Performance Management
Improving Local Government Performance in Louisville: ‘It’s All About The People’
Bill Lucia, Route Fifty
The deputy director of performance management in Kentucky’s largest city shares some tips about developing and keeping talented staff.
Improving Engagement Scores Is the Wrong Goal
Howard Risher, Government Executive
A better measure would be employees’ impact on agency performance.

Analytics/Evaluation
The Other Pay for Success: The Promise and Peril of Paying for Outcomes
Patrick Lester, Social Innovation Research Center
Outcomes-based funding – payments to social service and other providers based at least in part on the results they achieve – is an idea that has been around for decades. Unfortunately, the history of this other version of pay-for-success has been far from universally positive.
Outcomes-based government: New mindset for 21st century solutions
Jim Shelton and Marta Urquilla, The Hill
Government has a responsibility to ask whether its investments had an impact, and how much relative to costs. To do so requires shifting to a new mindset.
National Science Foundation building big data hubs, spokes
Aaron Boyd, Federal Times
The National Science Foundation announced a set of grants and a slate of upcoming solicitations to boost its big data capabilities and forward the progress of science.
Obama wants regulations to be effective, but agencies are ignoring his orders, study finds
Lisa Rein, Washington Post
According to a new analysis, few regulations are ever tracked for how well they’re working.

Leadership
White House Announces Inaugural Participants in Program to Develop New Federal Leaders
Eric Katz, Government Executive
Fellows went through “rigorous” selection process and come from “all walks of life,” OPM says.