Weekly Roundup: June 19 - 23, 2017

John Kamensky

Weekly Roundup: June 26-30, 2017

John Kamensky

Restored Faith.  FedScoop reports on comments by Cong. Gerry Connelly at a conference, noting: “With agencies now required to report their spending data in compliance with the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, it’s a chance for the federal government to earn some trust from the American people.”

Weekly Roundup: October 9-13, 2017

John Kamensky

Virtual USA and Web 2.0

I’ve seen a number of intersting mapping applications being developed “on the ground” that engage citizens in a collaborative efforts to provide details about their communities. The most common of these is OpenStreetMap.org, which advertises itself as an editable map of the world.

How Can Government Best Integrate and Share Information, at Home and Abroad?

The IBM Center for the Business of Government hosted a recent Roundtable discussion with current and former government leaders and stakeholders about integrating and analyzing data within and across governments across the Atlantic to improve threat prediction and prevention. This initial discussion focused on how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) information sharing enterprise can have greatest impact and interaction with partners. 

Weekly Roundup: November 27 – December 1, 2017

John Kamensky

FEMA’s Resilience Reset. RouteFifty reports: “State and local governments should own the disaster recovery process by creating integrated, outcome-based mitigation plans like Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s administrator said Thursday at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill.”

Cutting Contractors

OMB released a report today, “Acquisition and Contracting Improvement Plans and Pilots: Saving Money and Improving Government,” which follows up on its July 2009 directive that agencies trim 7 percent – about $40 billion -- from their contracting budgets over the next two years by improving their buying processes.

Risky Business

Recovery Act guidance from OMB requires agencies to identify the risk associated with each program and develop a plan of action to reduce such risks. After all, if a program gets 3,100 % increase in funding, like the home weatherization program did, there must be some risk involved!

Blogs as Public Policy Forums

A new study out by Brookings “Blogs as Public Forums for Agency Policymaking” looks at blogs created by top officials in five federal agencies and compared them to similar, but non-official blogs on the same topics to see how each are used to link citizens and government officials.

Adapting the Incident Command Model for Knowledge-Based Crises: The Case of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The federal government has developed increasingly sophisticated approaches to addressing emergencies and crises. One successful management model is the incident command system (ICS), which was initially developed in the 1970s as a command-and-control approach for fighting forest fires, but has since been adapted to other policy domains. The Department of Homeland Security adopted the ICS model—which it renamed the National Incident Management System (NIMS)—and required its use at all levels of government in emergency and crisis situations.

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