DHS

John Kamensky

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.”

John Kamensky

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.

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. 

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.”

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.

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!

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.