GSA

John Kamensky

John Kamensky

On Monday, President Obama signed an executive order creating a new White House advisory board to be populated by corporate executives who will provide cutting-edge best management practices to their government counterparts.

This week the General Services Administration (GSA) is hosting its 49th annual Interagency Resources Management Conference. An estimated 300 Chief Acquisition Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Human Capital Officers, Inspectors General, program managers and other senior executive leaders are attending. It is the most well known government-wide, government-only conference where leaders delve into emerging management issues and how they are being confronted.

Next week, agency Open Government Plans are due to the Office of Management and Budget.

With little fanfare, the While House announced that 29 agencies launched their Open Government weblinks on schedule (per an OMB directive), on Saturday, February 6^th. Virtually all of them also invited citizens to participate in a dialogue on how they could improve their approaches to transparency, participation, collaboration, and innovation.

What does it mean to be a citizen in a Gov 2.0 world? President Obama’s FY 2011 budget is being dissected for its shift in the size and scope of government. But several initiatives in the budget, and things happening at the state and local levels, point to subtle -- but significant --shifts in the role of citizens in their government.

The new administrator of the long-rudderless U.S. Agency for International Development is a real-time case study of how leadership matters. Rajiv Shah, 36, stepped into the job just five days before the devastating earthquake shattered Haiti. According to the Washington Post, Shah suddenly found himself designated the "unified disaster coordinator" and in meetings with the President in the Situation Room in the basement of the White House.

The Senate confirmed Dan Gordon as the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the Office of Management and Budget. He comes highly recommended by Steve Kelman, a former holder of this job who was acclaimed as an innovator.

Yes, it is cloudy and raining this week, and the media has been reporting a glut of stories about cloud computing already. But the IBM Center has released a new report “Moving to the Cloud: An Introduction to Cloud Computing in Government” that is targeted to executives, not technologists.