Fedblog

Fort Hood Had Heroes, Too

Fri,06 Nov 2009 19:40:13 GMT

One thing it's important to remember in yesterday's tragedy is that there were heroes who took risks, and prevented the shootings from being worse than they could have been. Chief among those heroes is Sergeant Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer, and an American Federation of Government Employees member, who shot Major Nidal Hasan four times, stopping his rampage, even though she'd been shot herself. We forget, too often, that it's impossible to separate civilian federal employees and the military. Their pay raises are debate separately. They receive wildly different amounts of prestige in American society. Most of the time, the military takes risks to protect civilians, whether they work for the federal government or not. But yesterday, it was a civilian federal employee who stepped in, and took a bullet, to protect members of the military on American soil.

Mental Health and the Military

Fri,06 Nov 2009 17:28:12 GMT

The Washington Post has a profile of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man who killed 13 people at Fort Hood yesterday. My first thought is for the families of the people who died and were injured, and for Hasan's family, who must feel tremendous guilt and confusion. But the case also raises questions for me about how the military should deal with people who are clearly unable to serve and stay sane.

I don't think it's possible to build a psychiatric evaluation system that catches everyone. And I understand that the military signs contracts with people, and relies on those contracts to keep the ranks full--it's a serious matter on both sides. But it's not actually beneficial for the military to keep people on who can't serve effectively, or who will melt down while serving. There needs to be some balance between a system that allows people to fake mental illness to get out of contracts they simply don't want to fulfill, and a system that misses people who are too ill to handle the pressures of service. I don't know what that balanced system looks like. But I hope the military has better ideas than I do.

How to Help the Shooting Victims at Fort Hood

Thu,05 Nov 2009 22:20:51 GMT

The news about the shootings at Fort Hood is dreadful: at least 12 people are dead and 31 are wounded. One of the shooters is still at large. If you're in the Texas area and want to help, Scott & White Memorial Hospital, the one nearest the hospital, which is accepting shooting victims, needs blood donations. Details about the donation center are here.

Obama Questioned on 8(a) Program

Thu,05 Nov 2009 18:01:46 GMT

By Robert Brodsky

Interesting moment this morning at the administration's Tribal Nations conference at the Department of Interior.

President Obama was questioned, possibly for the first time, on potential changes to the Small Business Administration's 8(a) Business Development contracting program. The 8(a) program carves out several unique contracting exceptions for Indian tribes, Alaska Native Corporations and Native Hawaiian Organizations. But, those procurement advantages have come under close scrutiny recently by Senate lawmakers.

The final question to Obama was posed by Leslie Lohse of the Paskenta Nomlaki tribe in California, who asked about potential changes to the 8(a) program.

"And another thing that I'd like to ask you to do is to take care of our 8(a) program because those of us -- those that are landless out there can develop economic development opportunities through the 8(a) contracting program, and that may ease some of the burdens that some of the landless tribes are, because you don't need to have land to operate that," Lohse said. "And there is an attack on our 8(a) program -- I perceive it as an attack -- because it is limiting. We just barely started three years ago with ours, and we're starting to get rolling, and now they want to change the rules. So I ask that you pay mind to that -- that we not inhibit our growth in that way so that we can purchase some of our lands back and grow from that, instead of being dependent on gaming."

Obama did not directly respond to comment, but directed conference participants to speak directly with departmental and agency leaders that are in attendance.

"Present to them your concerns, your specific recommendations," Obama said. "They are here to listen and to learn and to advise."

Next Step for Outgoing DCAA Director

Thu,05 Nov 2009 16:23:55 GMT

By Robert Brodsky

Tomorrow is April Stephenson's last day as director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency. But, Stephenson, was has been under fire from lawmakers for a pair of damaging GAO reports on DCAA operations, appears to have landed on her feet.

According to an internal e-mail obtained by Government Executive, Stephenson will begin a new role on Monday at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, assisting in a review of the department's Enterprise Risk Management program. Stephenson will also be tasked with providing recommendations for improving the program.

"By effectively embedding risk management techniques into our day-to-day operations, DFAS will be better equipped to identify and prevent events that might affect our ability to carry out our mission and to meet our established goals," wrote DFAS Director Terri McKay. "Ms. Stephenson's career has provided her with the unique combination of leadership, auditing, accounting, and finance knowledge and extensive experience necessary to be successful in this assignment and add value to our great organization. I know you will give Ms. Stephenson your full support as she takes on this new assignment."

