Did you know that the folks at the Voice of America developed "Special English," a 1,500-word English language glossary designed to help familiarize non-English speakers with our language?

The New York Times has an interesting article (31 July 2006) explaining still more of the good work being done in the Executive Branch of government.

It seems almost daily that reports are issued criticizing some failure to properly manage and oversee huge contracts to private firms working with the federal government.

For background on this story, see the Washington Post article [from 27 July  2006] summarized a report chronicling problems with billions of dollars of contracts for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

There are always many sides to any issue, and it would be most unhelpful and counterproductive to launch into attack mode against DHS on the basis of what was covered in this report alone.  However, it cannot be overstated how critical it is for the Executive Branch to adequately control the process by which contractor firms and employees interface and support government operations.

Contracting out government work and services is here to stay, and is likely to continue to grow despite apparent shortcomings in adequate review and oversight of expensive contracts.  Gone are the days of incoming workers spending their entire careers with one employer, which also includes the federal, state, and local governments.  Thus, ongoing support and collaboration with private sector companies and employees is a given.  What also must be a given is assurance that taxpayers are receiving the services for which they are paying through these many contracts.

Probably.

For years, many Congresspersons, unions, and employees hoped that more accommodation for Teleworking could be made, in all senses of the word – approval, reimbursement for expense for home broadband access, etc.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has been an active proponent for maximizing alternative job arrangements as a way to reduce traffic, enhance workforce retention, and more. 

Now, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is drafting a plan that would require – force – some folks to work from home. 

With the recent flooding of some downtown DC federal agency buildings (Archives, Justice, IRS, Commerce) due to heavy June rains, plus recent computer security problems (at VA, Agriculture, IRS, and others), the viability of work at home is not as clear or simple as some may wish.

Interested in reading more?  Unfortunately, these articles call for government and private sector Telework plans only in the case of a pandemic. 

Here are the articles for federal agencies and private companies.

Understanding Government wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last, to acknowledge the importance of recruiting a more educated and skilled executive branch workforce.

Several earlier postings have discussed these developments.  We’re seeing a need for better educated government workers to deal with increasingly complex issues.  We’re also recognizing the challenge that the government has to recruit such talent, especially with current trends moving away from the single, life-time employer-employee scenario that I and my parents experienced.

A couple fine articles address these key workforce issues in some detail.  First, Stephen Barr’s article in the Washington Post [7/24/06] on IRS’s insistence that Revenue Agents have college degrees and by Karen Rutzick’s piece [7/20/06] from Government Executive on agency recruitment efforts at nearly 600 schools this Fall.  [According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, as of the 2002-2003 school year, there were nearly 4,200 two- and four-year public and private institutions of higher learning in the U.S.]

Dana Priest (Washington Post) again has her finger on the pulse of classified information and all things clandestine.

Today Ms. Priest reports that a CIA contractor working for BAE Systems was terminated for a posting on a classified blog she originated.

It’s not clear whether or not the employee was authorized to establish the blog or knew what were the content groundrules for postings.  The offending item was a discussion of torture and the Geneva Convention based on some classified information she saw. 

It’s never sensible to discuss politics as a government worker.  It’s not part of our job description.  Such discussions must be left to elected officials.  Executive branch bureaucrats are supposed to be neutral and implement whatever policies are approved by and through our government processes.  Even the highest level civil service executives can only salute the flag and do the job.  You don’t see them arguing the politics or, if you do, it’s usually in newspaper stories such as Ms. Priest’s describing their removal from duty.

There are many questions to digest about this matter, but anytime someone is fired, it certainly chills the dialogue.  That explains why sites like ours at “The Forumâ€? do not receive as many insightful comments (or otherwise, ha-ha) as we would like.

Was this employee authorized to read this classified information about which she wrote?  Were all others registered on this blog entitled to receive it?  The classified world has very strict need-to-know rules, even though 9-11 has challenged the intelligence community to determine “need-to-shareâ€? instead, so as to help folks connect any dots that may be floating out there.

There’s also the possibility that management never officially approved this blog.  Approved or not, my guess is that a supervisor learned of this particular posting from an employee who disagreed with the premise.  Once that happened, the party was over.

What’d’ya think?

We’ve all read or heard about the loss of sensitive data from the Veteran Affairs Department, IRS, and other agencies.  OMB is reemphasizing the need to promptly report these breaches, i.e., within one (1) hour.

This is just another example of how far we still need to progress as we try to come to grips with living in "The Information Age."  Here’s a report on what’s happening from Daniel Pulliam of Government Executive [7/14/06].

Is the federal government’s interest sorely at risk due to an insufficient number of trained procurement officers?  A federal advisory panel is working on that very issue.

Procurement has changed enormously over the past three decades.  In IRS in the 1970’s, the procurement office – well it couldn’t really be called an ‘office’ – was merely one section of many within the Facilities Management Division.  However, by the 1990’s, this ‘office’ came into its own, growing into an Assistant Commissioner organization (which is akin to a Directorate level, for our readers who work in the defense and intelligence worlds).

For more information about this important issue, please read Jenny Mandel’s article from Government Executive [7/14/06] here.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that government staff is in direct competition with contracting and consulting firms when it comes to whether outside or inside resources are best suited to achieve operational objectives.

No longer is it unusual that the “Most Efficient Organizationâ€? – MEO – is found within the agency.  This has its pro’s and con’s, and agency management needs to be prepared to deal with them.

Two Government Executive Magazine (govexec.com) articles address the need for upfront communication regarding frequent performance monitoring and measurement when the agency MEO wins the award, and the dynamics of contractors protesting the selection of internal teams. 

Now that the baby-boomers are coming of retireable age, one can hardly look in any periodical, newspaper, or website without encountering something about what to consider in planning for retirement from the workforce.

Tammy Flanagan of the National Institute of Transition Planning has some interesting and important information to convey in her July 7, 2006, article in govexec.com.

Understanding Government will be writing more about retirement, as many of our readers approach that milestone event.  But we consider that this issue should be of concern to younger readers as well — since decisions made today about retirement benefits will affect them tomorrow.

During my lifetime, Republicans have been the anti-government party and Democrats the pro-government party.  Mostly that’s put the Democrats on the right side.  We need government to do lots of things from controlling air traffic to protecting us against disease.  The Republican attitude cost them in the case of Katrina, when their indifference to the quality of the people they hired led to a major embarrassment.

It seems to me, however, that the Democrats are also in danger.  Their automatic pro-government attitude has brought them powerful allies in the government employees and teachers unions–now the strongest force in the labor movement.  But these allies come at a price.  They make Democrats reluctant to take on the need to improve government and reform public education, especially when these efforts involve dismissing incompetent teachers and civil servants.

The truth is that much of government cries out for major change–in policy and in personnel, and not just in personnel at the top, which is where the Democrats prefer to concentrate their efforts.  We need a much better CIA, a much bettter Department of Homeland Security, just to name a few.  And we aren’t going to have them unless we’re willing to face the fact that better people are needed throughout government.  Nor are we going to have the public education to make us competitive in the 21st century without better teachers.  This is not to say there are not a lot of good people in the civil service and teaching in public schools now–and they should be our friends and allies–but we must face the fact that we need many more.