OMB – Resource Library

The word ecosystem likely takes you back to elementary school science—perhaps a memory of watching videos in class detailing the ways lakes and streams, trees and earth, bugs and spiders, and rabbits and foxes interact in a web of life. An ecosystem is at its core a community of living organisms taken together in their physical environment; it describes the way these components interact and are interdependent. All of these parts, alive and inanimate, depend on each other within the ecosystem even when they are not directly connected.

This was going to be a post about how wonderful the 2018 Grant Professionals Association (GPA) Annual Conference in Chicago was – meeting up with friends, finding Url the Squirrel, introducing my colleagues Vera and Lahaja to the grants community, Hamilton… but instead it’s back to regular order.

I’ve been in Federal Service excluding military time for about 15 years and my main responsibility is managing the Human Capital Office for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Under that responsibility, I’m responsible for talent acquisition for general schedule employees.

Ever since the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published OMB Memo 17-22 in April, a lot of attention has been paid to reform in Federal agencies. Agencies across the Federal government have begun the process of figuring out how to improve performance, reduce costs, and streamline operations of their organizations and, for many, meaningful changes are emerging. The history of radical change is long and storied, often driven by challenging outmoded thinking, developing new technology, and/or changing cultural sensibilities. Shaping any change starts with creating a vision of the desired end-state and explicitly identifying the barriers for achieving the desired vision. While the vision will undoubtedly vary by agency, I believe there are some universal barriers that need to be addressed to achieve the desired end state.

Last week, I was talking to Shane Jernigan (grants expert and blogger extraordinaire) about what he’d be working on before he leaves for vacation. And I correctly predicted that the 2017 OMB Audit Requirements, Appendix XI – Compliance Supplement (2017 Supplement) would come out late on Wednesday, and I’d have to write this post. The Federal Register gave me hope on Monday. But all 1,667 pages didn’t appear on the OMB website until Wednesday.

While summer is generally the time for taking a long vacation from work, officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have been busy revising grant policies.

This two-part blog post discusses recent actions that you, a faithful member of the Federal grants community, need to be aware of immediately… or as soon as you get back from the beach, of course.

So, without further ado…

It is a busy time to be a Federal HR professional. Budgets and staffs are shaking up—it’s an uncertain feeling throughout the workforce, but not one without opportunities.

On April 12, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memorandum requiring agencies to submit, by the end of June, high-level Agency Reform Plans and identify ways to maximize employee performance.

There’s been much debate about the agency Reform Plans that were submitted to OMB by each agency. How seriously will agencies take those plans? Will Congress pass a budget that supports the changes outlined in the plans? One thing that is hard to debate against, however, is that there will be change.

So, if change is inevitable, what we really need to think about is how we’re going to manage the change. Change management frameworks, methodologies, and best practices are widely available on the internet. However, one word sums up the key to successfully implementing change, and if not done properly, change will not be successful – communication.

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