Government does it all the time. Gets some bad press as the result of inane, wasteful decisions, and immediately goes into knee-jerk mode. The result? Important programs get axed.
One such piece of collateral damage to the GSA/Las Vegas convention scandal is legitimate travel for government techies.
You remember the scandal, right? The GSA held a conference in Vegas where the taxpayers bankrolled a $75,000 team-building bike-building exercise, $50 breakfasts, $5,600 for three semi-private in-room parties, $3,749.40 for T-shirts, $2,781.50 for water bottles, $6,325 for commemorative coins in velvet boxes for all participants, $1,840 for vests for 19 “regional ambassadors” and other employees, and on the list goes. Government spending at its wasteful finest.
Obviously, changes needed to be made. Accountability was called for. But the GSA has gone overboard, cracking down on conference and travel spending – even to the extent of getting Congress to consider legislation to implement restrictions – so rigorously that attendance at important scientific, technical, and education meetings is being sacrificed.
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Legitimate scientific meetings are vital, say top technology organizations, including the USACM, the Computing Research Association, the IEEE-USA, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Such meetings help researchers stay current in their fields and maintain their professional contacts. Proposed restrictions on travel to scientific conferences would curtail the ability of government scientists and engineers to interact with other professionals in their fields.
Furthermore, “conferences can provide opportunities for government scientists and engineers to support the missions of their agencies. They can monitor government funded research, identify areas for possible future government support, identify potential recruits for government positions, and otherwise make sure government has access to the best information and the best people,” according to a report by the US Association for Computing Machinery.
Clearly, government involvement in scientific and technical meetings is in the national interest. It would be wise for Congress and the Obama administration to make a distinction between wasteful spending on frivolous Vegas weekends and serious gatherings of scientific and technological professionals.