The threat of sequestration absolutely must be resolved in a bipartisan matter before the presidential election, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said during a June 26 Brookings Institution event in Washington, D.C. She urged legislative action on three forthcoming proposals that could counter looming sequestration cuts.

Ayotte expressed deep concern over the impact sequestration would have on defense spending, given that mandatory cuts would come in addition to the $487 billion in Defense Department spending reductions over the next 10 years proposed in the president's 2013 budget.

If sequestration is implemented as directed under the Budget Control Act, it will result in a real drop of 12.1 percent in discretionary spending compared to the current fiscal year, reports the Congressional Research Service.

Steve Bell, senior director of the economic policy center at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said sequestration would negatively impact areas beyond defense as well because it could lead to lost jobs in the sectors that support all parts of government. What's more it's not very effective in reducing the debt, he said.

"It's stupid fiscal policy," said Bell. "It doesn't change our approaching 100 to 200 percent of GDP debt to GDP ratio except for two years. So, instead of 2032, we'll be at 200 percent, we'll be at 2030 with a hundred percent of those cuts taken from the smallest part of the budgets, about 35 percent, and the largest and growing part untouched," he added.

The ineffectiveness of sequestration doesn't necessarily build a case against the strategy, said Ron Haskins, senior fellow and co-director of the center on children and families and budgeting for national priorities at Brookings. Rather, sequestration is the right policy and should go even further, he argued.

"The biggest problem with sequestration is its way too small, which is a way of saying we're going to eat ourselves in little bites," said Haskins.

"It's a lousy way to do things, but we have to do it; and, not only that, we have to do a lot more of it and there'll be big political repercussions either way," he later added.

Cuts should be more severe and to both defense and domestic discretionary, but not across the board without consideration for the merit of programs, Haskins said.

"There's a little teeny piece of entitlements in here. I think it's about $16 billion, something like that. So, it relieves the pressure a little bit. But that's nothing compared to what we could get," he said.

For more:
- go to the event page (includes excerpts from the archived webcast and a complete transcript)

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All agencies responding to an Office of Personnel Management data call had established telework policies, but only 84 percent of them had fully met the requirements of the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 at the time of the survey, according to an OPM report (.pdf) on telework dated June 2012. The data call, which was conducted from Oct. 26 to Dec. 9, 2011, came months after the June 2011 deadline for revised policies.

The new OPM report on telework draws from surveys, focus groups and archival data. But the report's usefulness is limited because the form of the 2011 data call is different than previous years' metrics, meaning results presented in the report are not "directly comparable to findings reported for prior years," according to report authors.

The report finds agencies struggling to implement formal telework agreements. The law requires a written agreement between agency managers and employees authorized to telework. Among the 82 agencies responding to OPM questions about telework agreements, more than 684 thousand employees were eligible to telework but only 144,851 employees have a telework agreement with their managers, finds the report.

A quarter of all employees eligible to telework were teleworking, said responding agencies, but the extent of telework participation was low, says OPM. More than half of responding agencies said "teleworkers spend 2 or fewer days per week teleworking" and "only 27 percent of teleworkers were reported as participating 3 or more days per week."

Challenges to telework remain, notes OPM Director John Berry in the report's introduction.

"Not all managers are comfortable directing employees who telework; agencies' ability to track and report telework metrics vary; and a lack of prior data makes comparisons to past telework metrics difficult," he writes. "This report will provide baseline data for future research and reports."

For more:
- download the report, "2012 Status of Telework in the Federal Government" (.pdf)

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Federal agencies collectively fell short last fiscal year of the governmentwide small business 23 percent prime contracting goal, the Small Business Administration announced.

In an annual scorecard (.pdf) that assesses performance, including for sub-goals for particular socio-economically defined small businesses, data shows federal agencies attaining about 94 percent of the overall 23 percent goal. For sub-goals, agencies together varied from exceeding the goal by 153.4 percent--in the case of small disadvantaged business prime contracts--or falling short of it by nearly 20 percent or more, in the case of women-owned, service-disabled veteran owned and HUBZone small businesses.

The fiscal 2011 numbers also represent a diminishment in every category except that of service-disabled veteran owned businesses compared to fiscal 2010 percentages.

Performance by individual agencies varied, especially since the 23 percent goal varies from agency to agency. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example (.pdf), has a goal to award 57 percent of its prime contracts to small businesses of any type, but in fiscal 2011, managed to award only 36.06 percent.

The General Services Administration, by contrast (.pdf), had a goal of 27 percent but managed to award 38.83 percent of all its prime contracts to small businesses--and also exceeded the sub-goals of socio-economically defined businesses in every category but service-disabled veteran owned small businesses. For this feat, the SBA awarded GSA a fiscal 2011 grade of A+ (the SBA does not say whether they also gave the agency a gold star and an extra graham cracker).

