October 31, 2019

Baby Sharks, Home-Run Dance Parties, and Gov’t Contracting? Lessons on Culture from a World Series Champion

by Peter Fedders, Employee Happiness Associate All Major League Baseball clubs use analytics these days, and none more than the Houston Astros. The Astros fired most of their scouts and replaced them with data- and video-based analysts. And it worked…
October 17, 2019

The Future of RPA in Government (As We See It)

The TCG R&D Lab has been working on identifying use cases for Robot Process Automation (RPA) and the challenges of RPA implementations. RPA is an emerging technology with the ability to automate workflows. It appears to have applicability throughout the…
September 25, 2019

Who says Shared Services are Only for Back Office Functions?

by Dave Cassidy, Vice President The consensus answer is: almost everyone. The problem is that almost everyone is wrong. By eliminating duplicative work and saving taxpayer’s money, federal shared services can have a huge impact on modernizing IT in the federal…
August 12, 2019

A New TCGer Attends His First Spree… And Survives. This Is His Story.

By Hunter Heath For several months now, my coworkers have encouraged me to attend a TCG Spree. They stressed that, as one of the more than 50% of TCG personnel who telework at least two days per week, it’s extremely important…
August 7, 2019

Gas, Grass, and Gables — TCGers Kick-off Park Beautification Projects

At TCG’s Annual All-hands Meeting we reviewed the past year and our goals for the coming year. Among the initiatives planned for this year is a focus on beautifying our national, state, and local parks. Parks face threats from pollution, climate…
July 15, 2019

Our High Road Story So Far…

Last year, TCG made a pledge to be a High Road Employer. A High Road Employer supports a set of principles developed by the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) that encourages businesses to better serve their employees and the world around them by making…
May 15, 2019

New Resources to Roll-out and Mature TBM at Federal Agencies

The General Services Administration (GSA) and Department of Education (ED) recently published a TBM Playbook, calling for seven activities they consider key to starting a successful TBM program. The playbook is a compilation of best practices and lessons learned from rolling out TBM…
May 3, 2019

Moving Past Compliance to Getting Real Value From Your TBM Program

The federal Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC) policies established in 1996 were a great first step toward understanding and managing IT investments. But just as government’s use of technology has evolved over the past 23 years, so have the policies…
April 30, 2019

Shared Services Gets Needed Governance in New Memo M‑19–16

by Dave Cassidy, Vice President OMB has given federal shared services a renewed boost with memo M‑19–16, Centralized Mission Support Capabilities for the Federal Government. While there’s plenty of new ideas in this memo, and it rescinds a ton of older guidance…
April 29, 2019

Spree (n): An Unrestrained Indulgence in or Outburst of an Activity

  TCG Sprees had a fast start in 2019. The first event of the year was a Charity Spree at Arlington National Cemetery. TCGers volunteered to help clean up thousands of wreaths that are placed at veterans’ gravestones in mid-December. Six TCGers…