Starving children have depended on warnings made by a federal interagency group that has worked together for more than 25 years to help international aid groups by predicting where famines in remote regions are occurring. The Famine Early Warning System is an interagency network among federal agencies and the United Nations that began in 1985,Read… Read more »
STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math – are career fields in the U.S. jobs market that tripled in recent years. In fact, current projections are that the demand for these skills will outstrip the supply by at least one million jobs. Since the late 1950s, after the Russians launched Sputnik to the surprise ofRead… Read more »
Over the past two decades, the goal of those in the “performance movement” across the globe has been to change the culture of government agencies to be more results-oriented and performance-focused in their work and their decision-making. But it has been a long road. In 2011, two European academics conducted a meta-analysis of 519 studiesRead… Read more »
The bruising battles over the budget and debt ceiling only resulted in pushing the goal posts for completion down the road a few months. Are there any lessons on how to be more successful? A timely new book by veteran public finance experts at the International Monetary Fund describes how budget and finance reforms haveRead… Read more »
Budgets, and budget reform, are sensitive topics at the moment, but it might be worthwhile to take a longer view of the issue to see what might be possible in the future, given the experiences of states and cities that have undertaken significant reforms. The topic of performance budgeting has been talked about for decades.Read… Read more »
The successes and failures of U.S civil-military. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan serve as the basis for lessons learned in creating effective interagency coordination. “Interagency coordination is an essential element of effective public leadership,” writes Dr. Andrea Strimling Yodsampa in a new report for the IBM Center on effective practices for interagency coordination, using U.S. civil-militaryRead… Read more »
Sometimes it is refreshing to look at how other countries approach the challenge of measuring and managing performance in their governments. Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a World Bank seminar where the Secretary of Performance Management for the Government of India described how his country is doing it. Background. In June 2009,Read… Read more »
Police departments across the U.S. are piloting crime prevention programs that rely on a smart analysis of historical crime data in neighborhoods across their cities. And they are finding that they can cut burglaries by as much as 27 percent! City police departments across the country are turning traditional police officers into “data detectives.” PoliceRead… Read more »
The Department of Veterans Affairs has been in the cross-hairs of critics for delays in approving benefits for deserving veterans. Recent reports suggest that VA has turned the corner and is reducing its backlog. One factor: greater collaboration with veterans service organizations. In May, the VA announced a partnership with two veterans service organizations —Read… Read more »
Back in June, Texas congressman Henry Cuellar spoke at a conference where he declared that he wanted to embed performance measures in each agency’s appropriation bill. What could this look like? When Cong. Cuellar was a state legislator in Texas, he saw how his state used performance information in the budget process. When he wasRead… Read more »