A cybersecurity czar this month — maybe
November 2nd, 2009 | Information Technology | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
The president has been accused of “dithering” on his Afghanistan strategy review. (Personally, I think he’s right to take his time: Escalating the war is not an easy decision, and when tens of thousands of soldiers are being sent into combat, better to take some extra time to get it right.)
But that’s not the only important decision on which Obama has delayed. There’s also the question of appointing a “cyber czar,” a White House official to coordinate cybersecurity policy. Obama announced the new position in May, during a White House speech on cybersecurity, but the position has remained vacant for more than five months.
The delay is starting to attract criticism. Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., said last week that he was frustrated with the delay. TechAmerica, an IT industry group, put out a press release this afternoon calling on Obama to appoint a czar “at the earliest possible opportunity.”
Tags: Barack Obama, cybersecurity, Mischel Kwon, Rod Beckstrom
2009 intelligence budget: Almost $50 billion
October 30th, 2009 | Agencies Intelligence | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
How much does the (civilian) government spend on intelligence? $49.8 billion last year, according to Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, who released the 2009 spending figure earlier this morning.
That figure includes only the non-military intelligence budget. Blair said in a conference call earlier this year that the entire intelligence community budget is $75 billion — suggesting that the military intelligence budget, still technically classified, is about $25.2 billion.
Tags: Dennis Blair
Did anyone take the USPS buyouts?
October 21st, 2009 | Agencies Postal Service | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Are you one of the 18,000 people who accepted the Postal Service’s $15,000 buyout offer? Want to talk about why you took the deal? E-mail me. (Alternatively, if you didn’t accept the deal, I want to hear why not!)
I’m working on a story about the buyouts, and I’d love to include your stories. Glad to keep you anonymous, of course.
Tags: buyouts, early retirements
Recovery.gov and job creation
October 20th, 2009 | Economic Stimulus | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
I’ve probably made this point before, but it’s worth making again. There’s a lot of snark going around about the job-creation figures released last week on Recovery.gov. The conservative National Review, for example, jokes that the data shows an “embarrass[ing]” $533,000-per-job performance by the economic stimulus bill.
That $533,000 figure comes from dividing the total amount of money spent so far on contracts, $16 billion, by the number of jobs they created, 30,000. $533,000 is more than 10 times the median national income — so if it takes that much money to create a job, the stimulus bill must be wildly inefficient, right?
Wrong. The $533,000-per-job figure is wildly misleading, for two reasons.
Tags: job creation, RAT Board, recovery.gov
Recovery.gov: Recipient reporting data goes live
October 15th, 2009 | Economic Stimulus | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
The Recovery Accountability and Transparency board has posted the first batch of recipient reporting data on Recovery.gov.
A little background for those of you who don’t follow the stimulus bill quite as obsessively as we do:
Recovery.gov already had agency reporting data, which comes directly from the agencies that awarded the money. But the recipients of that money are also required to report, on a quarterly basis, on each contract, grant or loan they receive. The first round of reporting ended on Oct. 10, and the RAT board has staretd posting that data online.
This data — in theory — is more detailed than the agency-reported data; it also enumerates the number of jobs created or saved by each project.
One big caveat: This first round of data only covers contracts awarded using stimulus money, not grants or loans. Contracts represent roughly $16 billion in spending, or less than 10 percent of the total stimulus money awarded to date. The grant/loan data should be available by Oct. 30.
So be careful about jumping to any conclusions based on this data — it’s a small fraction of the total stimulus spending.
Tags: RAT Board, recovery.gov
Perception in policy
October 12th, 2009 | Agencies Postal Service | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
A few of you have e-mailed me about the latest list of post office closures, released on Friday. I think there’s an interesting gap between how the public perceives the closures and how the Postal Service perceives them.
The closures are getting a huge amount of attention. Newspapers across the country are running stories about them; Congress has called hearings about them; even Andy Rooney threw in his two cents.
To the Postal Service, though, these closures are a pretty minor item. I don’t mean they’re not taking them seriously. But the closures represent a tiny fraction of the agency’s budget/network problems. The latest list of possible closures includes just 371 post offices — about 1 percent of the Postal Service’s 37,000+ facilities. And closing them all will save, at most, $100 million per year, or 1.5 percent of the Postal Service’s $7 billion budget deficit.
John Potter, in his speech at the National Press Club on Thursday, basically asked everyone to stop focusing so much on the closures and turn to bigger issues, like 5-day delivery and new lines of business for the Postal Service.
That gap in perception obviously makes it harder for the Postal Service to implement what it believes are the best policies. Members of Congress are going to react to public outcry over post office closures, regardless of whether the Postal Service says they’re necessary.
But I guess it’s also an encouraging sign for the Postal Service, no? It’d be a bad sign if people weren’t attached to their neighborhood post offices.
Tags: post office closures
About those new OMB guidelines…
October 12th, 2009 | Agencies Agency Management | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
A request for our readers: I know OMB’s new performance management guidelines are still pretty new, and I’m sure many agencies haven’t had a chance to discuss them yet.
But if your agency is planning to apply for the extra program evaluation funding that’s available in 2010, send me an e-mail — I want to hear from you.
Tags: performance management
Updated list of possible USPS closures: 371 post offices
October 9th, 2009 | Agencies Postal Service | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Here’s the updated list (pdf) of proposed post office closures from USPS. There are 371 post offices on the list, down from nearly 700 on the initial list released in July. Most of them are in major urban areas.
California has the greatest number of proposed closures — roughly 70 of them, mostly in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. New York City, Atlanta, and several cities in Florida would also face cuts.
The Postal Service started the summer with almost 3,600 post offices under review. It pared that list down to 677 before a July 30 congressional hearing on the closures. This latest list isn’t final: Postal officials say it will likely undergo at least one more revision.
Postmaster General John Potter said yesterday that he doesn’t expect closures to begin until at least January. A spokesman for the Postal Regulatory Commission, which oversees the Postal Service, told Federal Times that the PRC expects to receive a final list of closures by December.
The Postal Service estimates the closures will save between $20 million and $100 million per year. The agency had a nearly $7 billion deficit in fiscal year 2009, which ended on Sept. 30.
Tags: John Potter, post office closures
New OMB performance guidelines
October 7th, 2009 | Agencies Agency Management OMB | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
OMB director Peter Orszag sent an 8-page memo to agencies today outlining new performance management guidelines. Here it is (pdf).
Thoughts to come later this morning once I’ve actually had a chance to read it…
Andy Rooney on Postal Service woes
October 5th, 2009 | Agencies Postal Service | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
America’s one and only public crank, Andy Rooney, weighs in on the Postal Service’s plan to close hundreds of post offices (h/t Ed O’Keefe). He hates the idea:
There’s definitely a generational gap here: People of Rooney’s age have a sentimental attachment to the mail that just doesn’t exist in younger generations. And obviously that stems from how frequently each group uses the mail. My grandparents still send me hand-written letters. My friends? Not so much. They rarely go to their post office, so they don’t have any sentimental attachment to the place. (If Gmail were shut down, on the other hand, they’d be marching in the streets in protest.)
The Postal Service is scheduled to release its updated list of post office closures later this week, by the way. It will probably be far smaller than the original list presented to Congress in August.
Tags: Andy Rooney, mail