federal budget.

As a percentage of American jobs, the federal workforce has been moving in one direction for decades—downward. It now stands at less than 2%. At the same time, we’ve asked federal agencies to take on more responsibilities—from airport security to combating deadly new diseases. And many of government’s already existing challenges have become more complex over time. Disaster response is just one example.

Mindlessly hacking away at the federal workforce is reckless, cruel and wasteful. Undoing the damage already done will take years. And Musk is just getting started.

]]>

Good luck, Department of Government Efficiency

Tom Shoop — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 10:54:00 -0500

What did Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy do to deserve this?

They campaigned diligently for Donald Trump, defended his most controversial ideas, and even, in Musk’s case, tried to promote Trump-supported policies via a $1 million voter sweepstakes.

Their reward? Being put in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency. It only sounds like a Cabinet department. In reality, it’s a fancy name for yet another blue-ribbon commission to examine how to make government smaller, better and less expensive. Presumably unintentionally, it also calls to mind the fake government agencies like the United States Business Regulations Department that scammers invoke to try to fleece consumers and businesses.

Ramaswamy does not think small when it comes to cutting government. During his brief run for the Republican nomination, he vowed to slash 75% of the federal workforce, relying on a novel interpretation of personnel laws and regulations that he says enables the president to act swiftly and with minimal oversight to lay off employees by the thousands.

“We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright,” said Ramaswamy after DOGE was unveiled. “We expect mass reductions-in-force in areas of the federal government that are bloated.”

Musk is no stranger to such an approach, having slashed three-quarters of the workforce at Twitter after he bought the company. But when it comes to cutting government spending, Musk has a rather large conflict of interest. Two of his companies, SpaceX and Tesla, are major government contractors.

Now Musk and Ramaswamy are supposed to turn their attention to improving a government whose sheer size and diverse missions makes it difficult to change. Also, its legal and regulatory framework is organized around the principles of fairness and effectiveness, not efficiency.

Nevertheless, Trump has promised DOGE will complete a thorough overhaul of the federal colossus by July 4, 2026, as a 250th birthday present to the country. The effort could be the “Manhattan Project of our time,” Trump says—but he rather pointedly doesn’t promise that it will be. And the irony, of course, is that the Manhattan Project was an effort to spend money in pursuit of a governmental goal, not cut it.

At its inception, DOGE seems an awful lot like myriad other efforts over the years to highlight allegedly wasteful government spending—almost all of which ends up being in the category of domestic discretionary funding that doesn’t add up to much in the broader scheme of things. Musk says DOGE will “have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars. This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining.” (He also added, cheerily, “Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!”)

A list of wasteful programs sounds less like a revolution and more like the latest in a long line of government efficiency commissions and reports. Musk and Ramaswamy could save themselves some time and just compile the studies of the Clinton administration’s Reinventing Government crusade, George W. Bush’s President’s Management Agenda, and dozens of Government Accountability Office reports. (They could even simply cut, paste and change the fonts on the report of cost savings generated by Joe Biden’s Campaign to Cut Waste during the Obama administration, and see if anyone noticed.)

True government reform efforts require hard, sustained effort and commitment from the top. And second presidential terms is where they go to die. Lame duck presidents—and Trump will be one the day he takes his second oath of office—usually lose interest in management improvement and reorganization initiatives. There’s little political payoff from them in the short term, and they require expending substantial political capital.

Musk and Ramaswamy may be in for this for the long haul, and Trump may be willing to push the envelope on unilaterally slashing government. But what’s more likely to emerge is a strongly worded report and reliance on tried-and-true methods—attrition-based workforce reductions, employee buyouts and limited budget freezes—to bolster the claim of reducing government.

]]>

That Time the Federal Government Was Ruled By Czars

Tom Shoop — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:00:00 -0500

The latest in an intermittent series looking back at groundbreaking, newsmaking, appalling and amusing events in government history.

On March 15, 1917, Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne of Russia, ending its succession of autocratic rulers. But in an unlikely turn of events, the term “czar” carried on in, of all places, the United States.

The word had been previously used occasionally as an epithet to characterize power-hungry politicians. But it began to spread more widely after President Woodrow Wilson tapped Bernard Baruch to head the War Industries Board during World War I. Just a year after Nicholas II’s abdication, Baruch came to be known as the “czar of American industry.” Thus began a trend that would continue into the 21st century.

The Wikipedia entry for “executive branch czars” lists nearly 100 such titles and the individuals to whom they were applied. The use of the term is somewhat squishy, because it’s never been an official designation. It simply entered common usage to describe certain officials, whether they held established government positions or were tapped informally to coordinate the government’s response to a particular issue. Often, the “czar” designation originates in the news media. And when it is applied to individuals who are not political appointees confirmed by the Senate, they can attract controversy.

The appellation is frequently applied to people who hold positions of great national importance, such as the czars designated to respond to issues such as drug proliferation, AIDS, human trafficking and border security. In other cases, the term seems like something of a stretch. Witness the Asian Carp czar, the Great Lakes czar, the copyright czar and the weatherization czar.

According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, which measures the usage of terms in books over time, references to “czar” dropped off steeply after Czar Nicholas’ abdication, then picked up again in the early 1940s. During that period, President Franklin Roosevelt vastly expanded the powers of the federal government in both official and ad hoc fashion to fight off the effects of the Great Depression and to coordinate the national mobilization during World War II.

Roosevelt appointed about a dozen czars, including those to manage shipping, rubber production, censorship, food, prices and oil. After the war, however, the use of the term went largely dormant as presidents limited their use of such high-profile appointees. During the Nixon administration, there was a brief resurgence, especially with the designation of an energy czar during the dark days of the OPEC oil embargo and subsequent gas shortages.

Perhaps more significantly, Nixon named the first drug czar, Jerome Jaffe, in 1971. That position would become the first among equals in the czar world. Ronald Reagan’s only czar was a drug warrior, and the position attained national prominence unmatched by any czars before or since. George H.W. Bush’s drug czar, William Bennett, was a household name as drug czar. But relatively few people knew that his official title was director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Bush’s successor, Bill Clinton, relied on a handful of people who came to be known as czars, but the use of the term reached new heights under President George W. Bush. The moniker was attached to more than 30 administration officials, who handled AIDS, bird flu, the federal bank bailout, nuclear cleanup and cybersecurity, among other issues.

By now, it had become established that czars were the natural response to national crises, despite the concerns of scholars that their widespread use undermined the concept of separation of powers. During the Obama administration, Republicans in Congress latched on to this argument, saying the president was thwarting congressional oversight and denying accountability through his use of specially appointed czars.

“Unfortunately—and in direct contravention of the Framers' intentions—virtually no one can say with certainty what these individuals do or what limits are placed on their authority,” then-Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, wrote in The Washington Post. “We don't know if they are influencing or implementing policy. We don't know if they possess philosophical views or political affiliations that are inappropriate or overreaching in the context of their work.”

Obama had nearly 40 officials to whom the czar appellation was applied during his two terms in office. But administration officials argued that was an illusion. “Just to be clear, the job title ‘czar’ doesn’t exist in the Obama Administration,” then-White House Communications Director Annie Dunn wrote in a September 2009 blog post. “Many of the officials cited by conservative commentators have been confirmed by the Senate. Many hold policy jobs that have existed in previous Administrations. And some hold jobs that involved coordinating the work of agencies on President Obama’s key policy priorities: health insurance reform, energy and green jobs, and building a new foundation for long-lasting economic growth.”

The suggestion that Obama’s approach was “somehow a new and sinister development that threatens our democracy” was “ridiculous,” Dunn wrote.

With the scrutiny placed on the Obama administration, the use of the czar terminology faded again. Only a handful of Trump administration officials earned the moniker, and the same has been true so far of the Biden administration. Even though the appellation appears from time to time in news reports, it just doesn’t seem to stick like it used to. And in an era when problems of a pandemic-sized nature require an all-of-government approach, the notion of a single czar solving the issue seems anachronistic. And when the term has been used recently, such as in the designation of a “cruise czar,” it hardly seems like a threat to democracy and government accountability.

]]>

What the Midterms Mean for Government

Tom Shoop — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 09:53:00 -0400

In January 1995, a fresh-faced, 32-year-old newly minted congressman from Florida named Joe Scarborough arrived in Washington. He was part of the wave of Republicans who took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections for the first time in four decades. Just weeks after being sworn in, Scarborough was on the floor of the House leading a debate on “changing the direction of government.”

He and a group of other freshmen lawmakers dubbed themselves the New Federalists, and pledged to “privatize, localize, consolidate [or] eliminate” the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development.

More than a quarter-century later, all of those departments still exist, and Scarborough long ago moved on from Congress to host MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

He and his fellow revolutionaries quickly learned that dismantling government wasn’t as easy as it looked, and maybe not as necessary. In March 1995, Scarborough and other GOP legislators hauled then-Education Secretary Richard Riley before the Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Human Resources and Intergovernmental Affairs to justify the department’s existence given what Scarborough called the “new wave sweeping Washington.”

Riley, saying he wasn’t in his position to “save the job of a bureaucrat,” patiently explained that the Clinton administration had already proposed cutting Education’s budget by more than $16 billion over five years, eliminating 41 programs.

“What you all have done in the last two years appears to be very positive,” Scarborough conceded after Riley’s testimony. Maybe the department’s budget could simply be frozen for a couple of years, GOP members of the subcommittee said at the end of the hearing.

That tells you something about midterms, revolutions and the staying power of the federal bureaucracy.