The service-disabled veteran owned small business goal is one federal agencies have a particularly difficult time meeting--perhaps, as have suggested some federal acquisition experts, because there aren't enough businesses participating in the program to make it possible.

In absolute dollar terms, small businesses overall received $91.5 billion worth of prime business in fiscal 2011. Women-owned small businesses received $16.8 billion, small disadvantaged businesses $32.4 billion, service-disabled veteran owned small business $11.2 billion and HUBZone businesses $9.9 billion.

Correction: An earlier version of this article mis-stated the absolute dollar amounts that small businesses received in fiscal 2011. We regret the error. 

For more:
- go to the SBA webpage for small business procurement scorecards
- read a blog post about the fiscal 2011 numbers by John Shoraka, SBA associate administrator for government contracting and business development

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The introduction of broadband Internet depresses voter turnout in national elections, concludes a paper by three European academic economists.

In the paper, Oliver Falck, Robert Gold and Stephan Heblich (of the University of Munich, the Max Planck Institute for Economics and the University of Stirling in the United Kingdom, respectively), compare voter turnout in about 6,600 German rural municipalities in three elections, two before the broadband Internet era and one after.

The result, they say, is that the introduction of broadband Internet decreases voter turnout by 1.9 to 2.5 percentage points. Voters' behavior may be affected, too, since data suggests a positive association between broadband introduction and the share of established parties and a "significantly negative" association with the share of extreme right wing parties, as much as .4 percentage points.

Rural Germany proves a good place to study the effect of broadband introduction, paper authors say, due to its homogeneity and since broadband there is mostly delivered via DSL through the copper wire telephone network. Towns more than 2.61 miles away from a main distribution frame (at which point the DSL signal drops off when transmitted in copper) must have fiber cables installed--but because German telephone lines are buried, this involves expensive earthworks. The distribution of main distribution frames in German towns is as good as random, they say, since the voice signals of plain old telephone service aren't constrained like DSL signals are. As a result, the German telecom authorities of decades past didn't situate main distribution frames strictly according to population distribution, meaning that it's mostly happenstance which towns are more than 2.61 miles distant and so without DSL until new fiber is laid.

Also, in rural Eastern Germany following its unification, telecom officials installed a special type of fiber network known as OPAL that turned out not to be compatible with DSL without costly hardware and software upgrades at network nodes. As a result, many of the 11 percent of East German households that were connected with OPAL links lack DSL to this day, authors say.  

Comparing election outcomes in rural western and eastern municipalities before and after the arrival of the broadband to them sidesteps the problem of a self-selecting population, they add. Their regression analysis also accounted for municipality-level variables such as surface, total population gender and age distribution and the unemployment rate.

As for why the arrival of DSL depresses national election turnout, authors hypothesize that the Internet crowds out national newspaper consumption. Of the households farther than 2.61 miles from a main distribution frame, 7.4 percent read a national newspaper in 2004, whereas four years later (and after fiber extension projects), only 6.8 percent did. Circulation of local newspapers during that period decreased, too, but at a rate far less than national newspapers – data consistent with findings that DSL roll out didn't impact local elections, they say.

The Internet does not per se guarantee users will have access to more information, they add.

Because increases in the employment rate may also have a depressive effect on voter participation, authors also tested whether DSL deployment had an effect on local unemployment rates, but conclude that there was none.

Further research is needed on whether the effect of Internet introduction on voter turnout has persisted, given how Web 2.0 applications like Facebook might have a mobilization effect on people, they also say.

For more:
- go to the paper, hosted in line by the Social Science Research Network

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Proposed funding level for the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, the $1 billion program embedded in the National Institute of Standards and Technology's fiscal 2013 budget request, is "a back of the envelope calculation," said Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy John Holdren.

The administration expects NNMI, which has yet to receive funding and is still in the requirements phase, to gain another $1 billion through matched philanthropic and private-sector contributions, Holdren told the House Science, Space and Technology committee during a June 20 hearing.

Holdren said OSTP expects the program to have 15 institutes for manufacturing innovation spend approximately $30 million per year, over 5 years--totaling $2.25 billion.  

"That's where the $1 billion number came from the government would share," he said. "I could not produce a sharp enough pencil to tell you that $30 million is exactly the right number rather than $25 million or $35 million," he added.

When selecting areas for increasing and decreasing investment, OSTP looks at National Academy of Sciences' decadal surveys "very closely," said Holdren. The National Research Council uses the surveys (done once a decade, hence the name) to identify the highest-priority and recommended research activities for various fields of science. And when budget constraints do not allow adequate support for flagship missions, it follows the academy's recommended "fallback position" closely.

Holdren noted that the administration has increased funding to STEM programs but has been forced to make cuts in other areas. He said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is one agency that desperately needs a more generous appropriation from Congress.

"I think NOAA, as with many agencies, has been struggling with 20 pounds of missions in a 10-pound budget, and we all struggle with that challenge today," he said.

For more:
- go to the hearing page (includes prepared testimony and archived webcast)

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