Make Your Voice Heard
The GSA scandal from this past spring was a huge embarrassment for the organization. In May, I wrote a blog post about how poorly the situation was handled from the beginning, starting with the selection of Las Vegas as a destination. Not that there’s anything wrong with Las Vegas, but perhaps Sin City isn’t the best location for the federal agency whose mission is to provide “innovative solutions for our customers in support of their missions, and by so doing, foster an effective, sustainable, and transparent government for the American people.”
On April 25th, Congress passed legislation as a knee jerk reaction to the GSA’s missteps and lack of judgment. The newly written amendments attached to legislation would strictly limit the government’s spending on future conferences and events.
We all know that it just takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch. In this case, not only did GSA make all government agencies look bad, but also this action by Congress is reactionary to government and contracting as a whole. Peers, colleagues, and coworkers need to meet, sometimes off site, for dialogues to be opened and work to get done. Just because some federal employees were wasteful and excessive doesn’t mean that the need no longer exists for meetings or conferences. The solution should be transparent and responsible event planning.
We are still in the midst of an economic recovery. People are starting to plan and attend conferences again. Putting such a severe roadblock in the way of effective meeting planning when the production of meetings and events gets money flowing back into the American economy is very shortsighted.
MPI.web has some great resources available regarding how we can make our voices heard. Go here for details.
