Last year, I started a group exclusively for local govvies on Huddle called LocalGovWebStars with some help from a good local gov buddy of mine, Ken Eastwood (Assistant Director at Barnsley MBC and founder of publicsectornomads.com) to talk about website redesign projects in local gov. The group resulted in some very interesting discussions and tips.Read… Read more »
The Improvement Service in Scotland is delivering an ambitious project to help Scottish councils use flexible and agile working to help save money. Spearheaded by City of Edinburgh, Scottish Borders, West Lothian, Fife, Aberdeenshire and Argyll and Bute councils the project will deliver a range of online tools and hands on advice designed to helpRead… Read more »
The new law codifies an existing governance framework for performance across government by designating chief operating officers in each major agency and requiring the designation of program improvement officers in each agency. It also authorizes a governmentwide performance improvement council and requires a governmentwide performance website. Governance of Overall Performance System. After the original GPRARead… Read more »
Happy Holidays! Less than two weeks ago, a number of you agreed to participate in my social networking survey. Your responses are important to work on my dissertation in pursuit of a PhD at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. They will help develop an understanding of relationships between social networking and predictors of individualRead… Read more »
I am working on a dissertation in pursuit of my PhD in Public Administration and Urban Policy at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. To those who have already taken the survey, I thank you. I hope others will share less than 10 minutes with me to take the survey. My research is intended toRead… Read more »
Workplaces in the private sector and the public sector have many similarities. After all, objectives need to be met and daily work needs to get accomplished. Through our experience with business process management we have identified five major differences between sectors: The Election Cycle Term Limits Legislative Controls Human Resources Structures Revenue is usually notRead… Read more »
I am interested in receiving feedback on how to implement the use of process maps throughout an organization. My office has done a great job and we have process maps for every action – these have helped greatly with new hires and we constantly review for changes resulting in higher efficiencies. Other offices within ourRead… Read more »
On the 10th June I went with two of my colleagues to a meeting of the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations (SCVO). They are an umbrella organisation that tries to make their contributors work more coherently. In a manner of speaking the SCVO is the ‘Improvement Service’ of the voluntary sector so hearing presentations fromRead… Read more »
The Communities of Practice (CoP) has over 1,300 UK communities and upward of 57,000 UK members, it is the largest collaborative platform for local government and so can be a daunting place for newcomers. If you begin your CoP journey as a community facilitator, however, this feeling of uncertainty is amplified as you have theRead… Read more »
This is the title of one of my favorite books on this topic, authored by Mary Jenkins and Tom Coens. Many people have strong opinions about how to do performance appraisals, what improvements we can make and whether they even work at all. One of the best management thinkers of our time said: “(The annualRead… Read more »