GovernmentExecutive.com

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.)
...
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.

I swear I read blogs other than Matt Yglesias's. But his post on a new Center for American Progress poll on American's views on government is really valuable. Matt writes:

And on specifics, there’s a strong desire for high levels of government spending with 79 percent agreeing that “Government investments in education, infrastructure, and science are necessary to ensure America’s long-term economic growth” and 69 percent agreeing that “Government has a responsibility to provide financial support for the poor, the sick, and the elderly.” This fairly overwhelming support for spending is tempered by more conservative views on some other issue area, and also by concern that government does work well in practice. 61 percent agree that “Government spending is almost always wasteful and inefficient.” CAP also coded as “progressive” the 65 percent who agreed that “Government policies too often serve the interests of corporations and the wealthy” but at least some of that might be skepticism about the idea that an activist federal government will actually side with average people, rather than a belief that we need to reverse the small-government policies of the past 30 years.

Matt's writing about the survey in the context of what it says about how progressive or conservative Americans are. But I think this also represents a very important opportunity for the federal government. Americans want the government to do a bunch of very specific things right now, and feel urgently that it's important the government does them well. It's a rare chance to catch the public's attention and build a reserve trust in government capacity. That reserve of trust is a huge source of momentum for reform in things like the hiring system. If agencies fail to deliver, it won't be just President Obama, or liberals who suffer the consequences. It'll be government as a whole.

President Obama's famously joked that people in DC don't know from snow, which is true. So why, then is Michelle Obama's literacy event at the Library of Congress today cancelled? This is nothing, right? Just delay a couple of hours. (I kid. Mostly.)

Federal agencies in the DC area are open, but employees have an extra two hours to get into work, unless they're teleworking, or they're emergency employees. If you can't get in, you can use unscheduled leave.

The International Space Station's Node 3 should TOTALLY be named Serenity. Government should, on the whole, be a lot more like the Joss Whedon-created universe. Although I would personally not support budget appropriations for the Initiative.

Megan McArdle and I tend to come at many issues from different perspectives, since she's writing from a well-established political position, and I'm writing as a reporter. But I think this post of hers on the accumulation of rules in the federal bureaucracy is thought-provoking. It's hard to roll back rules once they're in place, and it's an enormously daunting task to even consider going through the entirety of federal regulations to determine which of them ought to be eliminated in the first place. Instead, we discover that a rule is cumbersome when we bump up against it, and then the contingency passes, and the rule's troublesome nature fades from memory again. It's a huge problem. I don't know how it can be fixed, though.

GovGab is kind enough to point out that Feb. 14 National Organ Donor Day in addition to Valentine's Day. Obviously, organ donation isn't for everyone, and I understand that. But there's a nice symmetry to the multiple ways of giving your heart to someone.

Apparently, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack wants a consolidated food safety agency. That seems like an extremely logical thing to do, but apparently, it's tricky.

Congressional Quarterly is reporting that the director of the Census Bureau will report directly to the White House and not to Commerce Secretary-designate Judd Gregg. My sense from the story is that this is mostly about political optics. Black and Latino advocacy groups aren't fond of Gregg period, and they're not happy about the fact that he pushed back against emergency funding for the 2000 Census.

But this makes good management sense. As Allan Holmes has reported over and over again, the 2010 Census is in real danger. Putting it directly in the White House's line of sight makes it a priority, and ups the need for serious accountability.

Rumor has it that Sonal Shah, the Google.org executive who was a member of the Obama “Technology, Innovation, and Government Reform” transition team, is set to run the White House Social Innovation and Civic Engagement Office. It’s a key gig, given Obama’s use of social networking as a major campaign tool, and the signs he’s sent that he’ll both try to mobilize his supporters as a lobbying organization when he sends bills to Congress, and that he’s likely to try to use Web 2.0 techniques to bypass the media when he has a major message he wants to get out to the public.

But my colleague Gautham Nagesh has done extensive reporting on Shah’s ties to a controversial Hindu nationalist group, Vishva Hindu Parishad of America. To be fair, Shah has distanced herself from the group and said she never would have been involved in the group if she’d known it would not condemn the participation of the Indian branch in 2002 clashes between Hindus and Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat. But it also seems that she was more involved with the organization than she’s previously claimed.