A Hold on the House

Historically, midterm elections haven’t had much impact on reducing the size of government or changing the way it is managed. There are three reasons for this. First, for decades, Democrats had an iron grip on the House and never had to cede complete control of Congress. Second, it’s harder to eliminate or overhaul a department than to create one. And third, federal management has historically been a bipartisan issue.

From 1955 to 1995, Democrats held a majority in the House, despite changes in control of the Senate and occasional landslide victories by Republican presidential candidates. That meant that not only could they wield substantial power of the purse, but could set the legislative agenda in half of Congress. And they were in the business of building government’s capacity to do everything from ensuring a social safety net to landing on the moon. So were many Republicans.

That changed with the midterm elections of 1994. That year, Republicans offered a specific, detailed “Contract With America” outlining their governing agenda. “This year’s election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works,” the Contract read. “That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive and too easy with the public’s money.”

Assessments vary about how much of an impact the Contract With America had on the outcome of the election, but the Republicans swept to victory. Then they set to implementing their specific detailed plan. It promised votes on legislation to require a balanced budget, provide the president with line-item veto authority and mandate zero-based annual budgeting.

More broadly, the Republicans, especially freshman lawmakers like Scarborough, sought to eliminate entire agencies, slash government employment and scale back federal pay raises and retirement benefits.

Easier Said Than Done

The new Republican leadership certainly succeeded in changing the terms of debate over the size and role of government. Within two years, Democratic President Bill Clinton would famously declare that “the era of big government is over.”

When it came to specific achievements, however, the terms of the Contract proved difficult to implement. Newly minted House Speaker Newt Gingrich promised sweeping legislative achievements in the GOP’s first 100 days in control of the House, and lawmakers did approve a balanced budget amendment, a freeze on federal regulations and other measures. But these pieces of legislation all fell short in the Senate.

“This is not a monolithic Roman legion marching inexorably toward victory,” Gingrich acknowledged at the hundred-day mark.

Nevertheless, the Contract With America set a precedent. Republicans—and some Democrats—have over the years continued to offer contract-like pledges to the American people. As this year’s election cycle heated up, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, released a GOP “Commitment to America.” It promised, among other initiatives, “a government that’s accountable”—including a threat to use subpoena power to back up more than 500 requests for information about federal activities that GOP lawmakers have already sent to the Biden administration.

The Commitment to America, however, attracted little attention, and is unlikely to have much impact on the outcome of the midterm elections. But if the Republicans retake the House, it could bog down committees tasked with developing legislation governing how federal agencies are managed. Instead, their focus would likely be on politically charged partisan investigations.

Bipartisan Approach

Almost all of the major initiatives to fundamentally change the management of government have passed with bipartisan support. This was, ironically, especially true in the 1990s, in the period surrounding the Republican “revolution” of 1994.

On the Senate side, Democrat John Glenn of Ohio and Republican William Roth of Delaware traded off the chairmanship of the Governmental Affairs Committee, but cooperated on management-related legislation. These included the 1990 Chief Financial Officers Act, the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, the 1994 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, and the 1996 Federal Financial Management Improvement Act.

Likewise, leaders on the House side treated these and other management-related legislation in a generally bipartisan fashion. That tradition held even as Congress became more polarized. Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who no one would accuse of being shrinking violets when it comes to fighting for their party’s agenda, cooperated on key pieces of legislation, including the landmark 2014 Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act. Earlier this year, they launched the Congressional IT Modernization Caucus.

Management-related bills still tend to attract more bipartisan support than tax, spending and appropriations measures, which recently have required nail-bitingly close partisan votes to pass. Witness this year’s Postal Reform Act, which passed with broad bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress.

Amidst polarization, there’s even hope for the contentious world of government oversight. “Even amid House Democrats’ often contentious oversight of the Trump administration in 2019 and 2020, occasional bipartisan investigations emerged—and an early look at the 117th Congress to date suggests oversight can still be bipartisan even during high partisan conflict,” the Brookings Institution reported last year.

This doesn’t necessarily mean, unfortunately, that management and oversight issues are being handled with a high rate of efficiency and effectiveness. The Lugar Center, founded by former Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and dedicated to, among other priorities, “enhancing bipartisan governance,” publishes an ongoing “Congressional Oversight Hearing Index.” For this session of Congress, the House Oversight and Reform Committee gets a grade of F.

]]>

The Day I Became Too Old for the Internet

Tom Shoop — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 09:30:00 -0400

Recently, two things happened to me. First, I turned 60, the age at which it’s simply no longer possible to lay claim to youthfulness. Second, I downloaded Clubhouse, the red-hot app of the pandemic era. I was unprepared for how these two events would become related in my mind.

For those of you who are either oldsters like me or simply out of touch and therefore unfamiliar with Clubhouse, the app allows its users—initially only a few celebrities and venture capitalists allowed in by invitation only, now anyone with a phone—to participate in or just eavesdrop on conversations using their device’s audio.

Of course, with my usual impeccable timing, I signed up just at the time Clubhouse began laying off employees, its future in question.

The signup process was simple, smooth and admirably user-centric. Until that is, they asked for my age. I gave an honest answer, and instantly the following message popped up: “You’re 60 years old? If this is not correct, go back and update your age.”

Ouch.

Now the good folks at Clubhouse assure me that since May, everybody who signs up for the app sees such an age verification screen. It’s not aimed at ferreting out old-timers. But for those of us of a certain not-young age, the popup message, phrased in the form of what seems to be an incredulous question, stings a bit.

It would be easy to fix this issue. For example, the response simply could have been: “You entered 60 as your age. If this is not correct, go back and update your age.”

When you’re my age, you get used to things like having to scroll down endlessly to reach your year of birth on online forms. But things like this just add insult to injury. Because, you see, this isn’t my first digital rodeo. I’ve been around since before there was a World Wide Web, and have seen a lot of websites, apps and entire companies come and go. Remember Second Life, Napster, Kozmo, AOL Instant Messenger, Netscape Navigator and, heck, even Internet Explorer? I do.

So gather ’round, young’uns, while I tell you the story of how I was once the early adopter whose message to my elders was to get out of the way while I ushered in the future. It goes all the way back to April 1995—that’s right, a whole other millennium—when I wrote an article for Government Executive magazine (a “magazine” is a non-interactive content delivery mechanism involving ink and paper) called “The Lure of the Web.” I also made the regrettable decision to appear in the opening graphic of the article—trapped in a digital spider web via an early-stage Photoshop.

I felt the need to declare at the outset of the piece, with a heavy dose of irony, that I was not a geek, but just a regular guy who had just a passing familiarity with digital life. Nearly a quarter-century later, I can imagine the response if I wrote the same thing: “Yeah, Methuselah, we know.”

I have nothing against Clubhouse. It’s clearly popular with a wide range of people, including federal employees and contractors. As for the signup process, I choose to believe that the app used my phone’s front-facing camera to analyze my face, and then decided to compliment me by observing that I couldn’t possibly be 60 years old. In return, I offer a compliment of my own: Congratulations on inventing the conference call.

]]>

That Time Bill Clinton Declared ‘The Era of Big Government Is Over’

Tom Shoop — Wed, 04 May 2022 16:25:01 -0400

Editor’s Note: This is the first in an intermittent series looking back at groundbreaking, newsmaking, appalling and amusing events in government history.

Last year, the federal government of the United States spent $6.8 trillion. The Treasury Department helpfully explains that it pays for “programs that ensure the well-being of the people of the United States.”

In a pandemic, of course, that’s a lot of programs and a lot of money. Still, even if you factor out COVID-19 spending, the federal government is huge and getting bigger every year—at least in terms of spending. Federal employment has held relatively steady at around 2 million employees for decades.

The ongoing growth of government is interesting, since we are now more than a quarter century away from President Bill Clinton’s famous declaration that the “era of big government is over.” The moment came on Jan. 23, 1996, during that year’s State of the Union address. Here’s the quote in context:

We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there's not a program for every problem. We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means.

The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves. Instead, we must go forward as one America, one nation working together to meet the challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are not opposing virtues; we must have both.

The line garnered polite applause, but hardly a standing ovation. Some Democrats weren’t quite ready to sign on to seriously shrinking government, and more than a few Republicans were skeptical that Clinton was serious about reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy. Even the president himself didn’t seem thrilled to be delivering the line. The fact that the next sentence after his big proclamation started, “But…,” hints that he wasn’t fully committed to the notion.

After all, Clinton had won election in 1992 not by promising to slash government, or to expand it, but to “reinvent” it. He and Vice President Al Gore, who headed the reinvention effort, promised a “common sense government” that “works better and costs less,” not a federal bureaucracy that was markedly smaller in terms of its ambitions.

The problem was Republicans had swept to control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections of 1994 by promoting a “Contract with America” that was a small government manifesto. It proposed eliminating, privatizing and consolidating whole agencies and Cabinet departments, slashing federal employment, and trimming federal pay and benefits. And it was a huge political success.

Clinton had tried to triangulate his way out of the big vs. small government debate, but there was no third way out of this situation. Backed into a corner, he decided to accept that Americans by and large, believed that government was simply too big.

The reinventing government effort entered a new phase, known as “REGO II,” in which attention was focused more on cutting government down to size than making it function better. The shift didn’t result in sweeping change, but that wasn’t really the idea. By concentrating their efforts on consolidating and shrinking agencies, Clinton and Gore hoped to stave off elimination of entire agencies or Cabinet departments.

