The WasteWatcher

Time to Reduce Wasteful Government IT Spending
On January 22, 2013, the House Committee on Government Oversight held a hearing on reducing wasteful information technology (IT) spending by the federal government. According to a video released prior to the hearing by the Committee, the federal...

An Increasingly Connected Society Needs Spectrum
According to a January 7, 2013 article in Wireless Week, on December 25, 2012, nearly 17.4 million mobile devices, including tablets, Smartphones, and cell phones were activated.

Sandy Relief Bill is a Disaster
On November 18, 2012, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) told Politico that spending cuts triggered by the “fiscal cliff” projected to take effect on January 1 would be “devastating,” and...

CAGW’s Top Technology and Telecommunications Issues for 2013
The technology and telecommunications industries are vital and innovative sectors of the U.S. economy. Advances in these fields have a positive impact on other industries such as health care, education, transportation, and services.

Tanking the Taxpayers
The hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks that Congress has approved for upgrades to the M1 Abrams are so “vital” for national security that the Department of Defense (DOD) has more than 2,000 of the tanks parked in a California desert.

Higher Taxes Will Lead to New Spending
The fiscal cliff, a combination of automatic budget cuts and tax increases set to take effect at the beginning of 2013, has dominated the news since the 2012 Presidential election. The effect of going off the cliff would be detrimental to the U.S....

GSA bats .333 on cloud security authorizations
In June 2012, Government Computer News reported that GSA hoped to have three cloud service providers approved for provisional authorizations to operate by the end of 2012. Batting .333 towards achievement of this goal, the General Services...

Two Different Worlds: Public vs. Private Sector Compensation
Despite the popular belief that federal employees are underpaid public servants, the data tells a very different story. When all of the factors that affect compensation are accounted for, there is significant evidence that federal employees make...

More Oversight Needed for our Veterans
On January 24, 2011, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) issued a report detailing the improper benefits given to disabled veterans. The report discussed temporary 100 percent benefits, which the...

Identity Fraud Hits Taxpayers in the Wallet
For many years, it has been clear that identity theft is a grave threat to the fiscal sovereignty of millions of Americans. For its victims, many of whom are saddled with the new and unwelcome full-time job of battling fraudulent credit card charges...

No Last-Minute Delivery on Postal Reform
The United States Postal Service (USPS) announced on November 15, 2012 that in fiscal year (FY) 2012, which ended on September 30, the agency lost a record $15.9 billion. In June, 2012 at a PostalVision 2020 conference in Washington, Postmaster...

Defense Waste: The Final Frontier
As the country careens toward the automatic year-end program cuts and expiration of tax breaks labeled “the fiscal cliff,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has been on the offensive, releasing reports in consecutive months highlighting wasteful spending in...