Many readers of this blog are probably familiar with Govloop, the self-described "social networking site for Gov 2.0" created just last year by Steve Ressler, a dynamic young DHS civil servant. In a short period of time, the site has attracted 14,000 members, and is increasingly lively and interactive. It does a better job making government look cool than government itself often does, though some of the stuff coming out of the White House these days gives it a run for its money.
Govloop now features a number of regular forums, and one of the largest, it turns out (with 230 members) is "Acquisition 2.0," founded, and hosted, by Mary Davie of the General Services Administration. The group held a Forum at GSA headquarters yesterday actually called "Rockstars of Gov 2.0 Innovate Federal Acquisition." This may have been the first-ever use of the word "rockstars" for an event hosted by GSA, and also the first use of the words "federal acquisition" and "innovate" together in Washington for a while. Maybe the long winter of fear industry stranglehold over the procurement debate is drawing to a close?
Since its launch, the Acquisition 2.0 Forum has hosted a number of discussions, most extensively on improving the requirements generation process for services procurement. As of Wednesday evening, there had been 26 posts on the topic, including discussions on the use of wikis and on the complexities of developing requirements for an IT environment in which customer demands are evolving rapidly. The tone of the posts is remarkably friendly for cyberspace, and many of the comments are quite lengthy and thoughtful.
Check it out here.
Posted on Jul 02, 2009 at 7:48 AM1 comments
As faithful readers of my blog and Federal Computer Week columns may remember, we have a fantastic part of our two-year master's curriculum at the Kennedy School called the "policy analysis exercise." All our MPP students are required to do a 30 to 40-page consulting project for a real client, helping them out with a real problem of the cliient's choice. For federal agencies, this represents an incredible opportunity to get some free consulting advice from a really smart Harvard graduate student -- possibly even two students, if the project is big enough.
I have frequently over the years referred to interesting findings from students' reports and have, with the permission of their clients, discussed them in columns and blogs -- most recently, a project on
improving government recruiting for the Partnership for Public Service.
Well, many of our upcoming second-year students are beginning to think about their policy analysis exercise projects now. Some find topics through their summer internships, so not all the class is in the market for a topic, but many are. I typically serve as faculty advisor for a number of management-related topics, and I plan to do so again this year. Indeed, I will soon contact my own students from last year and make them aware that I am available to supervise management-related exercises.
If any agencies have possible topics for these policy analysis exercises, you should e-mail me and tell me what you have in mind. I will then put you in touch with our Kennedy School staff who work on getting the paperwork filled out and the topics posted.
There are two caveats: One is that the projects are not due until the end of March 2010, so this has to be a topic that can wait a while. Also, while the student work is free, you need to be willing to pay airfare for students to come to Washington, if that is necessary, plus of course provide some guidance on what you would like from the project.
Contact me at steve_kelman@harvard.edu.
Posted on Jun 30, 2009 at 11:28 AM0 comments
1) A German graduate student at my conference in Korea asked me if I was afraid to be in Korea, given the possibility of a North Korean attack. It turns out the German Foreign Ministry put out six pages of instructions to Germans in Korea about what to do and where to assemble in case of North Korean attack -- basically, at local U.S. military bases, it turned out. I hadn't given the much thought. The South Korean press is, not surprisingly, filled with news involving North Korea, including the saga of the ship headed to Myanmar, though media stories are unanimous in saying that nobody has a clue about what's going on inside the North Korean "black box." I asked a number of Koreans about the danger of a North Korean attack, and nobody seemed to be worried, saying North Korea is constantly making threats.
2) Over a third of the population of South Korea is Christian, by far the highest percentage in Asia. I asked a Korean colleague why this was, and he said it was a mixture of respect for involvement of Christians in anti-colonial efforts against the Japanese before World War II (when Korea was a Japanese colony) and the establishment of universities by Christians in Korea, especially important in an education-crazed country. I was also told that in Xi'an, China, in the relatively remote interior of the country, Chinese Christians come out in public parks on Sunday mornings to worship (next to people doing tai chi exercises). Xi'an, the end (or the beginning!) of the Silk Road, also has a Muslim community boasting a large mosque that looks like a Chinese Buddhist temple rather than mosques common in the rest of the Muslim world.
3) The penchant for order and organization in Confucian cultures comes out in swine flu preparedness. I noted in an earlier blog post that on arriving in China, people came on board the plane to check to see whether anybody had a fever. In Korea, we went through a temperature-taking machine. In the Seoul airport on my way out, I picked up a copy of the Straits Times newspaper from Singapore. The lead story was "Targeted actions for schools," detailing anti-swine flu measures. When the new term begins next week (it is unclear just how long summer vacation might be in Singapore, but it doesn't seem to rival the prodigious summer-school break we have in the U.S.), students and staff will be temperature-screened on entering school and then twice each day. Plans for e-learning for students kept home or schools shut down have been set in place. The paper also published a two-page list of emergency centers in neighborhoods where quarantining might take place.
4) And, finally, "green sprouts" department: When I had last travelled to Asia in late February, I wrote a blog post entitled, "Yes, Virginia, there is an economic crisis," noting, among other things, that my flight on Singapore Airlines was hauntingly empty. This time, I can report, the flights were filled both ways, including in business class.
Posted on Jun 26, 2009 at 9:39 AM0 comments
Some Americans have grown concerned about the possible effects of the global economic crisis, which began in the U.S., on America's reputation abroad. Many fear that the crisis will make people in other nations regard the U.S. less as of a model society than they did before, and also encourage the view that the U.S. is in decline as a great power. Especially given the importance of American "soft power" — the attractiveness of our society and culture — to America's power in the world, the economic crisis could have significance for national security.
Almost certainly, there is some justification for these concerns. However, discussions with students in China and South Korea show no evidence of this phenomenon, at least among smart young people. For most of the students I've talked with, studying — and perhaps staying — in the U.S. is still an incredibly sought-after dream. Chinese students go to extraordinary lengths to do so. They spend years of effort preparing for grad school entrance exams to try to gain admission to U.S. graduate programs. The prestige of U.S. universities is still sky-high, and more than one Chinese student during my current trip has told me that the freedom and meritocracy of the U.S. are attractive to them, compared with their own society. One professor said that, in terms of student views of the U.S., the global economic crisis was a "blip." I have only heard one person during my trip say that the crisis suggests the U.S. model is less attractive or is in decline, and that was a Western academic, not an Asian one.
I have been reporting on coverage in the English-language Chinese press of the Chinese government's decision to require Internet-blocking software on new computers. China Daily published a lengthy, incredibly frank column with the provocative title, "Dam this Net Nanny," a play on words of the name of this software ("Green Dam"). The columnist wrote that decisions to block pornographic software from computers should be made by parents, not the government. (Sounds like a pretty American perspective, doesn't it?) The column noted that if there are key words that the software blocks for Internet access, kids will work to get around this by using wordplays (especially easy in Chinese with so many homonyns that sound the same but have different Chinese characters) and slang.
The columnist wrote: "When language is enslaved, it bursts out in unexpected directions. Parents have been complaining of being unable to decipher what their kids write online. Pretty soon, censors will have a hard time decoding the slang terms, inserted alphabet and bewildering spaces. So their expansion of keywords may grow exponentially, bringing down millions of innocent websites in the process." An amazingly bold column, I thought.
Posted on Jun 24, 2009 at 3:21 PM4 comments