By and large, that worked. Republicans ended up not being able to claim much in the way of success in their assault on big government. They promised much in their first hundred days, but delivered little in the way of tangible results. And they never did succeed in eliminating agencies or departments.

Public administration professor Paul Light later did an exhaustive analysis and determined that a true measure of government’s direct and indirect showed it was actually growing in a robust way. “Clinton would have been much more accurate to say that the era of big government was continuing pretty much unabated,” he wrote in 1999. “And that is precisely what the vast majority of Americans want.”

During his 2000 presidential run, Gore tried to put the whole thing in perspective. “We have promoted the useful nature of self-government in solving problems that must be addressed, while simultaneously reducing the size of government,” he said in an interview with National Journal. “So I think the world has moved on, and while the era of big government is over, the era of big rewards for bashing big government is also over.”

Neither of those statements turned out to be true.

Government continued to grow in areas ranging from homeland security to consumer financial protection. Republicans continued to make hay out of characterizing Democrats as free-spending big government-loving liberals.

By the time the 2016 election rolled around, Democrats on the whole had decided to stop playing defense against that charge. “We should not be paralyzed by the Republicans and their constant refrain, ‘big government this, big government that,’ said Hilary Clinton in a Democratic candidates’ debate. Bernie Sanders, pressed on his espousal of massive new federal programs during a town hall, finally said, “Fine, if that is the criticism, I accept it.”

Today, the big-vs.-small debate lacks the intensity it once had, since there’s general agreement that a pandemic requires a robust federal response. But it’ll be back. After all, the argument has been around since the founding of the country. Just ask Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton.

]]>

Government Leadership at its Best: Meet the 2021 Teddy Award Winners

Tom Shoop — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 14:09:55 -0400

Earlier this week, Government Executive unveiled the 2021 class of inductees into the Government Hall of Fame, Today, we announce the winners of the annual Theodore Roosevelt Government Leadership Awards. They are an all-star team of top federal performers in five categories: Visionaries, Directors, Pathfinders, Defenders and Partners.

The Hall of Fame inductees will be honored at a virtual gala broadcast on Oct. 21. A series of broadcasts highlighting the Teddy winners will follow starting Oct. 25. Sign up now to get updates on the proceedings.

In the meantime, meet the winners of the 2021 Teddy Awards:

VISIONARIES

Winners in this category have a proven ability to generate new ideas and new approaches to addressing critical issues. They’re genuinely creative in their approach, and eagerly take on big problems. At the same time, they’re adept at working within government constraints to achieve lasting success.

Steven Suder

National Alternative Transportation/Multi-modal Program Lead, National Park Service

Suzanne Shirley

Director of Community Engagement and Fellowship, Veterans Health Administration Innovation Ecosystem, Veterans Affairs Department

DIRECTORS

This category’s honorees have earned the support and enthusiasm of their teams and leveraged it to achieve demonstrable results. These leaders put a premium on employee engagement, goal-setting and program management. In short, they are the people who make things work for current and future employees and don’t shy away from a challenge.

Pauline Nunez

Project Coordinator, Denver Region, U.S. Census Bureau, Commerce Department

Carolyn Vines Sapla

Acting EEO Officer/Supervisory Attorney, Bureau of Prisons

PATHFINDERS

These winners bring the best information technology solutions available into the federal sphere. For some, that involves exploring the application of leading-edge technologies to government. For others, it means implementing currently commercially available products and services to solve specific problems. In both cases, the end result is driving down cost and increasing the efficiency of government operations.

Sylviane Haldiman

Associate Deputy Commissioner, Office of Systems, Social Security Administration

Kanitra Tyler

Supply Chain Risk Management Service Owner, Office of the Chief Information Officer, NASA

DEFENDERS

This category honors those individuals who have stood out in the effort to protect the United States. Winners have demonstrated sustained achievement in advancing the country’s security interests at home and abroad. These range from managing a critical military program to transforming the tools our soldiers and intelligence community leaders use to do their jobs.

Scott Weidie

Branch Chief, Security Cooperation and Multinational Exercises, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Defense Department

Derek Tournear

Director, Space Development Agency, Defense Department

PARTNERS

Government can’t solve the pressing national challenges of the 21st century on its own. Agencies require the expertise and partnership of non-government partners and private-sector companies that have tailored their products and services for the federal market. This category recognizes significant, lasting achievements by government’s cross-sector partners in helping federal officials meet mission goals.

Gilman Louie

Chief Executive Officer, LookingGlass Cyber Solutions

Gina Adams

Senior Vice President for Government Affairs, FedEx

]]>

Government Hall of Fame Inductees To Be Unveiled Next Week

Tom Shoop — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 16:30:00 -0400

Dr. Anthony Fauci. Colin Powell. Madeleine Albright. Frederick Douglass. Clara Barton. John Glenn.

These are just a few of the luminaries who have been inducted into the Government Hall of Fame in the two years since Government Executive created the prestigious honor. Now we’re about to unveil this year’s class, along with the visionaries, directors, pathfinders, partners and defenders whose outstanding achievements have made them the winners of this year’s Theodore Roosevelt Government Leadership Awards.

Register for the Hall of Fame and Teddy Award broadcasts

We’ll be announcing the honorees in both awards programs next week. Sign up now to get updates on the proceedings and watch the virtual Hall of Fame broadcast on Oct. 21. A series of broadcasts highlighting the Teddy winners will follow starting Oct. 25.

The Government Hall of Fame honors the best of the best: those who have demonstrated sustained achievement and unparalleled dedication to public service throughout their careers. The Teddies recognize an annual all-star team of distinguished federal officials and industry leaders for outstanding achievement in delivering on the government's promise to serve the American people.

]]>

If There Ever Was a Time We Needed a Government Hall of Fame …

Tom Shoop — Wed, 12 May 2021 14:00:00 -0400

In 2019, when Government Executive created the Government Hall of Fame, we inducted an inaugural class of 20 members. Many of them were famous names from the distant and not-so-distant past, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Colin Powell and the Apollo 11 astronauts.

But one of the Hall of Famers was—and is—still working in a government position, at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Anthony Fauci was then a fairly well-known infectious disease specialist, but no one at the gala dinner honoring him and the other Hall of Fame inductees was aware of just how much of a household name he would become.

Likewise, last year, in the second year of our annual Leadership Awards program (known as the Teddies, in Roosevelt’s honor), among the honorees we selected was Kizzmekia Corbett, an NIH researcher who had spent seven years focused on an obscure area of study: coronaviruses. Now she found herself working closely with a biomedical firm called Moderna on a long-shot program to quickly develop a coronavirus vaccine.

That’s what the Hall of Fame and the Teddies are all about: bringing well-deserved attention to the best of the best in government. This year, we’ll add a new group of similarly accomplished federal employees to these prestigious ranks. And that’s where we need your help. We’re seeking nominations for both the Hall of Fame, which honors history-making officials, and the Teddies, which are awarded in the following categories:

Visionaries: For those with a proven ability to generate new ideas and new approaches to addressing critical issues.
Directors: For those who have earned the support and enthusiasm of their teams and leveraged it to achieve demonstrable results.
Pathfinders: For those who have brought the best information technology solutions available into the federal sphere.
Defenders: For those who have demonstrated sustained achievement in advancing the country’s security interests.
Partners: For significant, lasting achievements by government’s cross-sector partners.

If you know of someone who fits the bill, now is the time to help them get the recognition they deserve. Nominations are open through May 28.

More information about the Government Hall of Fame and Teddy Awards

Submit a nomination

]]>

Federal CIO Suzette Kent on Tools and Techniques for the New Way of Work

Tom Shoop — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 18:00:00 -0400

Suzette Kent, who has served as the Trump administration’s federal chief information officer since February 2018, is a veteran of business transformation efforts at private companies such as EY, J.P. Morgan and Accenture. But like everybody else, she’s never faced anything quite like managing through a pandemic. In Kent’s case, that involves scrambling to ensure federal agencies have the tools and systems in place to manage in a time of “maximum telework.”

Kent spoke with Government Executive Editor in Chief Tom Shoop recently about her efforts and her overall approach to managing federal IT modernization. Excerpts from that interview follow.

How are you adjusting to the new way of work?

Especially in the beginning, what was incredibly challenging was the work cycle was almost continuous, especially for some of the agencies that had to set up some of the recovery capabilities in just days. So it was literally around the clock, and we were putting out different pieces of guidance that had to be discussed and reviewed, also on that 24-hour cycle. It was incredibly intense. I met with the CIOs and CISOs every single day, and then one-on-one individually, more than that. We were just moving so quickly.

We had to look at things to say, how do we create new and different boundaries, especially when people are working from their living space? And what does that look like? And how do you back off from answering the phone 24/7? I’m not joking: The phone would ring at 5 in the morning, the phone would ring at 2 at night. When we saw that the road was longer, we had to get to something sustainable, so that we had people who were fresh. And that’s where we looked at different types of shift work. And we had to collaborate differently because we were moving so quickly.

People handle change very differently. We all know that, right? That’s a big part of everything you do, whether it’s technology or business processes. Government has a very well-defined, albeit sometimes rigid, process. And even in this, we tried to follow all those things as much as possible, but just make them go faster. So sometimes people had 30 minutes to review something, not three weeks. That created different kinds of pressure. Most people rose to the occasion. Some people were challenged by it.

One of the biggest positives, though, is that we learned that a lot of the tools that we invested in, and those capabilities, will work. They help us achieve mission continuity and we can use them at scale for prolonged periods of time. Now we have the evidence. We know that we can do it, we know that the workforce can do it, we know the capabilities can perform in the way we expected. That’s going to give us some ability going forward to reconsider what the work day looks like, and what that might mean from a time and location standpoint.

