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COBOL (COBOL?), Defanging, and Still More Snowden Fallout

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I was lucky enough to be asked, again, by Francis Rose to be on his regular Friday ‘Federal News Countdown”, this last Friday, January 31st. The show can be heard here: Federal News Countdown.

The other guest was Jon Desenberg, the Policy Director for the Performance Institute, The Performance Insitute.

For those unfamiliar with the show, each guest selects their three top stories of the week relating to the Federal Government. The third most important story is discussed first by each, the second next, and the most important last.

COBOL (COBOL?), Defanging, and Still More Snowden Fallout

GSA Planning to End Its HR Shared Services

An interesting article by Jason Miller from Federal News Radio, http://www.federalnewsradio.com/145/3451148/GSA-plans-to-stop-providing-HR-shared-services. GSA provides HR services to 40 agencies, per the article, covering approximately 30,000 employees, of which 18,000 are GSA employees.

Private companies have, in some cases, outsourced capabilities that were not ‘core’ to their value-add in the marketplace. They do so because it allows their management to focus on their core mission and, hopefully, allows that capability to be provided for lower cost. The term often used for the provider is “shared-service” since multiple organizations are sharing the costs and infrastructure of the provider.

The Federal Government has gone through a number of iterations of shared-services provisioning, ending up with small numbers of government agencies and departments providing shared capabilities in a number of areas, including as this article discusses, HR.

The GSA Administrator, Dan Tangherlini, decided to have GSA focus on its core missions and thus get out of the HR shared services ‘business’.

GSA Planning to End Its HR Shared Services

Federal News Countdown, the Nationals, and the Maryland Renaissance Festival

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FEDERAL NEWS COUNTDOWN

As many of you know (assuming that there is in fact a ‘you’, that is people who read this), I am fortunate to be asked back by the evidently non-discerning, but always interesting and entertaining, Francis Rose to be on his show the Federal News Countdown, http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=155.

I will be on tomorrow, Friday, August 16 at 3pm, on AM 1500 on your radio dial.

The way the show works is Francis invites two ‘experts’ (his words) who ‘discuss the three news stories they think are most important in the world of government’. I learn a lot from the experience.

First, I am forced to think about what I actually think are news stories that have some importance, at least for the week I participate. I even have to rank them from third most important to the very most important article.

Second, I always learn from the interaction with the other guest. Francis is great at getting together two people who bring different perspectives; it is always great fun for me.

Federal News Countdown, the Nationals, and the Maryland Renaissance Festival

My Appearance on the Federal Countdown, April 26

This last Friday I participated in the Federal News Countdown with Ron Sanders, Booz Allen Hamilton, hosted by Francis Rose, WFED. The transcript and audio can be accessed here, http://www.federalnewsradio.com/86/3301646/Federal-News-Countdown-Furloughs-fizzle-spectrum-search-GS-update.

The way the show works is that each guest brings three articles from their least important, number 3-3-3-3; to their most important, number well you get the idea.My Appearance on the Federal Countdown, April 26

Status Update

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I thought it might be useful to talk a little bit about what I am doing.

At this point in my career, my interests revolve around how to improve the provisioning of services and products to the Government on one hand and the ability of Government to make use of these products and services more effectively on the other.

Status Update

Nationals Spring Training Pilgrimage – Two Days Down, Two To Go

It is always great fun coming to Nationals Spring Training. For those of you who have never done so, I would recommend it (either for the Nationals if that is your favorite baseball team, or for whichever team is).

The weather is pretty nice, especially the further north you live, the pace is informal, the fields much smaller and intimate and the opportunity to run into players either at the game or in restaurants or similar locations much higher.

We flew down Wednesday morning.  I actually had some business to transact for our first stop.

Nationals Spring Training Pilgrimage – Two Days Down, Two To Go