Challenges in Cutting Contracting

Thu,05 Nov 2009 16:07:00 GMT

I'm blogging from home today with a cold (telework really does make folks more productive!), which gave me a chance to read colleague and frequent contributor to this blog Robert Brodsky's fantastic feature in our November issue about how the Obama administration's desire to cut contracting is colliding with its expansion of government activities. And Rob makes the point that the administration's goals may never have been realistic even absent the Recovery Act's need to spend money very quickly (which basically mandates contractors):

As it has in the health care debate, the administration is betting that widespread inefficiencies permeate the procurement system and streamlined and reengineered business practices can save taxpayers billions. But some fear the lack of concrete implementation guidance and accountability measures in the Orszag memo could lead agency officials to treat it as little more than a theoretical exercise.
....

Rooting out 7 percent in inefficiencies could be easier said than done. For more than half a decade, agencies have employed chief acquisition officers whose primary goal has been to monitor the performance of contracts, to increase full-and-open competition and to manage procurement policy strategically. Some suggest the lowest-hanging fruit in terms of contract savings might have been plucked long ago.

Anyway, read it all. It's very, very good.

Happy 40th Anniversary to Sesame Street!

Wed,04 Nov 2009 16:37:03 GMT

You'd have to be a real Oscar the Grouch to argue that the show, designed and kept alive with private, foundation, and federal funds, hasn't been one of the better federal investments of all time. In honor of the show, here's one of my favorite segments of all time:

Questions I Have for the Army Corps of Engineers

Wed,04 Nov 2009 15:01:37 GMT

On reading this Washington Post story about the Army Corps of Engineers work in New Orleans:

1. Why has it taken so long to *break ground*, much less finish, new protections for the West Bank of New Orleans, especially given that the population was returning to earlier levels?

2. What are the rules about residents returning to areas threatened by catastrophic flooding, as the West Bank is?

3. What should West Bank residents do to make sure they'll be prepared for Katrina-level storms, since it's clear that the Army Corps isn't going to have the systems to prevent flooding in place at least until 2011?

OPM Expands Information Sharing

Tue,03 Nov 2009 17:02:44 GMT

At Wired Workplace, Brittany Ballenstedt highlights an Office of Personnel Management memo on improving information sharing between folks who work on human capital issues in the agencies, state and local government, tribal authorities, and the private sector. All of which makes me wonder if OPM has considered establishing an internal research unit, like the one at the Merit Systems Protection Board, which conducts studies and publishes public reports. Right now, much of that research work on human capital is left to other government audit units like the Government Accountability Office or to external organizations like the Partnership for Public Service. It would let OPM target research in areas it's curious about, and establish its own best practices recommendations in a form other than memorandums, and do its own data analysis on its own schedule. Just a thought, but an intriguing one, I think.

Obama Amends Labor Executive Order

Tue,03 Nov 2009 14:13:25 GMT

On January 30, President Obama signed a slew of executive orders on labor relations issues involving federal agencies, contractors, and their employees. Yesterday, he released an executive order amending one of them. Apparently, the order had been construed as banning agencies and contracting departments from treating the money contractors spend on maintaining relationships with their employees as money they could be reimbursed for, even though the order was only intended to ban them from being reimbursed for money they spent specifically on fighting or encouraging unionization drives. The language has been clarified to read as follows:

"Contracting departments and agencies shall treat as allowable costs incurred in maintaining satisfactory relations between the contractor and its employees (other than the costs of any activities undertaken to persuade employees to exercise or not to exercise, or concerning the manner of exercising, the right to organize and bargain collectively), including costs of labor management committees, employee publications, and other related activities."

The order is smart, and recognizes that labor relations is a programmatic budget line item, not just a philosophy. Does it mean an executive order on labor-management relations within the departments and agencies and partnership councils is due soon? I honestly don't know. I'm surprised that it's taken this long, but the administration is reviving the Federal Labor Relations Authority, so perhaps it's just that change takes time.

Cost-Plus Questions Persist

Mon,02 Nov 2009 18:07:08 GMT

By Robert Brodsky

Federal agencies are failing to justify their use of risky cost-reimbursement contracts rather than using fixed-price contracts, according to a new report released Friday by the Government Accountability Office.