What are some of the tools that are paying off now?

We had a huge push to move to cloud email. Over the last two years, agencies went from the low 30s to the majority of them there. So we were able to scale and continue to communicate. All agencies did not have expanded ability to use collaboration tools across their agencies.

We’ve talked about electronic and digital capabilities, whether that’s digital signatures and secure messaging for certain things, or bigger in digital services to citizens. You know, you can look at five or six of the agencies where moving away from paper-based processes to digital has been a goal. But it’s probably one of the areas where we were moving at an OK pace, but not aggressively. And this created an opportunity where we need to be more aggressive.

We had to create things we did not have before, and we were able to use modern, scalable, configurable platforms.

Has this experience changed the way you act as a manager?

I wouldn’t say it has changed my style. In many of the things I've done in my career, I’ve been involved in responses to things, whether it was the financial crisis, a hurricane, a typhoon. My overall style doesn’t change, but when crises occur, you have to do things differently. There are some tactics that I revert back to, like communicating fast even if you don’t have all the information. That’s kind of hard for some government folks.

You can’t trust that everything’s going to get through the process in exactly the same way, shape or form. You move to a different frequency and intensity of communication.

My style is very outcome-based—and probably people would say impatient—but I think that’s a good thing. I mean impatience in a good way. I’m always asking, “Can we go faster? What else could we be doing?” I always try to be inclusive, meaning everyone who has a stake in the game is at the table and part of the conversation.

We need to be more aggressive in determining what things can be done in a digital manner.

Even when you’re building and developing a product—and when I say product, it could be a policy, a piece of guidance, an approach to a project, whatever—when it goes through a single stovepipe and you come out with a product and you haven’t talked to the other people involved, sometimes you miss that opportunity to make it better. That’s really important in a crisis situation when you’re building—whether it’s technology or business processes—that don’t exist today and are for a very specific purpose.

What have you learned from the shift to maximum telework across government?

In the technology community, people are very comfortable with the tools, obviously. They take their computer with them everywhere, and many of them prefer electronic activity versus paper-based. That is not the mode of behavior of everyone in the federal government. And so, we saw people asking to take printers home. We saw people who didn’t take their equipment home.

We saw individuals—even though their agency had great collaboration tools—they’d never actually used any of them, because they were comfortable in a face-to-face, physical meeting setting with paper agendas and those types of things. Switching to this environment didn’t give anyone a choice. To continue your work you had to adopt and become familiar with tools. You had to do your work digitally.

Could it be more elegant? Are there things we can continue to do to improve? Of course. But that was a big learning point.

We had a lot of people who were very comfortable switching to telework. There are many who weren’t. They missed the interaction with their peers, they liked the debate and those kinds of interactions—especially in policy development. People have had to reassess how they get work done, and we’ve had to be flexible with that.

What I’m frankly excited about, speculating for the future, is that because we’ve been able to maintain operations in so many situations, I certainly hope that it lets agencies think about what kind of footprint is necessary. As we think about the physical setup of our federal buildings—in some of them it may take more time to create distancing options or to reconfigure to make safe workplaces—some agencies are thinking about shift work.

How would you characterize the status of IT modernization in government in general right now?

Generally, the things that were under IT modernization were focused on digital processes, on moving off of legacy systems, on moving to commercially available software solutions. In the cybersecurity area, we have a lot of metrics that are part of the President’s Management Agenda that are tracked every quarter and reported on around device security—both your phone and your PC. I’m very glad those were in our focus area, because look at what we’re doing now. Those have become people’s primary mode of work.

We saw individuals—even though their agency had great collaboration tools—they’d never actually used any of them.

So the efforts are continuing. You’ve seen the things that have come through the Technology Modernization Fund, but that’s a small piece of some things that gets a lot of attention. If you look at each agency’s roadmap and their own strategic plan, there’s significant work going on—getting legacy applications moved, getting the infrastructure completely redone and resilient. There are a few that are kind of behind where they’re supposed to be, but most agencies have made really good progress.

Look at what’s happened with the census. The investment in taking the census online was historic. And it’s proven not only to be wise, it’s working very well, on a backbone of commercially configurable software. So the efforts are continuing. What I think it shows, though, is that we need to be more aggressive in determining what things can be done in a digital manner, and moving that way.

What have you learned from your time working in government?

What I have learned—and I’ll honestly say it was a little bit of an eye-opener—is that the stakeholder alignment process is much more complicated than it is in the private sector. There’s a lot of decision-makers getting from idea to implementation—funding, policy, rules, administration priorities. How does it fit into all these laws? Whose jurisdiction does it impact?

It’s significantly more complicated than if you compared it to some types of private sector efforts. Because of the great things we want to do to make sure the acquisition process is fair—and there’s a lot of visibility and transparency—it also is a really complicated process. The amount of time and effort that’s spent in that process—and I understand why—does not make it easier.

I will say, I learned it, but I don’t accept it, and I think that’s a good thing.

]]>

Help Pick This Year’s Government All-Star Team

Tom Shoop — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 12:35:21 -0500

Last year, for the first time, Government Executive picked an elite group of federal managers, executives and industry partners to receive the Theodore Roosevelt Government Leadership Awards. Today, we’re launching the process of finding and honoring the 2020 class. You can make your nomination here.

The Teddies, as they’re affectionately known, recognize an all-star team of distinguished leaders for outstanding achievement in delivering on government’s promise to serve the American people. Each year two winners are chosen chosen in each of the following categories:

Visionaries: Those with a proven ability to generate new ideas and new approaches to addressing critical issues. They’re genuinely creative in their approach, and eagerly take on big problems.
Directors: Those who have earned the support and enthusiasm of their teams and leveraged it to achieve demonstrable results. These leaders put a premium on employee engagement, goal-setting and program management.
Pathfinders: Those who bring the best information technology solutions available into the federal sphere. For some, that involves exploring the application of leading-edge technologies to government. For others, it means implementing currently commercially available products and services to solve specific problems.
Defenders: Those who have stood out in the effort to protect the United States, demonstrating significant achievement in achieving goals that advance the country’s security interests at home and abroad.
Partners: Those at non-government organizations and private-sector companies that have tailored their products and services for the federal market. This category recognizes significant, lasting achievements by government’s cross-sector partners in helping federal officials meet mission goals.

A selection committee made up of prominent figures in government management and public administration will pick the 2020 Teddy Award winners from among this year’s group of nominees.

Last year’s honorees included Daniel Altman, assistant inspector general for investigations at the U.S Agency for International Development; Mary Leftridge Byrd, federal security director for the state of Georgia at the Transportation Security Administration; Mia Jordan, assistant chief information officer, Rural Development, at the Agriculture Department; and Wendi Weber, Northeast regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

They were recognized, along with the inaugural members of the Government Hall of Fame, at a gala event in Washington last fall. This year’s gala will take place Oct. 8 at the Washington National Cathedral.

Click here to make your Teddy Award nomination

]]>

Now’s The Time To Share Your Bold Ideas and Stories

Tom Shoop — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 15:24:54 -0400

If ever there was a time for boldness in government, this is it. As if simply managing through the day-to-day distractions in today’s political landscape weren’t difficult enough, federal leaders are being presented with never-before-seen challenges, from changing workforce demographics to the automation of routine work.

To help federal officials meet these myriad tests, Government Executive and Nextgov have teamed up to provide a showcase for sharing innovative ideas in technology, workforce and management. It’s called BOLD GOV, and it takes place on Dec. 3 in Washington.

We’re choosing up to six presenters to make presentations lasting 10-15 minutes at the event. Nominations are open through Oct. 30. You can nominate yourself or a colleague. Nominees will be notified if they've been selected as presenters one to two weeks after nominations close.

Click here to make a BOLD GOV nomination

Previous BOLD presenters have included a podcaster, an earth scientist, an outreach strategist and an ice cream maker. What they all had in common were their fresh and thought-provoking ideas and inspiring stories of success in the federal context.

So if you know of someone who has such a story to share, put their name forward. Even if you don’t, you can register for BOLD GOV and participate in a unique learning experience.

More details about the event and the nomination process are available on the BOLD GOV website.

]]>

Inaugural Inductees Into Government Hall of Fame Unveiled

Tom Shoop — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 10:32:32 -0400

Government Executive Media Group on Thursday announced the inaugural members of the Government Hall of Fame, including Clara Barton, Theodore Roosevelt, Frances Perkins and the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Government Executive created the Hall of Fame this year in connection with its 50th anniversary. It honors the best of the best: those who have demonstrated sustained achievement and unparalleled dedication to public service. The Hall of Fame inductees have had an historic impact on changing government for the better, and their stories serve as an inspiration to others.

The inaugural class includes a mix of distinguished individuals from all eras since 1850—roughly the dawn of modern American government. An elite selection committee of former federal officials and public administration experts chose the 20 members of the inaugural class. Additional inductees from all eras will be added in the coming years.

More information about the Hall of Fame and the Leadership Awards

Government Executive will honor the Hall of Fame inductees at a gala event on the evening of Sept. 19 at Washington National Cathedral. The gala also will recognize the first-ever recipients of the Theodore Roosevelt Government Leadership Awards.

