Is there a recipe for successful cross-agency relationships that are enduring? Or is each initiative so dependent on context and personalities that there is no way to offer general principles of success? With Valentine’s Day approaching, there are all sorts of advice columns about improving relationships. Well, A new IBM Center report by Dr. JaneRead… Read more »
“You can’t manage what you don’t measure” is often attributed to business guru Peter Drucker. But Oxford professor Christopher Hood raises a provocative question: Does “management by numbers” actually lead to improved performance? Dr. Hood, who is a well-respected public management professor, poses this question in a recent article in the Public Administration Review andRead… Read more »
Earlier this month, a forum co-hosted by the National Academy of Public Administration and the IBM Center for The Business of Government reflected on the evolution of a results-oriented federal performance management system over the past two decades and how it will evolve over the next few years. The forum participants comprised a range ofRead… Read more »
Academics don’t always speak the same language as practitioners. But they oftentimes have useful ideas to convey. So how do we bridge the gap between research and practice? I’ve been asked to participate as a “practitioner” on a discussion panel at the upcoming conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) ItRead… Read more »
How do you organize a cross-agency collaborative effort to get results no single agency could accomplish on its own? The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has developed an inventory of “mechanisms that the federal government uses to lead and implement interagency collaboration,” along with a self-assessment checklist to consider when using them. GAO’s latest study onRead… Read more »
This is a question to which agencies will now have to come up with an answer. And it won’t be easy! Background Earlier this Spring, Senator Tom Coburn grilled an OMB witness at a hearing about why OMB had not yet implemented a provision in the GPRA Modernization Act requiring the creation of a government-wideRead… Read more »
OMB has released its long-awaited guidance for the implementation of new provisions in the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010. It describes a novel way to meet a statutory requirement to annually judge the performance of government programs. Agencies will have to put this new approach in place over the next two years. A provision buriedRead… Read more »
OMB has released a new performance framework for the federal government. It is embedded in its guidance to agencies on how they should prepare their budget requests for fiscal year 2014, which is called OMB Circular A-11. Last week, the Office of Management and Budget released its annual technical guidance to agencies regarding how theyRead… Read more »
A perennial lament by advocates of the use of performance measures is that Congress seems to rarely use them in making decisions. Here’s a guide prepared by GAO, along with three examples of how congressional committees have used performance information to make decisions. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) works for Congress and is a bigRead… Read more »
Opinions of the federal government are at an all-time low. With only 17% of Americans holding a positive view of the work being done in Washington, we finally unseated the oil and gas industry for last-place on Gallup’s annual opinion rankings. And to be honest, it’s hard to blame them. Our federal government is jam-packedRead… Read more »