Government Executive - Authors - Zoe Grotophorst

The State of Internal Workplace Communication

Zoe Grotophorst and Daniel Pitcairn — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 15:00:00 -0500

Nearly half of 412 federal employees surveyed say they are uncomfortable or slightly uncomfortable being candid when emailing colleagues and supervisors. The cause? A slight majority say chain of command concerns and personal feelings (e.g., politeness) inhibit candidness. A third say personnel in their agency use personal email for government business at least sometimes, and yet less than a quarter indicate that their agency archives such emails as is mandated.

These are just the top-line findings from Government Business Council's February 2015 survey on internal workplace communication in federal agencies. See the full results, including demographics, below.

Demographics

Methodology

Government Business Council released an email-based survey on February 17, 2015 to a random sample of Government Executive, Nextgov, and Defense One print and online subscribers. 412 federal employees completed the survey, including those at the GS/GM-11 to 15 grade levels and members of the Senior Executive Service. 63 percent of respondents are GS/GM-13 and above. Respondents include representatives from at least 30 different departments and agencies, including each of the military service branches. 71 percent are non-DoD federal employees and 28 percent are DoD civilians. The margin of error is +/- 4.8 percentage points for the survey’s population.

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For analysis of this survey and related news, check out these articles from Government Executive and Nextgov:

"Many Feds Are Uncomfortable Communicating by Email"

"Hillary Clinton Not Alone in Using Private Emails to Govern"

"What Clinton's Email Habits Reveal About Federal Records Laws"

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Smart Command Town Hall Series

Zoe Grotophorst — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 11:00:00 -0400

Booz Allen Hamilton and GBC partnered to conduct a series of town hall events exploring how defense leaders can rapidly and effectively supply warfighters with interoperable technologies.

Charleston, SC Town Hall - May 28, 2014

At the Charleson, SC Town Hall, senior national security and defense leaders joined a panel of Booz Allen Hamilton experts to discuss how the Department of Defense can develop and manage a government-owned system of systems (SoS). Click the link below to read the GBC event summary to learn how diverse stakeholders can be brought together to develop common standards and simplify defense modernization.

Click here to view the event summary.

Los Angeles Town Hall - February 19, 2014

At the Los Angeles Town Hall, senior defense leaders joined a panel of experts from Booz Allen Hamilton to discuss how enterprise integration can enable smarter, better, and faster mission success. Click the link below to read the GBC event summary and learn how existing data can be exposed and reused to facilitate interoperability from the start.

Click here to view the event summary.

Defense One Summit - November 14, 2013

At the inaugural Defense One Summit, nearly 100 defense leaders joined a panel of experts from Booz Allen Hamilton to discuss how Mission Integration can help the government deal with budget shortages and rapidly put new technologies into the hands of warfighters. Click the link below to read the GBC event summary and learn how defense leaders can best acquire, develop, and manage a government-owned system of systems (SoS).

Click here to view the event summary.

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Improving Mission Effectiveness Through Better Information

Zoe Grotophorst — Tue, 20 May 2014 10:00:00 -0400

Organizations across the country—from healthcare to fleet and facilities management— have gained needed visibility over their physical assets through machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, a system of sensors, meters, and other devices that transmit information over a network. For federal agencies operating in today’s difficult budget environment, M2M presents an opportunity to monitor a large number of geographically dispersed and remote assets without deploying personnel to monitor the situation 24 hours a day.

Download this GBC Issue Brief to learn:

How real-time information and analytic capabilities can help federal agencies enhance infrastructure monitoring and maintenance, bolster public safety, and reduce greenhouse gas pollution.
How M2M technology can help federal agencies significantly improve information collection and analysis processes.

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Federal Workspaces Are Changing, the Question Is How?

Zoe Grotophorst — Tue, 13 May 2014 12:00:00 -0400

In a world where half of employee cubicles are smaller than the bathrooms in their homes, the open floorplan may have gotten a bad rap. “Six-packs,” as some cubicles are affectionately called, are becoming more and more common as agencies struggle with the “taffy pull,” or the almost partisan divide between open space and individual private office devotees.

