GovernmentExecutive.com

No, I don't mean Obama's vulcan salute. According to its official blog, the White House has set up the first-ever government-sponsored TED talks. The topic is Secretary Clinton's Global Partnership Initiative, an effort to partner the State Department with "foundations, businesses, non-governmental organizations, universities, and faith communities" to advance the Administration's key development goals.

For the uninitiated:

I realize that you might be wondering what all of this excitement is about and who or what TED is anyway. If you don't know about TED, then click away from this page immediately and visit www.ted.com. Spend a few minutes watching the videos that pop up on the screen. While it is easy enough for those minutes to rush away and turn into hours (or whole afternoons and evenings, in my case), no matter how much time you spend watching these videos, discovering for the first time that TED exists is one of those phenomenal little moments in life that is only rivaled by a few experiences -- for me, traveling abroad (anywhere) and learning about other people (anyone) elsewhere in this world, or watching that first Blu-Ray video and not even caring about picking my jaw off the floor because the effects were just so incredible, or listening to the Beatles for the first time and realizing that there was a whole new level of genius I just been missing out on entirely. TED often has that kind of a spontaneous, drastic impact. And it should: these futurists, visionaries, scholars, and experts are challenged to give the best speech of their life on any topic of their choosing in eighteen minutes or less. Now that's setting the stage for something really magical to happen. And I have not even mentioned the best part: TED shares all of this wisdom, inspiration, and passion on the internet for free by posting the videos on their website. Really, you have to visit www.ted.com. You are going to get addicted to this stuff.

Two personal favorites in the TED-o-sphere: Hans Rosling dazzles with data on public health in developing nations, and Malcolm Gladwell explains why we have so many different kinds of spaghetti sauce.

It seems to be Whoops Day today. Bullet point one:

The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked "highly confidential," that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation's civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.

The article seems to imply that the information released isn't hugely more detailed than what's already public knowledge. Reading the back-and-forth about who might be responsible for the leak, however, is a non-confidence-inspiring experience.

Then, there's this:

Nearly a fifth of the equipment -- including computers -- assigned to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory workers laid off in 2008 could not be immediately accounted for after their departure, according to a report released Tuesday by a U.S. Energy Department inspection office. In addition, nine laptops were reported stolen from the lab's employees between July and January -- four of them having been left in plain view inside cars, the report noted.

Don't worry, though, it's not like LLNL is home to any incredibly sensitive technologies or anything like that. This incident, however, actually has an interesting management dimension. Ed O'Keefe, covering the latest incident, makes the point that this is in some ways a human capital and transition management issue:

Amid budget cuts, Livermore laid off more than 2,000 staffers last year, with roughly 750 receiving termination notices on the same day they were asked to leave. "All of these terminations potentially necessitated updates to the property database, but the involuntary terminations had the potential to pose particular challenges because of the immediacy of individuals' departures." (Departing workers may have been more focused on stunned good-byes than mundane paperwork related to the disposition of government computers. Shocker.)
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The big problem here? Training. The lab didn't provide adequate guidance to employees about keeping tabs on equipment, relying instead on an informal training process. Chalk this up as another example of a government agency trimming training costs from tight budgets. But also add this to a long list of incidents involving the loss of government property at the hands of employees who fail to follow the rules.

A solid reminder that procedures are important, but they don't mean much unless you've got a workforce with the training and morale to carry them out.

Greetings, FedBlog readers! Thanks again to Alyssa for letting me invade her space (and yours) while she's out partying it up in Vegas stimulating the economy one of our nation's fastest growing counties.

While I'm proud to be an all-around government geek, my particular beat centers around the use of collaborative tools in government to enhance transparency, innovation, public engagement, and other Good Things in that vein. To that end, today brings some intriguing news: The White House blog is slated to receive its own comments section. (h/t gov 2.0 superstar Gwynne Kostin)

This, of course, raises the question: Why? Now, it's certainly unalloyed Cool that they've defaulted in the direction of transparency; having a comments section because there's just no justifiable reason not to. And in the case of the White House, I don't think it's reasonable to expect that every comment or even most will receive a response. But this does raise an issue that arises in nearly every example of public engagement that I've seen in government: What's the value exchange? What can people expect in exchange for the time and effort they spend providing feedback?

The challenge here is that "official" blogs work best when they're staffed by people who can plausibly be even mildly responsive. To my mind, the best example of this today is the TSA Blog "Evolution of Security." Some of the less effective blogs I've seen, by contrast, purport to be written by actual cabinet secretaries -- which is both implausible, and a little disturbing if true. ("Yes, I know we're in the midst of this key debate about regulating carbon emissions, but this guy just posted the funniest LOLcat!") Peter Orzag is a laudable exception, but in general, people would much rather get real feedback from less-senior people than canned responses from implausibly senior officials.

So, three cheers to the White House for embracing the blog format and giving folks yet another way to give government some feedback. It will be interesting to see what "they" -- meaning both the White House and citizens -- make of it.

Apparently, ABC is wrapping up the run of Homeland Security USA early. Ed O'Keefe writes that the network isn't sure when it will air the remaining episodes of the show, which debuted to decidedly mixed reviews and low ratings. I've got mixed feelings. It's too bad to lose representations of federal employees on television, but yet another law enforcement show doesn't exactly add to the diversity of those depictions. And a show that isn't compelling doesn't do federal employees any favors.