Tag Archives: Conference spending

Education Department pressed for conference spending details

Posted on by

Originally posted by Jamie Dupree on ajc.com

Yet another federal agency is taking heat from the Congress for spending money on conferences, as Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has asked the Department of Education to explain why it still plans to hold a large gathering in Las Vegas late this year, even as it makes cuts to deal with the sequester.

"The Administration is claiming that over a million students will lose access to support services and special education, but the Department of Education is still planning to hold a conference in December at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Vegas," Coburn said in a news release issued on Thursday.

Continue reading →

OMB: No More Lavish Government Conferences

Posted on by

Originally posted by Elizabeth Flock on U.S. News

New guidelines from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget say it's time to cut back on conference spending in light of the sequester. In a document, the agency said it had "taken aggressive steps to curtail conference spending," such as ensuring conferences that cost more than $100,000 were approved by the head of an agency, hotel costs were within per diem rates, and that a cyber conference was considered before any in-person event was planned.

Continue reading →

More Event Cancellations + Something to Share with the Corporate Office

Posted on by

Originally posted by Allan Rubin on immixGroup

First, here's some news on continued government event cancellations. Word on the street is that GFIRST 2013 will not take place this year "due to all of the budgetary/travel restrictions." Scheduled from August 25 to 30, the Government Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (GFIRST) "is a group of technical and tactical practitioners from incident response and security response teams responsible for securing government information technology systems and providing private sector support." There's no official posting yet, but expect one soon. That's too bad, as this has been a successful event for many of our clients in the past. Hopefully it will be again in the future.

Continue reading →

U.S. senator introduces bill to ban federal events in top party cities

Posted on by

Originally posted by the Associated Press

Nevada's congressional representatives don't want the government to blacklist cities because they're too fun.

Republican Sen. Dean Heller introduced a bill Thursday to prevent lists of vacation destinations in which the government isn't allowed to stage an event. He says such policies could hurt tourism-driven cities such as Las Vegas and Reno.

Continue reading →

Government budget cuts begin to impact Orlando convention business

Posted on by

Originally posted by Megan Anderson on Orlando Business Journal

Cutbacks in government travel are beginning to have an impact on Orlando's convention business, Orlando Sentinel reports.

The most recent example was the cancellation of the General Services Administration's training forum, which would have brought a $13 million boost to the local economy, the Sentinel reports.

Continue reading →