Useful Links

This section contains a set of categorized useful links.  The dog in the picture is Beth VII, who is at my favorite place, the woodshop at Camp Snyder where we run year round programs to teach youth wood working skills.  Beth recently formally graduated her formal trainings with Canine Companions and has matched with a Profession at GMU who is suffering from a degenerative muscle disease. Our family raised her from 8 weeks until 18 months when she went to NY for six months of formal training before being matched.  While it was hard to see her go, seeing how she help her new owner made it all good.    

Federal Websites of Note:

• https://www.gao.gov/ig/audit-reports -   This is the site were the Government Accountability Office post its reports – normally pretty dry but occasionally very interesting. 
• https://sam.gov/   - System for Award Management – this is where most of the Government solicitations are published, and a wealth of other information. All contractors have to register on SAM to receive Federal awards, so you can find a company’s Unique Identifier (UID) here, which is used to report spending. This replaced the DUNS number years ago. 
• https://www.usaspending.gov/   - This site is where the Government reports spending – and you can look up a company by its UID and download the data into .CSX files if you want to analyze it. Very useful site. 
• https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-resources/legislative/reports-to-congress/    - The Office of the Management of the Budget Report Site provides all the reports regarding the Federal Budget. They often contain large numbers of tables with the line item details of the budget.  
• https://govsalaries.com/    - Want to know how much a Federal Employee makes? You can find it here.   
• https://www.usajobs.gov/  -  - Want a federal job? This is where to start. For those just starting their career, it is not a bad place to start. A GS-7 can make over 50G and get full healthcare and other benefits. There are a lot of cool jobs out there that are not politically oriented - but you  must be patient. The Office of Personal Management uses 180 days as a target to fill a job. However, there are special exceptions for some highly-sought skills.  Just keep finding ones you are interested in and apply. 
• https://www.regulations.gov/   - Want to know what regulations are under evaluation and comment? This is the site to do so.