At Excellence in Government 2014, a panel of senior leaders in public and private sector organizations discussed this so called “taffy pull.” Chuck Hardy, Chief Total Workplace Officer at the General Services Administration, Paul Rauch, Assistant Director for Business Management and Operations at the Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS), and Larry Fitzpatrick, President of professional services firm Computech, all provided their input on how agencies can rightsize workspaces, a term Hardy loosely translated as “giving employees what they need to do their work.”

Budgets and mandates to reduce space are pushing all agencies to reassess workspaces, but the panel also called attention to push factors such as productivity gains. As Fitzpatrick explained, employees can make great productivity gains by being able to choose where they work. On a day demanding quiet, they may want to sit in a certain area, while other days may require frequent collaboration with colleagues.

On the other hand, individualized office space can also bring productivity gains. “People have a need for a space, a place to call their own,” Fitzpatrick explained. If having a designated space helps employees get into the zone 15 minutes faster, then spending a little more on office space might be worth it, he added.

No matter what the future workspace looks like, the panel agreed that distractions must be taken care of above all. “The average distraction costs 25 minutes,” Fitzpatrick said. That’s time that no agency can afford to waste.

- Zoe Grotophorst, Manager, Research & Strategic Insights

For more from 2014 Excellence in Government, check out GBC’s EIG2014 recap series.

Image credit: Hey Paul Studios (CC by 2.0)

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Improving Information Collection to Enhance Mission Effectiveness

Zoe Grotophorst and Daniel Pitcairn — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 10:00:00 -0400

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The federal government has set ambitious performance goals for itself ranging from Pentagon audit readiness to sustainable infrastructure, but the data it needs to achieve these goals is not always readily available. From military vehicles and weapons systems to federal facilities and utilities, agencies can improve information collection to enhance mission-effectiveness.

Government Business Council and AT&T launched a research campaign in November 2013 to understand the current state of information collection across federal agencies and how it can be improved. The research campaign included an insight report based on a survey of 355 senior federal managers from civilian and defense agencies, two issue briefs and two infographics illustrating key findings regarding civilian and defense information collection.

Click here for the insight report

Click here for the civilian issue brief

Click here for the defense issue brief

Click here for the civilian infographic

Click here for the defense infographic

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Enhancing Federal Mission Effectiveness Through Wireless M2M

Zoe Grotophorst — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 10:00:00 -0400

Click here to download the infographic

Click here to find the research campaign home page

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Information Collection: The Key to Better Decision Making

Zoe Grotophorst and Daniel Pitcairn — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 12:00:00 -0400

Information on equipment, facilities, utilities, vehicles and other assets is critical for federal agency mission execution, but it is often difficult to find or hard to reach. As data plays an ever-growing role in decision making, budget justification, and oversight and compliance requirements, establishing efficient information collection systems will be increasingly vital. Noting this trend, Government Business Council (GBC) and AT&T conducted a survey to explore the current state of information collection in the federal government.

Download this GBC insight report to learn:

How federal executives characterize their agency's ability to collect mission-critical information
The biggest challenges to information collection
How agencies can take advantage of existing technologies to improve data collection

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Bridging the Disconnect: The Government-as-Integrator Approach to Streamlining the DoD Acquisition Process

Zoe Grotophorst and Daniel Pitcairn — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 09:00:00 -0500

The defense acquisition process has long been recognized as being inefficient and often ineffective. But recently, shrinking budgets and a quickly evolving threat landscape have made the need for reform much more urgent. DoD has begun making changes with the launch of Better Buying Power 2.0 initiative and subsequent instruction 5000.02, but more fundamental reform may be necessary.

Government Business Council (GBC) and Booz Allen Hamilton launched a research study in October 2013 to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying causes of the broken acquisition process. Through a survey of 340 senior defense leaders, GBC and Booz Allen explored the need for DoD acquisition reform, problems specific to the growing field of C4ISR, and the opportunities and challenges associated with reform.

