As federal agencies tighten their belts, they’ll be questioning the value of citizen participation initiatives under the Obama Open Government Initiative. Do they lead to better results or reduced costs? A new report, “A Manager’s Guide to Evaluating Citizen Participation,” by Tina Nabatchi, an assistant professor at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, is designedRead… Read more »
I’ve got the exact amount of time it takes me to get dressed, get ready for work, eat breakfast, and get to work, as well as the order in which to do them in (keeping in mind that dressing always comes before the commute to work), down to a by-the-minute science. This is probably theRead… Read more »
A few years ago, MIT’s Smart Cities project developed the idea for the City Car. You may remember the City Car – it’s the one that folds up into itself when parked, the one that opens from the front, and the one that takes up 1/3 the space of a normal-sized vehicle on the street.Read… Read more »
Around this time, various IT and professional web sites list what they consider the top skills for the coming year. It’s interesting to look back and see what skills stay on the lists, what skills fall off the list, and the new skills that appear. I haven’t seen such a list for government workers soRead… Read more »
American City and County Magazine ran an article recently titled Trimming the fat-or-not with Lean Six Sigma by Stephen Ursery. The article refers to the success of Lean Six Sigma in Irving Texas and its failure in Erie County, New York, according to Mark Cornell spokesperson for Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz. In Irving Texas,Read… Read more »
This post has been on my mind for a while now, and a recent article on the topic from Policy Horizons Canada finally brought this to the top of my “blog topics” list (which seems to have a leaking hole in it these days…sorry about that). As always, I like to start with a definition:Read… Read more »
Derek Hyra, associate professor in Virginia Tech’s Urban Affairs and Planning Program, has been elected to a one-year term as chair of the board of commissioners for the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority, a public agency that provides affordable housing in the City of Alexandria. Hyra, who lives and works in Alexandria, Va., has servedRead… Read more »
Virginia Tech’s Jesse Richardson was interviewed this past week on WRIR 97.3FM’s Open Source radio program on Dillon’s Rule. Listen to the podcast at http://richmondpublicradio.org/2012/01/27/podcast-marijuana-laws-in-va-the-dillon-rule-and-blight-in-richmond/. Original post
We currently have a project out to bid for the installation of about a quarter mile of 10-inch water main. As usual, after we release the notification to bidders, we begin receiving requests from companies asking for a list of bidders or plan holders. Our city’s policy is to not release this list until afterRead… Read more »
GEAR. The Performance Management Pilot you’ve never heard of. In November 2011, the Employee Performance Management Workgroup put forth a set of recommendations to help catapult our federal government into the arena of 21st century performance strategy. The five key goals they’d like agencies to address are as follows: Articulate a High-Performance Culture Align EmployeeRead… Read more »