TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT
08/31/10 07:04 pm ET
Nextgov has written before about how cloud computing means fewer jobs, but that isn't talked about much in the federal government. (Read here.) Most of the savings in any organization comes from reducing labor - not equipment.>>
08/30/10 01:01 pm ET
It's pretty much understood that sitting in front of your computer all day without routine exercise can lead to some unhealthy outcomes. But getting up and walking for, say, just 40 minutes three times a week can not only slim you down, it can actually increase cognition and fight aging.>>
08/27/10 06:11 pm ET
Could what is happening in West Virginia (and other states already) be an omen for what could happen for federal information technology workers?>>
08/26/10 05:45 pm ET
The nonprofit Partnership for Public Service and PDRI, a human resources consulting firm, issued a report on Thursday that "found government does a poor job of evaluating applicants for federal positions," according to an article on Government Executive.>>
08/25/10 06:20 pm ET
Government Executive posted on Tuesday the second of a four-part series on telework. The brief article, written by Bill Bransford, general counsel for the Senior Executives Association, is how to convince bosses to give up control and allow eligible employees telework.>>
08/24/10 11:47 am ET
Dice.com has an interesting article about how the coming retirement wave of 76 million baby boomers over the next 18 years will create an even greater demand for technology experts, not just to replace these seasoned workers but also to develop new technologies, like patient monitoring, independent living concepts, assistive technologies and wired pillboxes.>>
08/23/10 12:30 pm ET
The Office of Personnel Management is looking to revamp its centralized hiring register program to make it easier for agencies to search for specific skills. Federal Times reports chief human capital officers say the hiring registers -- under which OPM advertises for 13 of the most in-demand federal jobs, including IT - are too broad and insufficient for helping them target the skills they need, according to OPM Director John Berry. For example, the Internal Revenue Service needs information technology specialists with experience writing Java code, but the current registers don't identify candidates with those skills. >>
08/20/10 12:19 pm ET
Federal employees benefited more from student loan repayment programs in 2009, according to a new report by the Office of Personnel Management. >>
08/19/10 11:46 am ET
The federal human resources community is hampered by a lack of robust information technology systems, forcing many HR leaders to rely on outdated manual processes, according to a new report.>>
08/18/10 11:38 am ET
The federal government continues to struggle with a number of dysfunctional policies and practices that hamper its ability to recruit and retain a high-quality workforce, according to a new report by the Partnership for Public Service and Grant Thornton.>>
08/17/10 10:16 am ET
The debate over whether federal employees are paid significantly higher than their private sector counterparts has made headlines recently. Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry issued a statement late Monday contending that such stories are "unfair and untrue," noting that they make comparisons based on gross averages, including retail and restaurant service workers and other entry-level positions that reduce private sector pay in comparison to the federal average. >>
08/16/10 12:48 pm ET
Federal agencies still have the green light to bring contractor jobs in-house, despite the Defense Department's recent announcement that it will abandon such efforts, Government Executive reports. Daniel Gordon, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget, said on Friday the Obama administration does not anticipate issuing guidance that would prohibit agencies from adding federal employees to do work currently being performed by contractors. >>
08/13/10 01:07 pm ET
Derek Thompson, a blogger at theAtlantic.com (part of Atlantic Media, Nextgov's parent company as well) tries to add more insight into the ongoing (and confusing) debate about whether federal workers make more or less than their private sector counterparts. >>
08/12/10 11:22 am ET
The average number of resumes viewed by technology hiring managers and recruiters is up 50 percent this year, according to this month's issue of the Dice Report. But that number represents the under-the-radar job market, where employers -- 80 percent of them, in fact -- are searching resume databases before posting their job publicly. As a result, it's important for technology professionals to highlight their achievements on social networking websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and personal blogs, Dice notes.>>
08/11/10 10:55 am ET
The Homeland Security Department has stood up a special task force to evaluate the needs within the federal and private sector cybersecurity workforce.>>
08/10/10 08:25 am ET
Another article in USA Today again claims that federal pay is significantly higher than private sector pay. Federal employees have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years consecutive years, forcing the compensation gap to double over the past decade, the article states.>>
08/10/10 01:01 pm ET
The Homeland Security Department has abandoned a technology platform that the agency hoped would simplify and accelerate its recruiting and hiring activities. >>
08/09/10 12:46 pm ET
A Republic senator late last week introduced a bill that would reduce and limit the number of civilian federal workers to February 2009 levels. >>
08/09/10 11:34 am ET
The Washington Post on Saturday had a great article about how the younger generation is shaking up the federal workplace with their tendencies to take risks, connect socially online and share information across boundaries. The Obama administration is hoping to fill up to 60,000 entry-level federal jobs within the next year, and government personnel experts believe that in 10 years, 400,000 of the 2 million federal workers will be younger than 35. >>
08/06/10 12:38 pm ET
The Transportation Department is using a variety of technology tools to attract and retain the younger generation of workers, and the launch of its new online social network is just the latest example of that, agency officials told Wired Workplace on Wednesday.>>
08/06/10 12:21 pm ET
The Transportation Department on Tuesday launched IdeaHub, an online community where its 55,000 employees across the country can share and collaborate on new ideas. And thus far, employees have been embracing the new online platform with open arms.>>
08/05/10 02:27 pm ET
The government must institute some type of performance-based pay system in order to retain the expertise critical to combating cyber threats, an expert on cybersecurity human capital said Thursday. >>
08/04/10 01:48 pm ET
When it comes to attracting the younger generation to the federal workforce, the federal government can look to some of the best practices in the private sector for ideas. Pamela Evans, global digital marketing manager at IBM, told Wired Workplace last week that the key to IBM's success in recruiting and retaining the younger generation is simply getting to their level, which often means reaching out online. >>
08/03/10 10:12 am ET
The Transportation Department on Tuesday launched an online community where its employees can share and collaborate on new ideas. The network - called IdeaHub - will enable the department to take employee engagement and innovation to the next level by allowing workers to do something they've never fully been able to do before - share ideas and collaborate with their 55,000 DOT colleagues across the country, according to a post by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on the department's Fast Lane blog.>>
08/02/10 12:24 pm ET
Last week, I blogged about the importance of ensuring diversity in the federal information technology workforce, particularly when it comes to recruiting women and other minority groups to federal IT jobs. The Office of Personnel Management on Monday issued proposed regulations that would add a form to federal applications on