Here are the inaugural members of the Government Hall of Fame:

Apollo 11 Astronauts: Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins

The heroes of the first landing on the moon 50 years ago had distinguished careers in the military before their historic mission in 1969 and demonstrated a deep commitment to public service afterward. Their mission marked the achievement of President Kennedy’s challenge to send astronauts to the moon and return them safely to Earth. After leaving NASA, Aldrin led the Air Force’s test pilot school. Armstrong served on NASA commissions investigating the Apollo 13 mission and the space shuttle Challenger tragedy. Collins served as an assistant secretary of State and as director of the National Air and Space Museum.

Clara Barton

When she took a job at the U.S. Patent Office in 1854, Barton became the first woman to work in a substantial clerkship in the federal government at the same salary as men. Later, though, because of opposition to women serving in government, she was demoted to a copyist position. Barton served as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War, winning fame as the “Angel of the Battlefield.” After the war, she set up the federal Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army, where she and her assistants answered more than 63,000 letters and identified over 22,000 missing soldiers. Barton later went on to head the American Red Cross.

Hubert T. Bell

Bell’s 54 years of distinguished federal service included 29 years in the U.S. Secret Service followed by 22 years as the inspector general of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He broke barriers by being selected to protect then-Vice President George H.W. Bush as the first black Secret Service agent to head a vice presidential protective detail. In 1996 he was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be the IG of the NRC. Upon his retirement in 2018, Bell was widely recognized as a trailblazer in federal law enforcement who spearheaded the advancement of minorities and women.

Anthony Fauci

Fauci is an immunologist who helped pioneer treatment for AIDS. Since 1984, he has headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where he administers basic and applied research into sexually transmitted infections, influenza, tuberculosis, malaria and illnesses from potential agents of bioterrorism. Fauci has made many significant scientific observations that underpin the current understanding of the regulation of the human immune response. He has advised five presidents on global HIV/AIDS issues, and has won several major honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Robert Gates

Gates’ long and distinguished career in public service culminated in his tenure as Defense secretary from December 2006 to July 2011, under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966 and spent nearly 27 years as an intelligence professional, including almost nine years at the National Security Council. Gates was director of central intelligence from 1991 until 1993, and is the only career officer in the CIA's history to rise from entry-level employee to director.

Grace Hopper

Commissioned as a Navy officer during World War II, Hopper led a team that produced the Mark I, an early prototype of the electronic computer. She later co-developed the COBOL programming language. Hopper went on to serve as director of the Navy’s Programming Languages Group. She was promoted to captain in 1973, to commodore in 1983, and to rear admiral in 1985. In 1991, she was awarded the National Medal of Technology, the first individual woman to receive the honor.

Dwight Ink

Known as "Mr. Implementation," Ink held positions in every presidential administration from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan. He helped establish the Environmental Protection Agency and the Housing and Urban Development Department, and was instrumental in launching the war on poverty in the 1960s. He also led the recovery effort in Alaska following a major earthquake in 1964. Ink served as acting director of the General Services Administration under President Ford and helped implement landmark civil service reforms during the Jimmy Carter administration.

Katherine Johnson

Johnson started her federal career of more than 30 years at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ Langley laboratory. When NACA became NASA in 1958, she joined the agency, providing computational support for the emerging space program. Her work on John Glenn’s flight as the first American to orbit the earth was featured in the 2016 feature film Hidden Figures. Glenn refused to fly his spacecraft until Johnson had verified an electronic computer’s work. She later worked on calculations to sync spacecraft in the Apollo program.

Norman Mineta

After spending part of his childhood in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, Mineta devoted his life to public service. He served as an intelligence officer during the Korean War, and later became the first Asian American elected mayor of a major American city (San Jose, California) in 1971. Mineta was later elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served from 1974 to 1995. He then was named secretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration and Transportation secretary under President George H.W. Bush, where he was the longest-serving secretary in the department’s history.

Constance Berry Newman

Having begun her federal career as a secretary at the Interior Department in 1962, Newman worked her way up to earn seven presidential appointments. She was nominated by President Richard Nixon to serve as director of VISTA and later as a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Newman was later an assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development and director of the Office of Personnel Management under President George H. W. Bush. From 1992 to 2000, she served as undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution. She was assistant secretary of State for African affairs in 2004-05.

Frances Perkins

The first woman appointed to a Cabinet position, Perkins served as Labor secretary from 1933 to 1945, the longest tenure of anyone in the job. She was a strong advocate for public works programs to address the impact of the Great Depression. Perkins oversaw the implementation of several key aspects of the New Deal, including the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. She also executed several landmark pieces of legislation, including the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Following her Cabinet career, Perkins was appointed to serve on the Civil Service Commission.

Colin Powell

Powell’s 35 years of service in the Army included two tours of duty in Vietnam. He became President Reagan's deputy national security adviser in 1987, and national security adviser in 1988-89. In 1989 he was promoted to the rank of general, and was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the four years Powell served in that capacity, he oversaw 28 crises, including Operation Desert Storm in 1991. He later served as secretary of State under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005.

Elliot Richardson

Richardson served as head of four different Cabinet departments and passed one of the greatest ethics tests in the history of government when he resigned as attorney general rather than fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service as a combat medic in World War II, then clerked for two Supreme Court justices. After his resignation during Watergate, Richardson served in the Gerald R. Ford administration as secretary of Commerce. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Alice Rivlin

A fiscal and monetary policy expert, Rivlin was founding director of the Congressional Budget Office. There, she earned credit for establishing CBO as an authoritative and bipartisan source of fiscal analysis. Earlier in her career, Rivlin was an assistant secretary in the then-Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Later, she served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton and as vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve. During the District of Columbia's financial crisis in the late 1990s, Rivlin chaired the city’s Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority.

Theodore Roosevelt

In the years before he became president, Roosevelt spearheaded the introduction of the merit system in the civil service. He was appointed a member of the Civil Service Commission in 1889 by President Benjamin Harrison and later became its commissioner. He was named an assistant Navy secretary before his famous exploits as a Rough Rider in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. In 1900, Roosevelt won election as vice president to President William McKinley, whom he succeeded following McKinley's assassination in 1901. The Office of Personnel Management headquarters building in Washington is named in Roosevelt’s honor.

Donna Shalala

After a lengthy career in academia, Shalala served as secretary of Health and Human Services for the full eight years of the Clinton administration. At the end of her tenure, the Washington Post described her as “one of the most successful government managers of modern times.” She started her federal service as one of the first volunteers in the Peace Corps from 1962 to 1964. In 2007, President George W. Bush appointed Shalala to co-chair the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors. In 2008, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Shalala was elected to the House of Representatives from Florida in 2018.

Susan Solomon

In nearly three decades as a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Solomon led research efforts on the causes of the Antarctic ozone hole, identified the chemicals contributing to the problem, and made significant advances in the understanding of climate change. In 2002, Discover magazine named her one of the 50 most important women in science, and in 2008, Time magazine selected her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Paul Volcker

Volcker served in the federal government for almost 30 years, including two terms as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1979 to 1987. He also was an undersecretary of the Treasury from 1969 to 1974. After his service in government, Volcker dedicated himself to improving and modernizing the civil service, serving as chairman of the National Commission on the Public Service and later creating the Volcker Alliance, whose mission is to advance effective management of government to achieve results.

]]>

First-Ever Winners of Theodore Roosevelt Government Leadership Awards Announced

Tom Shoop — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 15:06:00 -0400

Government Executive Media Group Tuesday announced the winners of the inaugural Theodore Roosevelt Government Leadership Awards.

Earlier this year, in connection with its 50th anniversary, Government Executive launched the awards program to honor an all-star team of distinguished federal officials and their partners outside government. The winners have demonstrated outstanding achievement in delivering on government’s promise to serve the American people.

The Leadership Awards program recognizes 15 honorees in the following categories:

Visionaries: For those who have developed promising new approaches to solving government’s biggest challenges
Directors: For excellence in managing people, programs and policy implementation
Pathfinders: For innovation in bringing advances in information technology to government
Defenders: For distinguished achievement in national security, homeland security and international affairs
Masters: For noteworthy accomplishments in science-related endeavors in areas such as space, health, environment, energy and agriculture
Partners: For non-federal sector allies whose support and guidance of government initiatives was key to their success

Government Executive will honor the Leadership Award winners at a gala event on the evening of Sept. 19 at Washington National Cathedral. The gala also will recognize the inaugural inductees into the Government Hall of Fame.

More information about the Hall of Fame and the Leadership Awards

More than 200 distinguished leaders were nominated for the awards earlier this year. A selection committee made up of former high-ranking federal officials and luminaries in government management and public administration chose the winners.

Here are the 2019 Theodore Roosevelt Government Leadership Award honorees:

DEFENDERS

Vincent E. Urias

Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories, Energy Department

Vincent Urias is at the helm of cutting-edge cybersecurity research, helping Sandia National Laboratories defend against attacks and conduct research on adversarial strategies and tactics. Urias helped develop and now leads the High-Fidelity Adaptive Deception and Emulation System, a revolutionary cyber defense platform.

With HADES, Urias is working to address the threat intelligence gap identified in a May 2018 report by the Office of Management and Budget and the Homeland Security Department. The report found most agencies have not improved their understanding of attackers’s methods. Urias’s forward-thinking approach to solving that challenge culminated in a system designed to both deceive adversaries and to provide threat intelligence.

Traditional “honeypots,” set up to lure adversaries into attacking deception environments and draw them away from real networks, gather limited data and are rarely convincing enough to entertain adversaries for long. Urias is breaking new ground with HADES by applying revolutionary technology to increase the realism of honeypots and instantly redeploy gathered intelligence for network defense.