Key findings include:

The most significant defense acquisition problems
The most significant C4ISR acquisition problems
How greater government involvement in designing requirements could affect the acquisition process
The biggest challenges government faces in reforming defense acquisition

Click here for the full report

Click here for the executive summary

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Improving Collaboration through Identity Management

Zoe Grotophorst — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 12:00:00 -0500

Driven by White House and Congressional directives such as HSPD-12, the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC), Insider Threat Task Force, and FICAM, federal agencies are focused on identity management like never before. Agency leaders face a difficult task in ensuring secure access to agency resources by the right people, at the right time, and for the right reasons, without restricting the organization’s operational effectiveness. Understanding the difficult task of balancing these two priorities, Government Business Council (GBC), Symantec, and HP undertook a study to explore the current state of identity and access management (IAM) in the federal government.

Download this report to learn:

How confident federal leaders are in identity and access management within their own agencies
How security concerns affect digital collaboration with groups outside federal leaders' own agencies
How a common framework for identity management could enhance collaboration and efficiency

Image credit: Perspecsys Photos

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7 Myths Challenging Shared Service Adoption

Zoe Grotophorst and Dana Grinshpan — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 09:52:46 -0400

Though some federal agencies have made progress in shared service adoption and at least nine federal shared service providers (FSSPs) have emerged across various lines of business, widespread concerns over the implications of shared services are slowing further implementation of the 2012 Federal IT Shared Services Strategy.

With these concerns in mind, Accenture Federal Services and Government Business Council undertook an in-depth study to better understand the reluctance among federal managers to adopt shared services and empower them to better focus on mission.

Download this GBC research report to learn:

What is holding managers back from shared service adoption
Which “Shared-First” strategy goal is most important to federal managers
How agencies are currently sharing services, and what functions will be next

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Defending from Within: How Insiders Threaten Data Privacy

Zoe Grotophorst — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 12:00:00 -0400

In the age of increased information collection, analysis and storage, nearly all organizations struggle to respond to and prevent ever-increasing security breaches and cyber threats to their data. Personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), financial data, trade secrets, and national security assets must all be protected, but agencies are increasingly finding that firewalls, antivirus software, and other traditional security measures are not enough. Insider threat, any action by current or former employees or contractors that exceeds or misuses an authorized level of access to networks, systems, or data, is a growing concern.

Download this GBC Issue Brief to learn:

What insider threat is, and how you can prevent it
The most common ways insiders compromise agency networks
How to limit inappropriate access rights in your agency
How technology can support data privacy, while limiting performance interruption

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Information Integration: The Key to Leveraging Open Data

Zoe Grotophorst and Daniel Pitcairn — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Four years into the Open Government Initiative, Government Business Council examined how agencies can overcome the remaining challenges to full implementation.

Download this report to learn:

What challenges agencies face in establishing interoperable and accessible information systems
How integration can improve agency operations and fuel innovation
Which agencies are realizing the benefits of integration

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Federal Survey Results: 6 Key Challenges to Adopting Shared Services & How to Overcome Them

Zoe Grotophorst and Dana Grinshpan — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Agencies are now required to identify and move particular services to shared models. But many agencies are having difficulty making the transition.

In this special research report, Government Business Council (GBC) digs deep into responses from over 300 agency managers to identify the biggest challenges in adopting shared service models and how some agencies are overcoming them.

Download this GBC insight report to learn:

How shared services can achieve cost savings and cost avoidance
The 6 biggest challenges to adopting shared services
How the “Shared-First” and “Cloud-First” strategies can work together
How to implement a shared services strategy in your agency

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Protecting the Past & Leaving Room for the Future: Challenges Facing Federal Records Management

Zoe Grotophorst and Dana Grinshpan — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:00:00 -0400

The Presidential Directive on Records Management outlines a clear future path for the proper storage, destruction and maintenance of paper and electronic agency records. The type of accurate and complete recordkeeping detailed by the Directive is also essential to compliance with other initiatives, including sequestration, the “Freeze the Footprint” Real Estate Mandate, the Executive Order on Open Data, continued progress on the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) and a new focus on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Despite the high priority many federal leaders place on records management, agencies are in various stages of implementation.

