Is Joseph Jordan as head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy really the best the White House could do? Admittedly, this is an administration with a weakness for putting flashy young guys...

Canadian assertion of sovereignty over the emerging arctic Northwest Passage waterway continues to remain a point of contention between the United States and its northern neighbor, says the Congressional Research Service.

During his testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Jordan said he would work to have federal agencies "buy smarter." He also said the acquisition workforce should be strengthened.

What does Generation Y really want? As a supposed member of the generation that is said to have preceded it, Generation X, allow me to posit this: They probably want to stop being condescended to...

In a move that critics say is a cure worse than the disease, the House Budget Committee voted May 7 to approve a pair of bills that would prevent automatic sequestration.

A main assumption of the campaign is that "early, frequent, and constructive engagement with industry leads to better acquisition outcomes," Field states. 

Findings that the racial composition of a jury pool can have a "substantial impact" on the rate of conviction is troubling. Authors of an academic paper that looked at two sets of data...

When a jury pool is all white, a black defendant is more likely to be convicted, says a paper that examined multi-year evidence from two mostly-white Florida counties.

If sequestration happens as currently called for by the Budget Control Act, it will result in a real drop of 12.1 percent in discretionary spending compared to the current fiscal year, says the Congressional Research Service in a new report.

There's a trend among federal and military research and development officials to praise applied research and development at the expense of basic research. Air Force science and technology...

Unless Congress moves to reverse provisions of the Budget Control Act it approved in 2011, the federal government faces the likelihood of having to shave $98 billion from its fiscal 2013 budget this January.

Army Research Lab "research has become overly prescribed by the planning and review process," the panel's report says.

For another piece of evidence that the Kyl-Lott amendment continues even a decade later to throw up roadblocks to open government, look no further than an April 12 post on the National Security...

U.S. per capita energy consumption has decreased somewhat since 2005, even as domestic petroleum production has increased, according to data in a Congressional Research Service report.

Historical Navy documents and artifacts are at risk of loss due to poor storage conditions in the service's History and Heritage Command facilities at the Washington Navy Yard, says the Naval inspector general.

The first time is tragedy, the second time is farce, goes the cliché about history. But, in the matter of resigning heads of the General Services Administration, that’s backwards:...

It’s only 2012, but the Commerce Department office of inspector general is already sounding alarms about management of the next decennial census, to be held in 2020. The bureau itself, the OIG...

Contractors continue to perform inherently governmental services for military services, according to the services' own internal reviews, says the GAO.

The inspector general report (.pdf) that led former General Services Administrator Martha Johnson to resign on April 2 contains shocking examples of government waste. The federal officials who...

Insourcing saved the Homeland Security Department $2.3 million since mid-2010, a DHS official said, even while counterparts at the Defense Department said their initial estimates of cost savings to...

Martha Johnson, head of the General Services Administration, resigned (.pdf) April 2 in the wake of an inspector general report said to detail a GSA training conference in Las Vegas that cost...

So, morale is low at the Homeland Security Department. Such is often the fate of new departments and big agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency, an old Washington hand once assured me, had a

An intelligence community assessment predicts that global water shortages could increase instability and state failure in countries important to U.S. security.

An analysis of members of the House of Representatives by a private watchdog finds a fair degree of nepotism and financial self-reward among elected representatives. In a report released March 22,

Let's check in on the administration's open government initiative. Back when agencies released their draft open government plans in April 2010, I noted that the Agriculture Department's plan