Daniel Altman

Assistant Inspector General for Investigations, U.S Agency for International Development

Daniel Altman is assistant inspector general for investigations at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he has served since 2009. He leads 80 personnel in 11 offices who conduct high-impact investigations across 100 countries. Under Altman’s leadership, IG agents have made major strides in uncovering and disrupting criminal enterprises and terrorist networks targeting global health and humanitarian relief operations.

His teams responded to theft of lifesaving medical commodities by conducting undercover operations, establishing hotlines, and working with local officials to advance dozens of arrests and indictments across eight countries. For example, when sexual exploitation and abuse reports emerged in assistance settings, he pressed officials to substantially expand the scope of allegations that were required to be reported. When large-scale criminal networks siphoned off tens of millions of dollars in assistance for displaced persons and refugees, he worked with other donor nations and international officials to prevent further loss and bring down those networks.

Altman’s efforts have helped neutralize criminal activity, prevent health threats from coming to U.S. shores, and weaken our adversaries. In just two years, he has increased savings and recoveries resulting from IG investigations more than sixfold.

VISIONARIES

Nitin Naik

Chief Technology Officer, Census Bureau, Commerce Department

Nitin Naik has transformed how the Census Bureau processes the country's demographic and economic data using open source technology and high-performance cloud infrastructure. Under his leadership, the Census Enterprise Data Lake vision was created. This initiative provides the agency with the processing capability to fulfill petabyte-scale data management and analytics while satisfying security and privacy requirements and controlling costs.

In preparation for the 2020 census—the first to be conducted predominantly in an electronic manner—Naik and his team have worked to ensure that the agency has the technological infrastructure in place for a smooth digital transformation. In doing so, they have created a central repository to join census data from multiple databases and enable other agencies to leverage the information to better serve citizens. Naik’s visionary leadership has the Census Bureau on track to deliver on its commitment to provide the public with more data, and with a higher granularity of detail, as part of the 2020 census.

Marianne Roth

Chief Risk Officer, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Marianne Roth is the senior-level subject matter expert on enterprise risk management for the CFPB director, chief of staff and chief strategy officer. When she joined CFPB in 2017, the bureau lacked an agencywide approach and infrastructure for managing enterprise risks. In the past two and a half years, Roth has made tremendous progress in addressing that issue.

Under Roth’s leadership, CFPB has developed a risk taxonomy tailored to its mission and organization, developed and applied a set of risk assessment scales, created its first risk profile, identified the most prominent risks to achieving its mission, designated senior political and career leaders as risk owners and developed a novel model for measuring progress toward implementation of the program.

Roth also has implemented an Enterprise Risk Committee, chaired by the chief of staff, to ensure executive engagement and support for managing risk. And she has made great progress in integrating enterprise risk into CFPB’s strategic planning, budgeting and organizational performance programs.

DIRECTORS

Mary Leftridge Byrd

Federal Security Director, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Transportation Security Administration, Homeland Security Department

Mary Leftridge Byrd serves as federal security director at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport—the world's busiest—and seven other airports in Georgia. She leads a workforce of over 1,300 employees, and is a champion of human traffic awareness, diversity and inclusion, high professional standards, continuous improvement and sustainable opportunities for workforce development.

Leftridge Byrd has been instrumental in bringing about significant improvements in administrative requirements, passenger and baggage screening operations and regulatory compliance at the airport. She successfully led numerous national pilot programs and multiple risk-based initiatives. She also led the organization in its preparation to open two additional passenger screening checkpoints and an inline checked baggage screening system in support of the airport’s $1.5 billion international terminal. In 2019, she led the effort to screen a record 104,000 passengers on Super Bowl Monday—with no incidents.

Along the way, Leftridge Byrd has won the respect and admiration of her workforce. “She helped us with transportation, food and other necessities during the government furlough,” said one transportation security officer. “She worked in the screening operation with us every day.”

Wendi Weber

Regional Director, Northeast Region, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior Department

For nearly a decade, Wendi Weber has demonstrated sustained extraordinary accomplishment as a senior executive. What sets her apart is her commitment to leading people, developing her team, and continually improving workplace culture and diversity.

Weber has invested strongly in people at all organizational levels and created a program to strengthen supervisory excellence, resulting in increased employee engagement and productivity. As a result, her 2018 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey engagement scores were over 70%—among the highest in the federal government. Weber has worked with supervisors to implement strategies grounded in employee feedback to improve the workplace in the more than 130 offices she oversees.

Weber is a national leader in the FWS’s effort to recruit and retain a diverse workforce. Last year, she hired 14 veterans, bringing the region’s veteran employment rate up to 28% of the total workforce. She also initiated a partnership with the Hispanic Access Foundation to employ Hispanic youth, as well as a Career Development Internship Program, which won the Diversity Award from the Wildlife Society.

PATHFINDERS

Mia Jordan

Assistant Chief Information Officer, Rural Development, Agriculture Department

Mia Jordan spearheads information technology modernization and implementation efforts at an agency that handles a loan portfolio of more than $224 billion and serves stakeholders across the nation. In her role, Jordan has led the agency to become data-driven and customer-centric to better deliver financial assistance and expand economic opportunity in rural areas.

To answer the administration’s call to action for rural prosperity, Rural Development launched the ReConnect Program to award grants and low-interest loans to eligible broadband service providers in underserved areas. Mia developed a consolidated loan application portal that reduces time and streamlines the application process.

She also implemented an employee portal at the agency, which enables workers to communicate with one another, access information from top leaders, and create a more collaborative workplace—all from their mobile devices.

Greg Little

Director, CFO Data Transformation Office, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller), Defense Department

Greg Little is responsible for preparing the Defense Department for a congressionally mandated readiness audit that became a model for using data analytics across the agency. His primary focus is to increase efficiency within DOD while conserving critical resources.

Little implemented data analysis and visualization tools to ingest over 2 billion transactions from more than 30 business systems to support six different audits from 24 defense agencies. As a result, DOD was able to reconcile $110 billion in financial transactions. He reduced the time to complete the task by half, from 12 months to six months, while shutting down three data warehouse projects providing redundant capabilities. This was the first agile open source big data project in Defense back office operations, and is now being used as a model for other analytics and big data projects throughout the department.

MASTERS

Andrea T. Norris

Chief Information Officer, National Institutes of Health

As the CIO at NIH and director of the agency’s Center for Information Technology, Andrea Norris oversees a $1 billion portfolio that supports scientific research and discovery. She also manages a broad range of NIH-wide information and IT services, including a 100 gigabyte high-speed computer network and state-of-the-art high-performance computing resources.

Under Norris' direction, a much-needed modernized network—high speed and high bandwidth—was created for NIH, the largest biomedical research agency. NIH researchers and external collaborators can now transfer large datasets at faster rates than ever before. For example, an entire human genome file can be sent from one lab to another in under two minutes.

In 2018, Norris led the launch of the STRIDES initiative, a large-scale effort to harness the power of commercial cloud computing to provide NIH researchers access to the most advanced computational infrastructure, tools and services available. The initiative aims to reduce economic and technological barriers to accessing and computing on large biomedical datasets.

Darren A. Lytle

Senior Engineer, Environmental Protection Agency

Darren Lytle is engaged in public-private collaborations to help remove contaminants from drinking water nationwide. With several innovations and technologies to his name, he is a leader in transferring applied engineering solutions from the laboratory to the real world to help serve EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment.

Lytle and his team are focused on treatment technologies for removing contaminants ranging from silts and clays in a river to inorganic materials like arsenic. Lytle also addresses drinking water distribution system issues, such as the corrosion of lead and copper pipes. He has helped communities, including Flint, Michigan, develop strategies to control corrosion in water pipes to prevent public exposure to contaminants.

“People look to us for recommendations and advice to solve real problems,” Lytle says. “I know we’re providing information that ultimately is going to end up protecting public health.”

PARTNERS

Jorge Sarmiento

Director, Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System, Princeton University

As the Director of Princeton University's Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System and its predecessor, the Cooperative Institute for Climate Science, Jorge Sarmiento has led a collaborative research partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. This unique academic-government partnership is an established world leader in understanding and predicting weather and climate across time scales from days to decades.

The foundation for this enduring and impactful public-private partnership was built on a need for building numerical models of the earth’s processes for environment applications, requiring individuals to develop highly-specific scientific and computer programming skills.

Sarmiento has been an inspiring leader in the partnership to advance its weather and climate goals. Through the work of the researchers attracted to Princeton by Sarmiento’s scientific acumen, GFDL has become a world leader in developing earth system models, the tools used to predict how climate and environmental systems will change in the future.

Al Tyree

Former Vice President, Business Relations and Learning Solutions, Graduate School USA

Before his untimely death in May 2019, Al Tyree spent more than two decades at the forefront of the movement to train and develop the federal workforce of the future. He rose through the ranks at Graduate School USA to become its vice president for business relations and learning solutions.

Along the way, he cultivated relationships with over 150 federal, state and local government agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security Department, State of Maryland, State of Delaware and District of Columbia.

Tyree also held several leadership positions at the Training Officers Council, a network of government learning leaders.

Amanda Eichert

Lead Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton

Imagine trying to prepare a virtual class with students across the country for final exams. Now imagine that you and your students have no idea which subject will be tested in the final exam. That provides a pretty good idea of what it’s like to prepare a major command for the Navy's first-ever financial audit.

Amanda Eichert recognized that taking an innovative approach to audit readiness at Navy Reserve Forces Command would both improve financial transaction data integrity and overall operational readiness. This innovative approach started with the Command Improvement and Review Program. Hosted online, CIRP automates the identification of business segments, control points, key supporting documents and attributes for monthly financial transactions from accounting and information systems.

