Originally posted by Jolie Lee on Federal News Radio
No more motivational speakers, musicians or promotional swag. The Defense Department is banning entertainment-related expenses at its conferences.
The Pentagon memo on conference oversight also prohibits conference participants from receiving gifts, such as tickets to recreational events outside of the conference. And DoD conference organizers can't use funds to produce videos not related to the conference.
Originally posted by Charles S. Clark on Government Executive
Among the many lapses the Veterans Affairs Department may have committed in planning two lavish training conferences in Orlando, Fla., in 2011 was a failure to adhere to contracting procedures.
The inspector general's report on the $6.1 million pair of employee gatherings, which led to the resignation of the department's Chief Human Capital Officer John Sepulveda, focused mostly on overspending, wrongful acceptance of gifts by employees and unnecessary advance trips to plan the conferences.
Following a new inspector general's audit of two conferences held in 2011, the Veterans Affairs Department has enacted numerous tactics to check spending, root out misconduct by employees and keep senior officials involved in conference planning.
One key control is a new requirement that a senior executive must approve all proposed conferences or training sessions, the department said in a statement Oct. 1.
The undersecretary, assistant secretary or similarly-ranked VA official has to give approval for a conference proposal with project costs reaching to $100,000. If the expected costs exceed $100,000, the deputy secretary and the chief of staff must approve. Conferences with a bill expected to exceed $500,000 are generally prohibited, unless the VA secretary gives a waiver. As an additional check, officials must do an "After Action Review" following the conference to compare proposed costs to actual costs.
Originally posted on AOL Energy
The US petrochemical industry appears on the verge of a resurgence powered by the market-shifting abundance of cheap feedstock associated with the North American natural gas production renaissance.
Petrochemical companies are beginning to move their operations back onto domestic soil, thanks to the large volumes of liquids being produced from the wet portions of prolific unconventional natural gas deposits. A major step in this direction came earlier this year when Shell announced plans to build a petrochemical facility in Pennsylvania that would utilize NGLs being produced from the Marcellus Shale play.
Originally posted by Jack Moore on Federal News Radio
Two Veterans Affairs Department training conferences held last summer in Orlando, Fla., contained as much as $762,000 in wasteful spending and were plagued by poor planning and oversight, according to an inspector general report released Monday.
In the report, the IG said although the conferences were held for legitimate purposes, agency leadership "failed to provide proper oversight in the planning and execution" of the two conferences. Specifically, Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration John Sepulveda "abdicated his responsibilities" by failing to provide guidance to agency senior executives and taking a "hands-off approach."
