The Center for Accountability and Performance (CAP) Annual Awards for 2020:

THE HARRY HATRY DISTINGUISHED PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE AWARD

This year’s Harry Hatry Award is presented to an individual whose outstanding teaching, education, training, and consultation in performance management has made a significant contribution to the practice of public administration.  The award winner must have spent the primary part of his/her career in public service.  This award recognizes a person who has made outstanding contributions on a sustained basis rather than a single accomplishment.

CAP is proud to present The 2020 Harry Hatry Distinguished Performance Management Practice Award to Charlie Perusse, North Carolina State Budget Director.

Mr. Perusse, in his various roles in state government during a 25-year career, has been a long-time champion of the use of performance information to inform decision-making and to ensure accountability for results.

Most recently, he was appointed to a second stint as State Budget Director in 2017 by Governor Roy Cooper.  Upon taking charge, he created a team to develop a strategy to advance the use of performance management practices in state agencies.  The team reviewed the practices of leading states such as Utah, Minnesota, Colorado, Virginia, and incorporated best practices into a new performance framework for the state.  They also partnered with the Pew-MacArthur Results First Initiative to craft legislative and administrative initiatives to implement these practices.

In 2018, the legislature clarified the budget office’s authority to implement a performance management framework, starting with a pilot initiative.  Mr. Perusse reorganized the budget office to reflect the new framework.  He also created the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Performance Management as a forum for senior level input on the implementation of the new performance system.  He led a cross-branch collaborative effort in support of this effort and as a consequence, the 2020-2021 state budget approved by the legislature included investments in building staff capacity to use performance information in program management as well as funding for evidence-based program evaluation.  Taken together, these initiatives are helping rate North Carolina as one of the top states in the use of performance information. Subsequently, he has been a mentor and advisor to peers in other states interested in implementing similar efforts.

Prior to his current assignment, he served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the University of North Carolina (UNC) System for six years.  In his earlier work with the Budget Office, he served as State Budget Director for three years and Deputy Director for six years.  He also spent eight years in the General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division, serving three years as budget coordinator for the House of Representatives. 

Some of Mr. Perusse’s notable career accomplishments include – 

• Championing North Carolina’s Common-Sense Government Initiative to promote fiscal transparency and data-driven decision making;
• Authoring a substantial portion of UNC’s 2011 strategic plan; 
• Balancing the state’s budget each year during the Great Recession; and 
• Transitioning the state to a market and competency-based compensation program for employees. 

Mr. Perusse received a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from North Carolina State University.  

THE JOSEPH WHOLEY DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARSHIP AWARD

The Joseph Wholey Award is for outstanding scholarship on performance in public and nonprofit organizations.  The author(s) must provide a significant contribution to advancing knowledge in a scholarly journal about the development, implementation, use and impact of performance measurement.  Preference will be given to a scholarly work that is relevant to the broad public administration community and is of interest to both practitioners and academicians.

CAP is proud to announce that the 2020 Joseph Wholey Award will be presented to Professor David Ammons, not only recognizing his lifetime achievement and many contributions to the field of performance management, generally, but also for his recent contribution to the field in the form of a book entitled Performance Measurement for Managing Local Government:  Getting It Right. Irvine, CA:  Melvin & Leigh, 2020 — a very powerful and useful book that contains best practices and helpful hints for practitioners and students in this important field, which is increasingly based on data science and analytics.  

Dr. Ammons joined the School of Government at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1996, and served as director of the MPA program from 2001 to 2006.  He writes and teaches about performance measurement, benchmarking, and productivity improvement in local government.  His books on local government management include Municipal Benchmarks (M.E. Sharpe, 2012), Tools for Decision Making: A Practical Guide for Local Government (CQ Press, 2009), and Leading Performance Management in Local Government (ICMA, 2008).  His articles have appeared in Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, American Review of Public Administration, Public Performance and Management Review, State and Local Government Review, and other public affairs journals.  Previously, he served on the National Performance Management Advisory Commission, ASPA’s National Council, and the Executive Council of the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA).  He was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration in 2006 and in 2014.  Professor Ammons earned a PhD from the University of Oklahoma.

Latest Work

Performance Measurement for Managing Local Government: Getting It Right. Irvine, CA: Melvin & Leigh, 2020.

