Weekly Round-up - September 08, 2011 Weekly Round-up - September 08, 2011

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

• Social Media, Soup to Nuts: Lovisa Williams shared, through Twitter and her blog, the whats, hows, and wherefores of social media.  I also published this slide deck on advanced uses of Twitter.
• Grading the Government, and Looking Forward: Darren Whitelaw shared his report card on Gov 2.0 activities and Alice Lipowicz  reports that the Open Government Partnership gets mixed forecasts.

Dr. John Bordeaux

• We continue to have an education system that measures content absorption rather than what matters; measures of affective and cognitive development.  IBM's CEO study demonstrates the key trait needed in the workforce: creativity.  Where is the standardized test to measure creativity in U.S. schools?  Instead, we cling to outmoded measures and compound the error by presuming to measure the value proposition of new ideas based on these.  Until we have measures that matter, education remains a data-free system ruled by beliefs rather than knowledge.
• For years, users experienced "blue screens of death," data loss through server room power surges, viruses that ravage hard drives - all accepted as a cost of a computing workforce.  But if a "cloud" service is unavailable for 30 minutes - with NO data loss - it 'rocks the industry?'  "Google Docs' downtime is the most recent in a string of high-profile cloud outages that have rocked the industry and called into question the reliability of cloud computing services."
• In business, in school, in life - we know we learn most from our failures.  In the public sector, however, failure is still taboo. 

Dan Chenok

• Open Government goes global.
• E-Gov to yield significant global savings.

John Kamensky

• GAO on US Postal Service.  How’s this for an opening sentence?  “By the end of this fiscal year—in less than one month—the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) projects that it will incur a $9 billion loss; reach its $15 billion borrowing limit; not make its $5.5 billion retiree health benefits payment; and thus, become insolvent.”  More tough text follows!
• Government on the Brink.  Government Executive’s Tom Shoop sums up a litany of recent executive branch and congressional bumps in leadership that he says “adds up to a failure of epic proportions.”  And I thought Tom was an optimist about government!
• Millenials to the Rescue!  While the curmudgeons complain, the Partnership for Public Service finds that younger feds are happier at work than older feds.  And the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have the highest satisfaction ratings among new employees!
• Homeland Security at Age 10.  The Partnership, and the Governmental Accountability Office, both released assessments of the state of homeland security since 9/11.  Of course, they conclude that progress has been made but more needs to be done!

The Business of Government Radio Show: Robert F. Hale

The Business of Government Hour features a conversation about management with a government executive who is changing the way government does business. The executives discuss their careers and the management challenges facing their organizations. Past government executives include Administrators, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Operating Officers, Commissioners, Controllers, Directors, and Undersecretaries.

Robert F. Hale is the principal advisor to Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates on all budgetary and fiscal matters, including the development and execution of the Defense Department’s annual budget of more than $600 billion.

Each week, The Business of Government Hour interviews government executive who are changing the way government does business. The show airs four times a week on two radio stations in the DC Metro Area. If you can't wait, though, we also put it online. You can also search our audio archives for your favorite interview.