Since the implementation of CIRP in April 2017, the program has tested over 2,800 internal samples across the command’s headquarters and six regional component commands. CIRP can seamlessly take raw transaction data, generate a random testable population, and submit data for response from all primary accounting systems. The system can now identify transactions at a 99% accuracy rate.

Randy Rodriguez

Managing Director and Group Lead, Accenture Federal Digital Studio

As head of the Accenture Federal Digital Studio in Washington, Randy Rodriguez leads a collaborative approach to innovation based on proven principles of human-centered design. That allows federal agencies with wide-ranging missions to modernize and transform faster and more effectively, delivering improved experiences and outcomes for their customers and employees. More than 30 agencies are embracing this approach.

The studio is inherently collaborative. Rodriguez provides strategic direction, overseeing creative execution of all projects and leading 120 designers, developers, data scientists, innovators, technologists and other digital experts.

Rodriguez is accomplished at working together with federal executives, business owners and program leaders. His leadership on pivotal programs from health care to national security affects millions of people.

John Kamensky

Senior Fellow, IBM Center for the Business of Government

During his 24 years of service in government, John Kamensky played a significant role in helping pioneer the federal government's performance and results orientation. Prior to joining the IBM Center, he served for eight years as deputy director of Vice President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government.

Before that, Kamensky worked at the Government Accountability Office, where he played a key part in the development and passage of the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act.

Since joining the IBM Center, Kamensky has co-edited several books and writes and speaks extensively on performance management and government reform. Areas where he oversees research include improving government performance, developing performance-based methods for managing, improving customer service, and using collaborative tools to get work done. Kamensky also is an active fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States.

]]>

Nominations Open for New Government Leadership Awards

Tom Shoop — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 13:00:00 -0400

Click here for more information and to nominate someone

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Government Executive, and in honor of that landmark, we're introducing a new awards program to honor distinguished federal managers and executives and industry leaders for outstanding achievement in delivering on government’s promise to serve the American people.

The Theodore Roosevelt Government Leadership Awards and Government Hall of Fame will bring much-needed focus on high-achieving managers and executives who are meeting unprecedented challenges.

The Leadership Awards program will annually recognize an all-star team in the following categories:

Visionaries: For those who have developed promising new approaches to solving government’s biggest challenges
Directors: For excellence in managing people, programs and policy implementation
Pathfinders: For innovation in bringing advances in information technology to government
Defenders: For distinguished achievement in national security, homeland security and international affairs
Masters: For noteworthy accomplishments in science-related endeavors in areas such as space, health, environment, energy and agriculture
Partners: For private-sector allies whose support and guidance of government initiatives was key to their success

In addition to the Leadership Awards, the Government Hall of Fame will enshrine the best of the best: those who have demonstrated sustained achievement and unparalleled dedication to public service throughout their careers. Each year a new class of inductees will be added to this group’s elite membership.

Public nominations are now open for the Leadership Awards.

Leadership Award winners and Hall of Famers will be honored at a gala dinner at Washington National Cathedral on Sept. 19.

Click here for more information and to nominate someone

]]>

To Improve Customer Experience, Start With Morale, Not Technology, Feds Say

Tom Shoop — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 08:00:00 -0500

It’s no secret that federal agencies are under pressure to improve their dismal ratings in the area of customer experience. And when it comes to actually making that happen, federal employees think cultural factors are more important information technology or budgetary issues.

In a new survey of 625 respondents across a range of federal agencies, when asked what factors would significantly improve customer service in government, 69 percent listed “enhanced workplace morale.” And 61 percent cited “empowerment of customer service delivery staff.”

By contrast, 54 percent of respondents listed “improved information technology” as holding the potential to have a significant impact on improving customer service, and 45 percent mentioned “additional financial resources.”

The survey on improving federal customer service was conducted for Eagle Hill Consulting by the Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group. Click here for more on the survey results.

“Eagle Hill’s research finds the cultural infrastructure clearly isn’t in place to successfully deliver a better customer experience,” said Melissa Jezior, the firm’s president and chief executive officer. “For example, agencies can start by improving employee morale and empowering customer-facing employees. Yes, technology solutions and financial resources are essential, but more coding and dollars can’t drive better service when there are culture and people issues.”

Fully 70 percent of those surveyed said customer service was a core value of their agency, ranking higher than such items as teamwork and collaboration (64 percent) and service to country (50 percent). But less than half of employees said their agencies were effective at the activities identified as the core elements of customer service, such as measuring customer satisfaction and empowering employees to use such data.

]]>

Doing Bold Work? Share Your Story

Tom Shoop — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 12:17:11 -0400

Last year, in the inaugural weeklong Fedstival, Government Executive and Nextgov convened leading federal officials and thinkers to share ideas about tackling government’s biggest challenges.

Now, we’re deep into planning for Fedstival 2017, which will take place from Sept. 18-22 in Washington. The series of events culminates in Bold Friday, during which federal innovators from all corners of government tell about the important work they’re doing in a series of rapid-fire presentations.

At last year’s Bold Friday, experts from the National Defense University, the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Park Service and many other federal organizations shared stories of their cutting-edge work. This year, a new group of federal leaders, selected by a panel of Government Executive and Nextgov editors, will take the stage to tell their peers and colleagues how they’re making a difference in technology, management strategy and workforce development across government agencies.

If you or someone you know fits that bill, we want to hear about it. Nominations are now open for this year’s Bold Friday presentations. This is your chance to highlight the important work you’re doing, share your ideas with peers from other agencies and learn from their experiences.

Overall, this year’s Fedstival will take an in-depth look at the new administration’s efforts in management, workforce and IT innovation. We’ll convene a wide range of practitioners and observers for conversations, debates, workshops, live events, networking and much more.

Click here to make your Bold Friday nomination

]]>

So, What Does a CIO Actually Do All Day?

Tom Shoop — Mon, 23 May 2016 14:29:01 -0400

A day in the life of a chief information officer at a federal agency involves a lot of meetings, a search for consensus on key decisions and a dose of the unexpected.

So said four federal CIOs who appeared at the ACT-IAC Management of Change conference Monday in Cambridge, Maryland.

The four CIOs, who spoke under rules set by conference organizers that they not be quoted by name, said working with their colleagues in other parts of the agency is a constant -- and sometimes challenging -- task.

“My day is generally going to meetings,” said one of them. “A good day is when we can make a decision.”

One key challenge, another said, is that “the requirements outpace the budget” on a regular basis. “So on any given day, I’m negotiating, [asking] ‘Do you really need all this right now?’”

“Ninety-five percent of the time, I convince people to make the right decision,” said another. “Five percent of the time, I have to tell them what the decision is.”

» Get the best federal technology news and ideas delivered right to your inbox. Sign up here.

While the CIOs had varying degrees of authority and responsibility, all indicated that the heads of their organizations ultimately look to them to provide strategic guidance when it comes to purchasing and deploying IT systems.

The CIOs said dealing with information technology contractors -- both those doing business with their agencies and those who would like to -- takes up a fair amount of their time. “I get 15 to 20 emails a day from vendors who would like to meet,” one of them said.

Day-to-day frustrations, the CIOs said, included the limitations and restrictions in federal acquisition and hiring systems. The people responsible for such systems “think their only function is to make sure I don’t break the law,” lamented one CIO. “They’re good people, but they’re stuck in bad systems.”

Unanticipated issues, especially involving IT security, arise on a regular basis, panelists said.

“Don’t show up,” one noted, “unless you have a high tolerance for a lot of surprises.”

]]>

Yes, There Will Be a Federal Spending Spree This Fall

Tom Shoop — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 12:47:34 -0400

Federal agencies typically squeeze much of their contract spending in at the end of the federal fiscal year, and that trend is expected to continue this fall, analysts and agency officials said Wednesday.

Since 2009, agencies have spent an average of 32 percent of their annual contract dollars in the last three months of the fiscal year, which ends in September, Bloomberg Government analysts said at an event sponsored by the company. The event, called “The Race to the Finish,” was aimed at companies seeking to increase their government contracting opportunities.

Much of the late-stage spending is on large multiple-award contracts, especially for information technology purchases. For example, about half of the spending under NASA’s Solutions for Enterprise-wide Procurement vehicle -- which is available to all federal agencies for purchasing IT products -- occurs in the the fourth quarter.

Last year, agencies obligated $142 billion in contracts during July, August and September, according to Bloomberg. A significant proportion of those contracts usually go to small firms, as agencies become aware of how much they need to award to meet small business contracting goals for the year.

“We’ve got 55 shopping days left this year,” said Bill Gormley, a former high-ranking acquisition official at the General Services Administration who now runs his own consulting firm, at the event. “There’s a lot that gets pushed through at the end.”

It’s a myth that government waits until the yearend so as to avoid competition in awarding contracts, said Joanne Woytek, program manager for NASA SEWP. Especially with the long-term continuing resolutions of recent years -- under which agencies are typically prevented from awarding new contracts -- it often simply takes until later in the year for government contracting officers to complete their work.

SEWP, which is in its fifth iteration as a multiple-award contracting vehicle, took in about $3 billion in contract spending last year. About one-third of that came in September, Woytek said. On the last day of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, SEWP spending totaled $150 million -- about 6 percent of the yearly total in one day.

On GSA’s contract vehicles, some of the spending has moved out from the end-of-year rush to take place as early as July, said Tim Dempsey, systems chief in the agency’s Office of Acquisition Management.

