ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

Public Servant Pulse: A National Survey of US State and Local Employees

The People Lab

Nearly 5,000 public servants from 1,300 local governments and all 50 state governments participated in this annual nationally representative survey of state and local employees. Workplace satisfaction is higher among local government employees than state government employees. And 78 percent of employees are at least “somewhat engaged” at work.

The Broken Ruler

LinkedIn (Mark Schacter)

Prompted by an article by a fellow consultant, Schacter offers his own takes on “why organizations mistake visible evidence for meaningful progress.” While measurement emphasizes what has been delivered, it says little about the benefits (or outcomes) attributable to a program. So, even if a program did what it was supposed to do, it still might not be successful.

Resource of the Week: U.S. GAO Strategic Plan 2027-2032

U.S. Government Accountability OfficeThis plan organizes GAO’s work under three Strategic Goals, each supported by Strategic Objectives and corresponding Performance Goals. One of the three strategic goals is: “Identify ways to enhance the performance and accountability of the Federal Government.

Making Performance Data Matter to Elected Officials

Barrett & Greene (Obed Pasha)

The author asked elected representatives and recently retired managers to help develop recommendations for local government managers seeking to gain elected officials’ support for performance management. They identified ten strategies.

A Namesake Job Announcement: Executive Director of the Office of Performance and Accountability

U.S. General Services Administration

This Senior Executive Service position serves as the integrator and expert on enterprise-wide strategic performance, planning, internal control, enterprise risk management and audit management activities across the General Services Administration, and is responsible for the overall management and development of the GSA strategic plan and annual performance plans that guide all GSA activities. Deadline: October 27.

Resource of the Week: Practitioner Standards for Fraud Measurement

UK Public Sector Fraud Authority

The Government Counter Fraud Professional Standards and Guidance are designed to present a consistent cross-government approach to countering fraud, raise the capability of individuals, and through this increase the quality of an organisation’s counter fraud work.

Performance Management: A Multi-Prong Approach

IBM Center for The Business of Government (Barrett & Greene)

For many years, people have been using the words performance management as a sort of synonym for performance measurement. . . for years, there was huge excitement about the potential of using measures to help make important decisions. But in recent conversations, zealots of that practice can come out sounding depressed by the lack of attention it’s been getting lately.

Measuring Skills-Based Hiring Results

Barrett & Greene

The National Governors Association has created a Skills-Based Talent Metrics Toolkit that envisions a measurement system that can evaluate what approaches work and which may not and whether government services and outcomes are improved under a skills-based hiring system. An important aim is to “move beyond descriptive reporting and toward actual evaluation.”

Webinar: Collaborative Performance Management (Tues., Oct. 13, 1 p.m. Eastern)

Center for Accountability & Performance, American Society for Public Administration

How do you manage performance when achieving results depends on partners outside your direct authority? This webinar will explore how public managers can make performance management work in collaborative settings, based on cases from the United States, Jamaica, and the Netherlands.

Webinar: Performance Management and the Organizational Context (Tues., Oct. 20, 1 p.m. Eastern)

Center for Accountability & Performance, American Society for Public Administration

Student fellows from the Data Science for Social Good program at Johns Hopkins University will discuss their experiences working on applied projects with city government partners. Students will present the public problems addressed by their teams and reflect on what they learned about city operations, stakeholder needs, data limitations, and communicating their findings.

Budget Talks: A Better Way

Barrett & Greene (Haley Kadish)

Sit in on many government budget conversations and you will hear a lot about money but surprisingly little about services. We talk about vacancies, salary savings, contracts, recurring costs and fund restrictions. . . Ultimately the big question is this: What level of service are we trying to provide, and what does it cost?

Pennsylvania’s Dark Board

Governing

A Pennsylvania state board created by law in 2017 to review billions of dollars in tax credits and government spending quietly stopped meeting three years ago and board members won’t say why.

The HoCo Dash Board

Howard County, MD

Data-informed. People-driven. Howard County is committed to building trust through transparency and accountability by empowering residents to stay informed and engaged. Explore its seven “Impact Pillars” focused on quality of life in the county, and key performance indicators.

Looking Beyond the Dashboard

Medium (Christine Lauca)

Dashboard indicators don’t answer the question of what is needed to make a difference. They point to where attention is needed. Understanding why performance is changing, and what, if anything, should be done about it, requires a central capability that continuously scans for emerging delivery issues, works with service providers to understand what the indicators reveal, where capacity constraints are limiting progress, and where intervention is needed before problems become crises.

Resource of the Week:  Do What Works: Smarter Government, Better Results

Results for America (Michele Jolin and David Medina, eds.)

A new book written by governors, mayors, legislators, and other leaders of both parties who are testing bold solutions and using data to improve results, these inspiring essays offer a blueprint for how governments everywhere can solve urgent challenges and rebuild public trust.

The Path to a Results-Forward Budget

Barrett & Greene (blog by Laura Larsen)

For decades, budget season has followed a familiar script: departments submit requests based on what they received last year, finance and budget teams look for places to trim, and elected officials debate the margins. It’s a process built for stability, not for adapting to fast-moving community needs. The good news is that a different approach is possible.

Better Metrics, Smaller Experiments

Harvard Kennedy School/Data-Smart City Solutions (podcast, 23 min)

This is an interview with Jessica MacLeod, on her new role as chief of strategy and performance for the city of San Francisco. “It’s all about helping our city get really concrete about what the top priorities are, how we define what success looks like and how we create an evidence-based plan to achieve it in creative new ways.” It is also about building a culture and operating norm to get teams to collaborate on solving problems.