GET EDUCATION CREDITS AND A GREAT WATER VIEW
GSA's upcoming IRMCO conference, April 13-16, may be taking place in a casual setting. But the conference will be all business. In fact, program managers who attend will be able to obtain continuous learning points (CLPs) from a workshop conducted by the Federal Acquisition Institute. -> Read More

GSA's IRMCO: A CONFERENCE BY AND FOR GOVERNMENT
If you want a nearly pure government environment in which to network and develop your profession skills, you need to be at IRMCO. IRMCO has corporate sponsors, but the number is limited—and the number of people each sponsor can bring is limited, precisely to preserve the intimacy possible only among feds that has characterized the conference for nearly 50 years. -> Read More

OVERSIGHT: ROUGH GOING FOR THE NEXT 12 MONTHS
Make sure you read, thanks to the typically thorough reporting in Congress Daily, why federal managers can expect an unusually intense period of oversight through the remainder of the Bush administration. -> Read More

• GSA Makes Getting Green a Little Easier

  Buildings with lawns and gardens on the roof?

  The Statue of Liberty and the island she stands on powered by a windmill?

  Federal executives driving around in government-issued hybrid Saturns?

  These phenomena are happening, and they are all part of an effort to reduce energy consumed daily by the government. If the federal government is the biggest buyer of vehicles and computers, and the biggest tenant and building owner, it can have the most energy impact, the thinking goes.

  Dave Bibb, Senior Environmental Officer, General Services Administration.

  Dave Bibb, the senior environmental officer at the General Services Administration, is one of the government's main point people for cutting energy use. Bibb's and, really, any agency's efforts, are backed by a year-old Executive Order calling on agencies to cut their use of fuel, water, and anything that results in greenhouse gases. The EO is both wide-ranging and detailed. For example, emissions by agencies are supposed to go down 3% per year through 2015. Water and fuel use must drop by 2% per year for the same period. The EO requires agencies to periodically report on their environmental activities.

  “We believe GSA has a real leadership role” in energy reduction, Bibb says. He'll participate in a special IRMCO panel discussion on the government going greener on Monday, April 14. In the meantime, Bibb has been working to make GSA itself a model agency for the energy-reduction plan.

  “We want to be sure our in-house act is sharp,” he adds. Those efforts take many forms, some applying to GSA and some applying to agencies using GSA's services. Just a few of the examples include:

  • Phasing in of requirements to use other than standard incandescent light bulbs.

  • Pop-up alert messages for people accessing GSA contracts online and not choosing “green” products. That's until the old products are flushed from the schedules in about three years.

  • Buying hybrid power ethanol-burning vehicles. Bibb notes that GSA Administrator Lurita Doan herself drives an E-85 consuming car.

  • Taking many steps to cut building energy use, including backing use of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for new and rehabbed buildings occupied by federal agencies.

  One example of the last point is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's satellite operations center in Suitland, Md. Completed in 2005, the building has 146,000 square feet of landscaped roof. The benefits of such roofs are longer life for the substrate and lower heating and air conditioning costs for the buildings they top. Plus, the surface contributes to the processing of carbon dioxide back into oxygen.

  But GSA has wide-ranging efforts, and a portal at its web site to guide agencies to them. It's worth checking out.
  
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• Get education credits and a great water view

  GSA's upcoming IRMCO conference, April 13-16, may be taking place in a casual setting. But the conference will be all business. In fact, program managers who attend will be able to obtain continuous learning points (CLPs) from a workshop conducted by the Federal Acquisition Institute.

  In a memo last April, Paul Dennett, the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, laid out a plan for compliance with a requirement from the Office of Management and Budget (Circular A-11). It says that not only procurement managers, but also program managers assigned to major acquisitions must be certified in program management. The memo notes that attendance at meaningful conferences can qualify as training towards that certification.

  And that's where GSA's IRMCO conference comes in. Special CLP-qualifying workshops on program management will be led by Kriste Jordan, recent vice president of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Program Management Institute and a P.M. herself at the Homeland Security Department.

  PM-focused training will take place throughout the conference. And it's typical of the focused, tangible information you can gain at IRMCO.
  
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• GSA's IRMCO: A conference by and for government

  You've heard the government conference horror stories. Federal attendees overwhelmed by contractor folks in three- or four-to-one ratio. Feds being followed into the restroom by overly-eager business development types. (Yes, it has happened.)

  These situations occur because most of the well-known conferences are about government, but not exclusively for government. Not that they are bad conferences—some of them are well worth attending and offer excellent content.

  But GSA's IRMCO is different. If you want a nearly pure government environment in which to network and develop your profession skills, you need to be at IRMCO. IRMCO has corporate sponsors, but the number is limited—and the number of people each sponsor can bring is limited, precisely to preserve the intimacy possible only among feds that has characterized the conference for nearly 50 years.

  Program managers in particular should be at GSA's IRMCO conference. A big theme this year is transition. Specifically, what five steps program managers can take now to ensure continuity of and enthusiastic acceptance for their programs by the incoming administration and its appointees.

  The setting, at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay beside the Choptank River, is businesslike but casual. IRMCO late night—often outside on heated patios—plus scheduled golf and tennis, the plenary roundtable discussions, and even the coffee breaks all offer the chance to network and discuss vital issues with colleagues.

  That's why the CFO Council has chosen IRMCO at which to hold a special executive session on internal controls on Monday, April 14. Results will be reported out Tuesday afternoon to the whole conference.
  
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• Oversight: Rough going for the next 12 months

  Make sure you read, thanks to the typically thorough reporting in Congress Daily, why federal managers can expect an unusually intense period of oversight through the remainder of the Bush administration.

  The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). He has seemingly made it his mission to ferret out, expose and expunge every shortcoming in every ongoing subject of an inspector general or Government Accountability Office look-see since Inauguration Day, 2001. To that end, he has requested lists of every undone IG recommendation and every GAO proposal not agreed to by the agency in question.

  Waxman consumes GAO and IG reports like a Coney Island competitive eater devours hot dogs.

  Last month alone, 40 reports came out of GAO. At 40 reports a month, seven years' worth is, let's see, something like 3,360 reports full of recommendations. That's a lot to chew on. It means you, as a public manager, have a high likelihood of getting bitten by the hearing machine, or having the program in which you work snagged.

  Oversight goes with the territory in government management, as it should. Congress has a duty keep an eye on the operation of the federal government. But at what point do the inquiries cease to be performance-oriented studies and cross over into being politically motivated witch hunts? Gathering data from more than 3,000 reports begins to look like the latter.

  Don't say you weren't alerted.
  
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