“The holiday season is really starting," he said.

Still, Dempsey said, spending on GSA’s online procurement site, GSA Advantage, accelerates as the end of the fiscal year approaches.

“It’s really interesting to go online Sept. 30,” he said. “It’s kind of like Black Friday.”

(Image via Melpomene/ Shutterstock.com)

]]>

Obama Calls for IT Procurement Reform

Tom Shoop — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 10:30:14 -0500

President Obama on Monday called for an overhaul of the way the federal government purchases information technology in the wake of the troubled launch of the Healthcare.gov website.

“There are a whole range of things that we’re going to need to do once we get this fixed -- to talk about federal procurement when it comes to IT and how that’s organized,” Obama said in remarks in Washington before members of Organizing for Action, a grassroots advocacy organization that grew out of his presidential campaign.

Obama said, “I personally have been frustrated with the problems around the website on health care. And it’s inexcusable.”

The president said part of the problem was simply managing an operation as large and complex as the federal government. “What I want to just remind people of is that this government is an enormous enterprise,” he said, “and so even as sometimes we see ourselves getting stymied at the congressional level, at the administrative level, in the work that we’re doing, all kinds of changes are happening.”

Several observers of the Healthcare.gov implementation have said the ultimate problem is with the federal procurement system and the way contractors are selected for major projects. Clay Johnson, co-founder of Blue State Digital, which managed Obama’s highly touted online efforts in the 2008 presidential campaign and later became a Presidential Innovation Fellow, has been an outspoken critic of the IT procurement process.

“I’m not concerned with how you fix Healthcare.gov,” Johnson told CNN in October. “I’m concerned with how you fix the system that’s costing us literally billions of dollars.”

Bloomberg News reported Monday that the tight deadline for unveiling Healthcare.gov by Oct. 1 led the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to use a streamlined procurement process to select a vendor to complete the bulk of the work. Ultimately, only four firms bid on the contract, including CGI Federal, the company that was selected.

Join Clay Johnson and other experts at Nextgov Prime in Washington Nov. 20-21 to discuss the biggest challenges and opportunities facing federal IT leaders. Registration is free for federal employees.

]]>

Alleged Navy Yard Shooter Worked Under Major IT Contract

Tom Shoop — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 21:28:15 -0400

The alleged shooter in Monday's mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard worked as a subcontractor to a large federal information technology contractor.

Officials at HP confirmed that Aaron Alexis, 34, of Fort Worth, Texas, worked on a major Navy information technology project. He was killed in the course of the attack.

In a statement issued to news organizations, HP stated: "We are deeply saddened by today’s tragic events at the Washington Navy Yard. Our thoughts and sympathies are with all those who have been affected. Aaron Alexis was an employee of a company called 'The Experts,' a subcontractor to an HP Enterprise Services contract to refresh equipment used on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) network. HP is cooperating fully with law enforcement as requested."

HP Enterprise Services won the $10 billion NMCI contract, which serves 750,000 Navy and Marine users, in 2000. In Fenruary, the Navy announced it would increase the ceiling value of an NMCI bridge contract with HP from $4.9 billion to $6.1 billion, with an option to extend it from April 2014 to September 2014. At the time, Navy spokesman Ed Austin said the service boosted the value of the NMCI Continuity of Services Contract and added the extension option to ensure that it can complete transition to its $5 billion Next Generation Enterprise Network -- or NGEN -- contract.

The Washington Post reported that Thomas Hoshko, CEO at The Experts, said that Alexis appeared to have contractor credentials that would have allowed him onto the Navy Yard.

Alexis had a security clearance that was updated in July, the Post reported. He was discharged from the Navy in 2011, after he was arrested a year earlier on gun-related charges.

Bob Brewin contributed to this report.

]]>

How to Hack the System to Change Government

Tom Shoop — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 14:35:36 -0400

Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of the Code for America initiative who is now working for the Obama administration as deputy chief technology officer, has been in government for 37 days -- 51 if you count weekends.

Pahlka is counting the days, because she has given herself a year to make a difference in pushing government into the 21^st century from a technology perspective. At the Next Generation of Government Summit in Washington on Thursday, Pahlka shared the lessons of her first weeks in government and as head of Code for America, where she worked on civic-oriented data projects at the local government level.

“I know people say that in government, the easy things are hard, and the hard things are impossible,” Pahlka said. “Really? Was it easy to put a man on the moon?”

Pahlka works closely with the Presidential Innovation Fellows, a group of innovators and entrepreneurs who do short-term stints in government to work on specific projects. The group, she said, represents a collective “hack on the system.”

One member of the new class of fellows, Robert L. Read, managed in 27 days to develop a data visualization tool showing prices paid for a particular type of laptop across government. “I know people -- not through their own fault -- who were still struggling to get their email set up on their 27^th day,” Pahlka said.

The idea of the fellows program is to give participants as much freedom as possible to navigate through the maze of federal rules and regulations that can stand in the way of implanting new tools and approaches. “Many people in government wish they had a longer leash to do what they do,” Pahlka said. The secret to success, she said, is thinking of government as if it were a person: “You can’t change it unless you love it.”

“Respect the people,” she added, “but change the system.” That often requires questioning whether roadblocks are actually unavoidable. “If someone says you can’t do something, it may not be the law or regulations that prevent you,” Pahlka said. “It may just be memos written around them.”

Much of her initial work has focused on President Obama’s second-term management agenda, which is centered on the idea of leveraging technology to improve the performance of government.

“It’s been quite a wild ride,” Pahlka said, involving “an enormous amount of work by an enormous amount of people.” Still, she added, “these are the things I just absolutely geek over.”

]]>

Is Government Now the Caboose of Technology?

Tom Shoop — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:40:52 -0500

TechCrunch has posted an interesting Q&A with veteran IT innovator Marc Andreesen on "the future of enterprise." It includes an insightful (if not wholly original) summary of the evolution of the computer industry, in which Andreesen makes the case that government used to fund and develop the big advances in computing, which would then make their way to private companies and, ultimately, consumers. Now, Andreesen argues, the situation is reversed.

Here's how he characterizes the shift:

So the computer industry started in 1950 and basically ran for 50 years with the same model, which was a model where all of the new computers, all the new technology, all the new software started out being sold for the highest prices to the biggest organizations.

So originally the customer was the Department of Defense. It was the first customer for the computer. In fact, one of the big first computers was called SAGE, which was a missile defense, the first missile-defense computer, which was like one of the first computers in the history of the world which got sold to the Department of Defense for, I don’t know, tens and tens of millions of dollars at the time. Maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in current dollars.

And then five years later computers became — they dropped half in price and then the big insurance companies could buy them, and that’s when Thomas Watson, who ran IBM at the time, was quoted as saying, “There’s only a market need in the world for five computers.”

The reason that wasn’t crazy when he said it is because there were only five organizations that were big enough to buy a computer. So that’s how it started. And then IBM came along and productized the mainframe, and then all of a sudden big normal companies — manufacturing companies and banks — could start to buy computers. And then DEC came along and came out with the minicomputer, and then all of a sudden smaller companies could start to buy computers. And then the PC came out and then all of a sudden individuals could start to buy computers. But the PC only ever got to hundreds of millions of people. It never got to billions of people.

Now, the smartphone has come out and it can get to billions of people.

And so it has always been this kind of trickle-down model for 50 years. We think that basically about 10 years ago the model flipped. And so we think that the model flipped to a model where, today, where the most interesting and advanced new technology now comes out for the consumer first. And then small businesses start to use it. And then medium-size businesses start to use it, and then large businesses start to use it, and then eventually the government starts to use it.

Of course, many federal officials have been saying things like this for years -- that government used to lead the way in technology innovation, and now must struggle with antiquated procurement processes just to be able to take advantage of the latest advances. But in a bring-your-own-device world, the playing field might actually be leveled, with people and organizations of all sizes getting the newest tools at the same time.

]]>

Hackers already are in your network. Now what?

Tom Shoop — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:58:41 -0500

To Shawn Henry, there are only two types of organizations in the world: Those that know that their networks already have been breached, and those that don’t.

“It is nearly impossible to keep the most sophisticated adversaries out of networks,” said Henry, president of Crowdstrike Services and a former executive assistant director of the FBI dealing with cybersecurity issues.

Henry spoke Monday at Nextgov Prime, a Government Executive Media Group event on technology and the future of government.

Even a concerted effort to apply best practices in protecting networks -- such as firewalls, hard-to-crack passwords and dual factor authentication for access -- isn’t enough to stop advanced intruders, according to Henry. “If you build a 10-foot wall, they’ll bring a 12-foot ladder,” he said.

So what can government agencies do under this scenario? They should “be constantly hunting on the network,” Henry said, in an effort to “create a hostile environment for the adversary.” It’s not just about trying to prevent people from accessing your systems, but seeing if someone who has gained access is trying to extract or change information.

“There are a whole host of things to you can do internally to look for someone trying to get out,” he said.

Speaking at the same Nextgov Prime session, Alan R. Shark, executive director of the Public Technology Institute and an associate professor at Rutgers University, highlighted several beliefs users cling to in assuming they’re secure:

I don’t have anything anyone would ever want.
I have antivirus software installed.
I don’t use Windows.
My network has a great firewall.
I only visit safe sites.
My network administrator is in charge.
I’ve had the same password for years and nothing has ever happened.

Shark made the case for training for public employees on cybersecurity best practices. “If people sit back and think technology can save it all, it’s not going to happen,” he said.

]]>