Weekly Roundup: June 6-10, 2016

Army Budgeting Changes?  More than 20 years ago, the Clinton-Gore Reinventing Government initiative tried to stem year-end “use it or lose it” spending. It failed. Federal News Radio reports: ‘’The Army is a few weeks away from an experiment that aims to tackle . . . the “use it or lose it” phenomenon that manifests itself at the end of each fiscal year in almost every government office. . . . As part of a directive set to take effect on July 1, the Army is telling the leaders of all of its major commands that they cannot cut a program’s funding just because it didn’t spend all of its money the year before. In theory, the policy would at least reduce managers’ incentives to binge on questionable purchases in the last few weeks of September. . . . Good luck!”

DOD Personnel Reform Redux.  Government Executive reports that: “Defense wants more flexibility to promote exceptional service members more quickly through the ranks, and the ability to bypass the traditional federal hiring system to directly hire some civilians and allow civilians greater opportunity to move laterally into military jobs. . . . Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Thursday announced his latest proposals to provide the department’s civilian employees and service members with more work-life flexibility and greater opportunity for advancement.”

State Governments Missing Out on the “Internet of Things?”  Meritalk writes that “a new report released by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) reveals states are unprepared for the IoT movement: Only one out of five state CIOs say their state has moved to the formal discussion phase–and zero states have adopted policies and developed an IoT road map.

Getting Digital Services to Stick.  Federal Computer Week “gathered a broad cross-section of digital service and citizen engagement experts to explore what works -- and what's still needed.”

Michael Keegan

For feds, the real-life perils of social media. Social media fails can be more than just embarrassing. For government officials and contractors, especially those working abroad, there are more urgent dangers to consider. "These social media sites do put that bullseye on you if you are not careful," Terence Clapp, a State Department information assurance instructor, told an audience at 1105 Media's Acquire conference in Washington, D.C.

Survey: 'Oversight doesn't love innovation'. Federal acquisition managers are relatively confident about their employees' skills, but they are less sure about efforts to inject innovation into the acquisition process, according to a recent survey by the Professional Services Council and Grant Thornton.

Census says tech overhaul is on schedule. As the 2020 census ticks closer, oversight bodies are sounding alarm bells: the Census Bureau isn't delivering promised reports, nor does it have a single cohesive timeline to track how its formidable modernization push will work with the 2020 count.

House panel weighs the risks of legacy IT. As experts warned of the "dire" threats posed by outdated federal technology, lawmakers grilled top feds, debated workforce issues and inched closer to backing a $3.1 billion fix-it fund.

Carter proposes host of changes to military, civilian personnel rules. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced sweeping changes to DoD’s personnel system for both military officers and civilian employees, saying it needs more flexibility to control military promotions and to hire qualified civil servants.

John Lainhart

Agency CIOs Undercount ‘High-Risk’ IT Projects, GAO Says.  A recent Government Accountability Office report reported that agency CIOs at more than a dozen agencies were too optimistic in assessing the risks associated with large-dollar IT projects. According to GAO’s latest analysis, agencies are not adequately assessing risk of major projects -- which diminishes the power of the Administration’s IT Dashboard to operate as an early-warning system for potentially off-the-rails IT projects. Some agencies’ risk ratings “do not provide an accurate assessment of investment risk and thus reduce the value of this important tool for transparency and oversight,” GAO auditors concluded. Nearly two-thirds of the projects evaluated by GAO showed more risk than originally reported by CIOs, according to the report. GAO recommended agencies update risk ratings more frequently and include active risks in their evaluations. Most agencies agreed with GAO’s recommendations.

NASCIO: States Should Be Laying Groundwork for the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to dramatically alter infrastructure and public services in the coming years and states need to prepare for those changes, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers cautioned in a recent policy brief. The IoT includes a wide range of emerging technologies relevant to state governments – and this is a becoming a broader and fast-evolving category of areas states need to address according to the policy brief. But discussions about IoT remain few and far between within many state governments, NASCIO has found. A survey of state CIOs conducted last year discovered that nearly one-quarter of respondents were not discussing IoT, while about half were engaged in informal discussions. None said their states had adopted IoT policies or security controls.

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The Business of Government Radio Show.  What can government executives learn from the GAO’s high-risk list? What have agencies done over the years to get their programs off the list? How can programs stay off the list in the first place? Join host Michael Keegan as he explores these questions and more with Dr. Don Kettl, author of the IBM Center report, Managing Risk, Improving Results: Lessons for Improving Government Management from GAO’s High-Risk List.

Broadcast Schedule: The show airs Monday at 11 a.m., and Friday at 1 p.m. on Federal News Radio 1500AM WFED.

If you can't wait, though, you can listen to (or download) this week's program and all our previous interviews at businessofgovernment.org.