ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

How San Diego Links Spending to Results

Substack/Department of What Works

An independent evaluation office is connecting rigorous evaluation to the policy and budget decisions that shape the lives of 3.3 million San Diegans.

Evidence for the Future?

Policy and Society Journal

Can strategic foresight become a source of evidence for policymaking? The authors develop a conceptual framework that “can meaningfully complement other forms of evidence within a broader, pluralistic knowledge ecosystem.”

50 Years of Evaluation: Imagining a Framework for Usability

New Directions for Evaluation Journal (Nick Hart)

National evaluation policy in the United States has substantially improved over the past half century, yet honest assessment requires acknowledging where fundamental challenges persist. The article proposes five adjustments for a future evaluation policy framework oriented toward better, faster, cheaper, and more usable evaluation.

Resource of the Week: Strategic Spartanburg Dashboard

City of Spartanburg, SC

Strategic Spartanburg is a non-profit research organization that leverages data and evidence to improve the quality of life in Spartanburg County by conducting research that informs policy and practice. Its website includes an Upward Mobility dashboard and a Community Indicators Project Data dashboard, along with a series of policy briefs.

Performance-Built Budgets

Barrett & Greene

This article summarizes a webinar focusing on the use of performance measures in the budgeting process.  It highlights the successes of the highly transparent results-oriented funding approach that is transforming the Ohio budgeting process, with examples of concrete program outcomes.

Closing the Loops

Federation of American Scientists (Amanda Girard)

Information and artifacts alone don’t necessarily facilitate learning and adaptation; strengthening federal feedback loops requires embedding translation and use into decision-making from the start. Here are six recommendations for how to do this.

Connecting Congress to Implementers

NextGov

Typically, Congress’ current mechanisms for performance feedback from those closest to implementation in the government are limited. The POPVOX Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit, based on the input of 50 federal employees pushed out of their government jobs last year, wants to change that.

WEBINAR: From Line Items to Impact: Incorporating Evidence into Budgeting (Tues., June 2, 3 p.m. Eastern)

Evidence Matters/University of Notre Dame

You’ll hear practical advice from local government leaders in San Diego County and the District of Columbia about how to get started and how to sustain momentum over time—building the internal capacity, cross-departmental partnerships, and political will needed to make evidence-informed budgeting a lasting part of how your government works.

Understanding Performance Management from the Bottom-Up

Public Administration Review (Leif Kongsgaard; Open Access PDF)

This article provides a cutting-edge perspective of how frontline employees and managers respond to a robust performance management system in terms of their reactions to “numbers” from the point of view of their emotions, attitudes, and actions. The research is based on rich empirical data and interviews with employees in the Danish public employment services.

Making Oversight Work

Niskanen Center (Anna Heetderks)

It’s just not all about cost savings. One of the areas in which oversight entities are well-positioned to influence agencies for the better is in their ability to provide candid, evidence-based assessments of how well agency programs are working. Oversight can essentially function as an impact evaluation team, communicating what’s working in a program and what isn’t. Realizing this potential requires changes in oversight practices in six areas.

Measuring the Hidden Workforce

Barrett & Greene 

While many government entities have performance management systems in place to measure the success or failure of the work that’s done in house, this can be trickier when it comes to the contractors and consultants who are sometimes referred to as the “hidden workforce.”

Closing the Loop

Federation of American Scientists Amanda Girard)

The federal government has a feedback-loop problem. Information and artifacts alone don’t necessarily facilitate learning and adaptation; strengthening federal feedback loops requires embedding translation and use into decision-making from the start. 

WEBINAR: Can Budgeting be Based on Performance? (Tues., Apr 28, 1 p.m. Eastern)

Center for Accountability & Performance (free)

New AI-driven tools may make it easier for governments to track performance in real-time, lowering the administrative burden of linking budgets to performance. Panelists include Marc Holzer, Katherine Willoughby and Kimberly Mernieks, director of Ohio’s Office of Management and Budget.

Translating Performance Management into Action

Barrett & Greene (Rudy de Leon Dinglas)

Adoption of a performance management system is only the first step. Based on observations of dozens of cases, success depends on leadership commitment, managerial authority, organizational capacity, and organizational cohesion. 

Mitigating Metrics Malaise

Eating Policy (Jen Pahlka)

Goodhart’s Law (when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure) is one of the deepest traps in organizational life, and the leaders who handle it best tend to share six recognizable instincts.

Accountability Without Authority

LinkedIn (Alexander Spradling)

Everyone wants accountability, but there is a principle that many organizations consistently violate, often without noticing: accountability without authority is unfair. And if accountability and authority are not aligned, then the mismatch erodes trust, distorts behavior, and poisons the decision-making process.

Using AI in Strategic Foresight

Public Administration Review (Open Access PDF)

Generating strategic foresight for public organizations is a resource intensive effort. A case study of an innovative effort in an Australian state government shows that AI can significantly help, when balanced with human expertise for validation and oversight.

Measuring What Matters in NonProfits

PATimes (Savanna Batson)

Nonprofits are increasingly called on to provide empirical evaluation of their impact to meet expectations for efficiency and accountability from board members, philanthropy and government-funded programs. As a result, proactively developing impact evaluation metrics serves as a critical strategy for organizational development.

Call for Papers: Research to Reinvigorate the Performance Movement

Public Performance & Management Review

This symposium seeks to critically assess the state of performance research and its connection to practice, with the aim of reinvigorating the performance movement intellectually and practically. “We invite scholars and practitioners to revisit foundational commitments, critique current trajectories, and articulate future pathways. What might a reinvigorated performance movement look like—and what kind of research, networks, and praxis might sustain it?” Submissions due: August 15, 2026

Resource of the Week:  Oversight Matters

Substack/”For 250 More”

“Oversight Matters” is a recurring feature of the For 250 More Substack that highlights important developments across the oversight community, so that we can strengthen public understanding, support accountability, and help readers see how these institutions shape the integrity of government every day.

When Data Challenges You to Change

Barrett & Greene (Michael Jacobson)

Over a decade, King County, WA (Seattle) decided to gather data from community members about their priorities and our employees about their engagement. What we found changed our approach to what to measure and how to prioritize our work and offers lessons on how to let the data inform decisions, strategy, and the way to do your work.

Outcome-Based Contracting in the US Government

IBM Center for The Business of Government

For years, federal agencies have been encouraged to shift their acquisition strategies from buying activities to buying results—yet the distance between aspiration and execution remains wide. This report addresses that gap.