Looking Forward and Looking Back – New Year News from The Center for the Business Government » Community

This article was originally posted by Dan Chenok on the IBM Center for the Business of Government Blog.

The IBM Center for The Business of Government had the privilege of publishing a wide variety of reports about key public sector challenges in 2013, from some of the Nation’s leading thinkers on government management. As 2014 begins, we are also pleased to provide more information about forthcoming reports that were recently selected, to be published starting this summer. We wish all of our friends and colleagues an excellent New Year; in that spirit, we present short summaries of the new, as well as a review with links to the 2013 list of reports.

Recent Awards, to Be Published starting Summer 2014

Fostering Government Open Access Platform Use by Jean-Pierre Auffret, George Mason University and Jeffrey Matsuura, Howard Community College

This report will provide a plan for government to develop/implement practices and initiatives providing incentives/opportunities for public-private partnerships/multistakeholder engagement to develop and extend open access data platforms. Focusing on three government open access programs: public access to federally-funded scientific data; cybersecurity threat data-sharing, and the Data.Gov program it will create a report describing open access use in the three targeted areas and evaluating its current/potential effectiveness. It will also propose new initiatives, collaborations, and incentives to enhance effectiveness of government open access use

A How To Guide for Making Innovation Offices Work by Rachel Burstein, New America Foundation and Alissa Black, New America Foundation

This report offers a how-to guide for agency heads in federal, state and municipal government who are considering establishing new or improving existing innovation offices. There has been no systematic cataloging of innovation offices, articulation of their goals or structures, or comprehensive effort to make them more effective. The report will draw on interviews with practitioners in order to present a decision-making flow chart for those considering instituting innovation offices. The report will detail success metrics for stated goals, from economic development to internal efficiencies. This report will propose recommendations for aligning agency hierarchies to ensure stated goals are met.

Leading Change in a Hyper-Changing World by Michael A. Genovese, Loyola Marymount University

This report will look at the leadership and change processes, asking: What challenges will future leaders face? What toolkit will they need? What training must they have? How can changes in technology be better utilized? Will globalism make leadership more difficult? Given the spread and democratization of social media, how will social movements impact leadership and social stability?

Participatory Budgeting at the Local Government Level in Chicago by Dr. Victoria Gordon, Western Kentucky University

This report will conduct a qualitative study utilizing interviews of local government managers and elected officials in the City of Chicago that have initiated the use of participatory budgeting within their wards to understand how they perceive that they will work together to provide essential services to citizens in tight budgetary times. The author will explore how these officials will gather and then incorporate the citizens’ stated desires about service prioritization into the decisions they make and policies they recommend for adoption.

Beyond Business as Usual: Transforming Defense Acquisition Through Better Buying Power by Zachary S. Huitink, Syracuse University and David M. Van Slyke, Syracuse University

This report will provide a case study of the Better Buying Power (BBP) initiative, a Department of Defense (DOD) led effort to reform the defense acquisition system. The report will evaluate BBP against a three-factor framework emphasizing structural, cultural, and leadership dimensions of purposeful organizational change. The approach will combine elite interviews with document research in a qualitative methods context. Objectives of the report are three: (i) disentangle the structural, cultural, and leader-related components of the change program; (ii) determine whether DOD leaders employed these factors effectively given the environment they faced; and (iii) uncover best practices for change agents in other policy contexts.

Inspectors General and Their Strategic Environments: Approaches to Encouraging Collaboration by Charles A. Johnson, Texas A&M University

U.S. Inspectors General (IGs) serve as independent watchdogs for fraud, waste, and abuse, while also collaborating with executive and congressional offices to promote effective management and programs. Interacting with officials in their agency, Congress, and elsewhere, IGs must create cooperative relationships if they are to be effective. Drawing on personal interviews and published data in a multi-agency case study, this report will (1) detail levels of cooperation involving IGs and others in their strategic environment, (2) identify factors leading to successful collaborations, and (3) recommend strategies to encourage working collaborative partnerships to advance their federal agency’s mission and programs.

Risk Analytics to Improve Grants Management and Organizational Performance in Federal Agencies by Young Hoon Kwak, Ph.D., George Washington University and Julia B. Keleher, Ed.D., PMP, MBA, George Washington University

This report will examine new approaches to managing risk within the Department of Education (ED). The report will explore how ED developed its capacity to use data and risk analytic tools to better understand the uncertainties that surround its grants management functions, communicate risk information, and begin to create a culture that supports risk management. The researchers will explore how ED is leveraging its risk management capacities to promote organizational performance improvements. Findings will be relevant to managers and leaders interested in developing risk management approaches for grants management and those interested in using risk management to improve organizational performance.

Sponsoring Open Innovation Via Technology Ecosystems: Examples From the Healthcare Industry by Donald E. Wynn, Jr., University of Dayton and Renée Michelle Elaine Pratt, Washington and Lee University

The authors will develop a set of best practices to guide public agencies interested in sponsoring innovation projects through participation in technology ecosystems. The best practices will be based on two core strategies: building an ecosystem to support existing initiatives, and sponsoring new initiatives within an existing ecosystem. Consistent with both strategies, the report will propose an initial set of guidelines for agencies to maximize their return on sponsorship investments. Additional guidelines will be included in the final report, accompanied by illustrative examples.

Reports Published in 2013

Evaluating Current Defense Acquisition Initiatives in a Declining Budget Environment

Bill Lucyshn and Jacques Gansler

Incident Reporting Systems: Lessons from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Organization

Russell Mills

Cloudy with a Chance of Success: Contracting for the Cloud in Government

Meredith Weiss and Shannon Tufts

From Data to Decisions III

Partnership for Public Service

Federal Ideation Programs: Challenges and Best Practices

Gwanhoo Lee

Six Trends Driving Change in Government