management | The Contracting Education Academy

October 9, 2020 By cs

Why government must change its management model

Bureaucracy is getting worse, not better.

COVID-19 and the sudden shift to working remotely has accomplished something presidential initiatives, commissions and consultants failed to do — it’s forced work units and their managers to rethink working relationships. There is no time or reason to do another study; agencies have to make it work.

On the positive side, this could finally provide the impetus to shed bureaucratic practices. As John Kamensky argued in a recent column, it’s time to “strengthen unit-level health and performance.” That’s also the theme of a new book, Humanocracy, a “passionate, data-driven argument for excising bureaucracy and replacing it with something better.” The book advances the ideas in Kamensky’s column in some important ways.

The Need to ‘Excise Bureaucracy’

Government today is confronted by multiple workforce concerns: the abrupt need for highly qualified, dedicated front line workers to battle COVID; redefined manager-employee working relationships imposed by remote working; the continuing aging of the workforce; a work experience that by all reports contributes to early turnover of new hires; and a need for improved performance. Government is also affected by demographic trends, the changing career choices of the next generation of workers, and talent shortages in a number of fields. Looking ahead, in the absence of needed change, the workforce problems will deepen and performance will deteriorate.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/09/why-government-must-change-its-management-model/168449/

December 6, 2018 By AMK

IG shines light on GSA’s major management challenges

The General Services Administration faces significant management challenges — including recovering costs and filling critical positions — as it attempts to become the government’s “premier provider of efficient and effective acquisition,” according to the agency’s inspector general.

The agency’s many initiatives to improve procurement have left customers trying to use tools that don’t work and facing delays in critical projects like the transition of agency telecommunications to the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract.

These and other management and performance challenges were identified by the GSA Office of Inspector General in a report released Monday.

The agency reported a net loss of $8 million in 2017 to its Acquisition Services Fund, a revolving fund that is supposed to cover costs and operating expenses of the Federal Acquisition Service’s business units, including the Office of Information Technology Category and the Technology Transformation Services. To better review expenses and billable work, the agency shifted TTS and the tech group 18F in 2017 under FAS after previous reports that 18F wouldn’t be in the black until at best fiscal 2018.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2018/12/ig-shines-light-gsas-major-management-challenges/153256/

July 13, 2017 By AMK

Special Counsel backs whistleblower, says GSA ‘grossly mismanaged’ tech funds

The Office of Special Counsel has announced that it had reached a settlement with the General Services Administration on behalf of recently resigned Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Tom Sharpe.

The office said GSA “had grossly mismanaged its Technology Transformation Service” as described in a GSA report that OSC has forwarded to Congress and the White House, the special counsel having judged the response of the Obama administration’s GSA to Sharpe’s whistleblower disclosures to be “unreasonable.”

Sharpe resigned abruptly from the agency in June (his job is now occupied by Alan Thomas) just as the GSA inspector general was reporting that Sharpe had earlier made “protected disclosures” about “concerns of violations of law, gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds and abuse of authority” to former GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth, the former deputy administrator, the former General Counsel, and the OIG.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2017/07/special-counsel-backs-whistleblower-says-gsa-grossly-mismanaged-tech-funds/139221/

April 12, 2017 By AMK

The path to better management of government’s huge programs

With the enactment of the Program Management Improvement and Accountability Act late last year, the federal government has the opportunity and mandate to address two long-standing challenges: delivering successfully on large-scale change initiatives and addressing the dearth of well-qualified program managers across executive branch agencies.

For a government that operates through the execution of programs — many of them large and complex — such gaps represent enormous risk.

Even in a modular, agile world, the role of program managers remains essential, because change initiatives are more likely to cross multiple organizations. After all, the federal government manages more than $3 trillion in annual budgets and hundreds of huge programs critical to the nation and its citizens.

But the federal landscape remains littered with what Peat-Marwick once dubbed “runaway systems” — projects that are over budget, behind schedule and failing to deliver promised benefits and functionality. Thanks to the PMIAA, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) now has the responsibility to implement a set of policies to improve program management in government. As the Trump administration takes shape, OMB should leverage this opportunity to increase the probability of successfully delivering on its initiatives.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2017/04/path-better-management-governments-huge-programs/136848

Bureaucracy is getting worse, not better.

The Need to ‘Excise Bureaucracy’

The General Services Administration faces significant management challenges — including recovering costs and filling critical positions — as it attempts to become the government’s “premier provider of efficient and effective acquisition,” according to the agency’s inspector general.

The Office of Special Counsel has announced that it had reached a settlement with the General Services Administration on behalf of recently resigned Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Tom Sharpe.

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