The watchdog reviewed 92 contracts and orders and found that roughly 30 percent did not include any supporting documentation explaining why a cost-reimbursement contract was selected. Agencies also failed to conduct a price analysis to determine if they can transition to a contract type with firmer pricing or to provide evidence that the contractor's accounting systems had been deemed adequate to determine costs applicable to the contract.

"Inadequate accounting systems, or accounting systems that had not been deemed adequate for many years, may result in the government making improper payments to contractors," the report said.

From fiscal 2003 through 2008 federal obligations under cost-reimbursement contracts increased from $16 billion to $136 billion. Those figures, however, actually represent a decrease in the total percentage of federal contract spending over that 6-year period, from 34 percent to 26 percent.

But, while cost-plus contracting appears to be on the decline, a significant increase has been reported for obligations using the "combination" contract type--a category that GAO found includes many contracts with cost-reimbursement obligations that are not recorded as such. The Office of Federal Procurement Policy recently decided to eliminate the use of "combination" as a Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation contract type, effective for all new contract awards starting in fiscal 2010.

The FBI, Torture, and the Falseness of Agency Unity

Mon,02 Nov 2009 16:18:55 GMT

Over at The American Prospect, Adam Serwer digests the Federal Bureau of Investigation Inspector General's report on the agency's position on torture, and pulls out the unsurprising fact that different officials within the agency had different positions on what it was and wasn't permissible to do to detainees. "The general narrative surrounding the use of torture is that the FBI conflicted with the CIA and the military over the use of harsh techniques to interrogate detainees," Adam writes. But as I've written a couple of times before, there was always going to be a difference of position on interrogation techniques. Institutions like the FBI never act--and never think--unilaterally. It's impossible to recruit for unity of thought, and no institution should want to do that, even if it was practical. The question for the FBI and for the intelligence agencies is to learn how voices are heard, how opinions are privileged, and how decisions are made--and then how agencies are reconciled after agonizing decisions.

Idea Factory Goes DHS-Wide

Fri,30 Oct 2009 14:49:45 GMT

Over at Wired Workplace, Brittany Ballenstedt reports that the Department of Homeland Security is expanding the IdeaFactory, a program piloted in the Transportation Security Administration to allow employees to submit and discuss suggestions for improving the agency, to cover all the DHS components. Larry Orluskie, a DHS spokesman, told Brittany that:

I like the idea that it's Web 2.0; it's interactive....It's not like some agencies that have an e-mail concept, where you send an e-mail or complete a form template on a Web page with your idea. IdeaFactory is interactive - you put in the idea and people vote on it and submit comments. It can even spin around and morph into another idea.

I agree that email inboxes can be a depressing place to send suggestions, especially if someone isn't monitoring them particularly closely, and a response is not guaranteed. But I think there has to be some genuine investment to make sure that the conversations IdeaFactory is meant to foster actually happen: you don't want queries to just sit out there.

Formatting Plain Language

Fri,30 Oct 2009 13:18:15 GMT

I essentially agree with everything Joe Davidson has to say in his column today about the need for bills and regulations to be written in plain language (although I don't particularly know anyone who doesn't!). As frustrating as they are to read, all the subsections amending specific lines of specific codes are actually necessary to make bills operative, of course. I wonder what the best way to condense--or work around--those sections is. Should they be footnotes that are operative, rather than just explanatory? Appendices? Should there be entirely separate plain-language translations of actual working legislation? I do wonder, if translation is the option, what happens if plain-language versions of legislation can be interpreted differently from working, operative versions of legislation. It seems like that could risk opening up ground for lawsuits. And plain language should definitely be adopted in a way that doesn't risk dramatically increasing the workload for Congressional staffers who actually write bills. Plain language is a critical goal, although not one with an immediate and clear solution.

State Department Diaries

Thu,29 Oct 2009 14:53:47 GMT

This DipNote diary by James Liddle, a desk officer in the State Department's Africa bureau on his time in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is really well-written and powerful. I just wish they'd published it in installments, instead of all at once--it's a long read, but well worth the investment of time. I think these kinds of projects are extremely useful, because they don't assume that people know everything the government does. They open up government without being condescending, or without simply focusing on trouble-shooting or frequently asked questions.