The federal government faces an estimated annual structural deficit of $500 billion to $700 billion. A deficit of this magnitude represents a major threat to the economic health of the nation. The structural deficit is defined as the portion of the total annual deficit that results from a fundamental imbalance in receipts and expenditures, notRead… Read more »
Government leaders and managers are increasingly doing business using methods and approaches that differ from the traditional contracts and grants process. Today, government leaders and managers need to know how to use innovative acquisition methods that shorten the lifecycle of a contract, as well as how to leverage new ways of tapping into the privateRead… Read more »
Government leaders and managers have a fundamental responsibility to protect citizens from security threats. The weapons and tactics employed in many of today’s security threats do not require the traditional armies of the past. Malicious groups of people, down to a hostile individual operating within the homeland, can acquire and employ commercially available technology toRead… Read more »
Harry Hatry, a pioneer in the performance measurement field, recently predicted that “performance data in the future will be able to be processed continuously and in real time,” and that “managers and their staffs will be able to obtain such information easily and quickly, no matter where the managers are. The information will come fromRead… Read more »
Over the past decade, government at all levels made much progress in building collaborative relationships. There are two areas in which government has clearly moved toward increased use of collaboration. The first is governments coming together to create ad hoc collaborative networks in response to emergency situations. The second is the creation of new networksRead… Read more »
From the Pony Express in 1860 to today’s digital revolution, the scope of our connectivity has increased in every dimension. Our connections are faster, farther-flung, and more complete and immersive than ever before. In the last decade, however, we have crossed a significant threshold, from connectivity into hyperconnectivity. As an example, most urban Americans areRead… Read more »
The United States federal government operates in a period rife with significant, seemingly intractable challenges, including an evergrowing federal deficit, economic uncertainty, unemployment, and an aging infrastructure. These challenges go to the core of effective public management. As Don Kettl notes in Reflections on 21st Century Government Management, many problems faced by government allow littleRead… Read more »
I’d like to introduce a new blog series that I’ll be posting for comments here on GovLoop, starting today and (I hope) continuing each Monday throughout the summer: Seven Management Imperatives. The genesis of the report, upon which the blog items will be based, springs from more than 300 research reports and some 300 interviewsRead… Read more »