Download this GBC Insight Report to learn:

How most agencies store their records
What managers identify as the top challenges to records management
How training can improve records management in your agency

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Data Analytics: The Prescription for High Health Care Costs

Zoe Grotophorst and Dana Grinshpan — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Ask anyone today and you’ll hear that health care costs are astronomically high. National health care expenditures nearly doubled from 2000 to 2011, from $1,377.2 billion to $2,700.7 billion, and they continue to climb. Numerous factors are likely responsible for the growth, including rising hospital, provider and medical technology prices; an expansion of Americans affected by chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes; and the climbing costs associated with an aging population.

Escalating health care costs have both direct and indirect effects on federal finances. Though agencies may not be able to affect the price of care themselves, steps can be taken to ensure that dishonest activity does not add to already inflated costs. With the uncertainty associated with the Affordable Care Act, curbing unnecessary spending is a top priority.

Download this Government Business Council issue brief to learn:

What rising health care costs mean for government finances
How Medicare and Medicaid fraud pushes health care costs even higher
What federal agencies can do to curb fraudulent activity

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The Need for Self-Service Data Tools, Not Scientists

Zoe Grotophorst and Dana Grinshpan — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Data science is one of today’s hottest fields and one that is rife with competition. Projections indicate that employer demand requires that the United States increase the number of graduates with skills handling large amounts of data by as much as 60 percent. The federal government is one of the organizations most in need of data scientists, but hiring freezes, slashed training budgets and a lack of qualified candidates have all hampered the ability to recruit these types of professionals. Faced with such obstacles, agencies have been developing creative solutions to fill the hiring gap.

Download this Government Business Council issue brief to learn:

Why government needs more analytic capacity
Which new data mandates are putting pressure on federal agencies
Why government has difficulty hiring data scientists
How self-service data tools can bridge the hiring gap

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3 Signs You Need to Upgrade Your Agency's IAM System

Zoe Grotophorst and Dana Grinshpan — Tue, 28 May 2013 14:54:00 -0400

Though much progress has been made since the national cybersecurity strategy was unveiled in May 2009, identity and access management (IAM) is still evolving in public sector. Though 83 percent of the 24 major federal agencies have IAM systems in place, a March 2013 FISMA report revealed numerous gaps in agency implementation.

Failing to address these gaps has serious implications for cybersecurity. In this issue brief, learn three indicators that point to needing an upgrade and what you can do about it.

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GBC Infographic Library

Zoe Grotophorst, Clement Christensen, and Dana Grinshpan — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 12:00:00 -0400

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The Government Business Council, Government Executive's research and analysis division, seeks to bring in-depth research and analysis to federal decision makers. In addition to reports and issue briefs, the Government Business Council regularly publishes infographics, a unique and refreshing way to deliver insightful and impactful research. Below is the complete library of infographics published by the Government Business Council.

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Chief Learning Officers: Teaching the Government's Workforce

Federal agencies in the coming year will have to deal with ongoing budget cuts, a graying workforce, and potentially sequestration. Training will be a vital component in agency efforts to overcome these challenges. In the past decade, numerous agencies have created a Chief Learning Officer position or designation, giving that individual significant potential to ensure agency training efforts are of the highest quality and to advance the agency mission. The efforts and successes of these individuals will be central to the success of their agencies.

To view the infographic : Click here .

The Lifecycle of Retirement

Under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), as long as a federal employee worked 20 to 30 years in government, their benefits were guaranteed, no matter the length of retirement. Since 1983, the federal government has been operating under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), which leaves much of the responsibility of retirement planning up to the individual. In this new infographic, the Government Business Council examines the current state of retirement planning and income security among federal employees.