Let's say you're a Millennial -- otherwise known as a 20-something young adult -- and you're trying to get a job and start paying off those student loans. You're in the Washington, D.C. metro area and you know a lot of folks that work for the federal government, so you...
Posted December 2, 2011 | 12/02/11 11:26 AM ET
Hide your wallet and suspend all reason, because here he comes again.
Expect Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry to make the rounds on Capitol Hill this month, hat in hand, begging for more dollars and resources to fix his agency's two-decades long inability to modernize the Federal Employees...
Posted November 9, 2011 | 11/09/11 01:37 PM ET
The Obama administration was heavily criticized when its federal job posting website, USAJOBS 3.0, crashed upon launch. After all, the administration is all about jobs, jobs, jobs. Rather than go "cloud-first" -- in theory, an administration mandate since 2009 -- the Office of Personnel Management, the government's human...
Posted October 13, 2011 | 10/13/11 10:18 AM ET
Who didn't see this coming? Certainly not applicants for jobs with the federal government.
One year behind schedule and nearly $20 million spent this year alone, the Office of Personnel Management couldn't come close to engineering a smooth launch of its USAJobs 3.0 platform update on Wednesday.
Users took to...
Posted September 28, 2011 | 09/28/11 11:55 AM ET
There must be a parallel universe where no banks fail, Wall Street needs no oversight, all mortgages are secure, consumer rights rule the day, there's no federal deficit, and Republicans and Democrats agree on everything. It used to be that this parallel universe would bleed over into ours -- we...
Posted September 23, 2011 | 09/23/11 11:24 AM ET
Barbequing is best done low and slow. Reforming government, on the other hand, is much more like cooking with a Chinese wok -- a hot fire, fearless execution, and constant mixing and scrambling ingredients in super-heated oil.
If you were asked to make a personal investment in an organization, that...
Posted June 22, 2011 | 06/22/11 01:01 PM ET
Tell the average person that intragovernmental funds transfers are the root of an institutional conflict-of-interest problem in Washington, D.C., and you'll probably evoke a quizzical look.
Tell that same person that more than $1.7 billion in taxpayer dollars is being wasted by a federal agency? They get it.
Numbers are...
Posted May 10, 2011 | 05/10/11 09:44 AM ET
By Linda E. Brooks Rix
"It's unbelievable.... The whole government is a Ponzi scheme." ~ Bernie Madoff, as quoted in a New York magazine article, "The Madoff Tapes" (Feb. 27, 2011)
It takes one to know one.
In its Dec. 21, 2010 release,...
Posted April 19, 2011 | 04/19/11 12:11 PM ET
Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry said in 2009 that he would work with the Department of the Interior and the General Services Administration to create a set of model programs for employees who work at the three agencies' headquarters to "turn the three workplaces into a...
Posted April 13, 2011 | 04/13/11 01:21 PM ET
"I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow,
It's cloud illusions I recall,
I really don't know clouds at all."
~ Joni Mitchell, 1968, Both Sides Now, ©Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
While I've never looked to Joni Mitchell for technology...
Posted March 21, 2011 | 03/21/11 09:23 PM ET
Very few private sector companies or government agencies have weathered the recession as well as the Office of Personnel Management, thanks to a business model built on conflict of interest, lack of accountability and anti-competitive practices.
In 2011, OPM estimates it will enjoy $1.7 billion from its "fee for service"...
Posted February 29, 2012 | 02/29/12 02:21 PM ET