John Kamensky

The Government Accountability Office study went on to note: “Agencies reported 3,427 IT staff employed just to maintain legacy-programming languages, such as COBOL (1,085) and Fortran (613).”  In addition, the Office of Management and Budget recently observed that “43 percent of federal IT projects are reported to be over budget or behind schedule.”

Nearly three decades ago, New Zealand pioneered government reforms to make individual single-purpose agencies – a “vertical” solution -- more accountable and effective.  While successful, it exacerbated another challenge facing government agencies -- addressing “horizontal” societal problems, i.e., those that span traditional agency boundaries.  So, New Zealand undertook a new round of reform in 2012 to address a handful of persistent societal and economic problems by creat

One of the better Open Gov plans for collaboration is the one by the Department of Agriculture.  It sets out four goals: (1) create an environment that fosters partnerships in program and service delivery; (2) seek out innovative ideas; (3) create incentives to collaborate; and (4) use technology to support coll

The new legislation adds to a loosely organized network of continuing federal efforts to boost Americans’ engagement in STEM education.  In fact, President George W. Bush placed a governmentwide emphasis on STEM education in his State of the Union address in 2006 as a part of his national competitiveness agenda.

Selecting a college can be one of the most expensive choices in life.  But until recently, the information sources to make an informed decision were scattered and of varying quality – rankings in national magazines, word of mouth, brochures from campuses, and the perennial college tours. 

 Harvard professor Bob Behn calls the various “-stat” systems used across the country “Performance-Stat.” This includes the New York City CompStat, Baltimore’s CitiStat, and Maryland’s State-Stat, as well as Montgomery County’s County-Stat system.

OMB released specific guidance to agencies on how they should prepare their budget submissions to OMB, which are due September 13. The key element being that agencies should submit requests that would be 5 percent below what was estimated for FY 2012 when OMB submitted the president’s FY 2011 budget in February. There have been good stories on this in the Washington Post and

John Kamensky

Warner Letter re: DATA Act. Federal News Radio reports: “Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) sent letters to 24 chief financial officer agencies on Friday, urging leadership to “prioritize efforts” to comply with the Digital Accountability and Transparency (DATA) Act. . . . Warner, an original backer of the DATA Act, asked five questions to agency leaders about their progress toward the May 2017 implementation deadline.”

Discoveries like these are an entrepreneur’s dream, but they live in a different world than the scientists who develop these technologies. And their paths rarely cross. How can this dynamic be changed so discoveries move from the lab to markets more quickly, and don’t remain “a lamp under a bushel basket?”