Today, local governments routinely report performance measures to city councils, county commissions, and citizens. Many government officials want to do more with their measures.  They want to use them not just for reporting but also for management purposes-to improve operations and services. But the measures governments have now often are inadequate for this expanded role.  After teaching thousands of government practitioners about performance measurement, author David Ammons knows the questions these practitioners, as well as students of performance measurement, want answered.  This book delivers.

THE CAP ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP AWARD

This award, presented to an organization, recognizes outstanding applications of a systems approach to performance measurement that has resulted in a culture change, sustained improvements and demonstrated positive effects on government performance and accountability.  The award recognizes an organization, rather than a person that has yielded outstanding results on a sustained basis.  The organization may be selected from all levels of public service organizations, including local, state, or federal government, as well as from international and public service nonprofit organizations.  Preference will be given to an organization whose results have been measured and whose impact has been documented in the literature or at conferences.

CAP is proud to present the 2020 Organizational Leadership Award to the City of Asheville, North Carolina.

The City of Asheville has worked over the last near decade to build a unique data culture that drives performance in how the city articulates policies, responds to the urgent needs of residents and supports decision making.  Led by a multidisciplinary governance community with leadership from the city manager’s office, program offices and IT, the City of Asheville has made tremendous gains to make Asheville a growing hotspot for new residents, departure from city hall norms, and significant innovation. 

Here is just one example of how data and performance is driving change in the City of Asheville – 

A recent City of Asheville’s Disparity Study results showed that between 2012 and 2017, of the $118M in city contracts, only $12M or about 10% went to minority and women owned businesses.  Additionally, across 10 counties, the Study identified 308 willing/available/and ready minority owned businesses, a vast undercount and underutilization of the total minority owned small businesses.  The lack of equity in the contracting process has led to a strong sense of community distrust in the vendor marketplace process due to discrimination and minority businesses not being reached by services that could improve their competitiveness in the marketplace.  The City of Asheville, with the strong support of the City Manager, initiated a series of organizational management rebuilds that aim to not only break down over 30 years of problematic and unequitable contracting practices and reduce disparities, but also empower departments across the organization to use their data for effective decision-making.

Specifically, the City of Asheville has been able to – 

• Redefine the scope of its 5-year initiative to reduce disparities in contracting with minority-owned businesses by setting tangible and measurable business development, economic mobility, and equity goals across the organization and within specific departments (i.e. Purchasing, Finance, Capital Projects, Data and Analytics, and others);
• Develop a new workplan process to enable City of Asheville leadership to track performance bi-annually; 
• Establish a data governance structure to oversee the management of more innovative data collection and data sharing systems that are being scaled across the organization; 
• Develop the framing for a new internal business development and equity dashboard that can be used by all department directors to track performance in their business inclusion practices; and 
• Train City of Asheville staff across multiple departments on effective community outreach and engagement practices, and drafted community engagement plans in coordination with the Mountain Business Equity Initiative.

THE CAP EMERGING LEADERS AWARD OF EXCELLENCE WINNERS

CAP has created a new recognition program to recognize up to five early- to mid-career professionals in the field of performance management at the federal, state, or local levels. This recognition will be presented at the CAP board meeting associated with the annual ASPA meeting.  Applications will be accepted until December 1st of the preceding year. 

CAP has a history of promoting the adoption of accountability and performance management systems in government.  Traditionally, CAP accomplished its goals through educational materials and awards for scholarship, organizational improvement, and individual leaders/contributors.  As performance management has spread, but still remains a developing field of practice, CAP sees an opportunity to recognize and encourage a new generation of practitioners through a CAP Emerging Leaders Award of Excellence program. 

Through recognition by CAP, an Emerging Leaders Award of Excellence will provide an early or mid- career boost to individuals who are actively implementing performance management systems, innovating new practices, and promoting the importance of performance and accountability within their governments and communities. 

As part of the recognition, Emerging Leader award recipients will be invited to (but not be required to) develop a case study, potentially in collaboration with a graduate student, about their government’s performance management practices to support CAP’s case study work.  In addition, they may be invited to develop CAP-sponsored panels at the annual ASPA meeting to highlight best and alternative practices from the field and help build the empirical base for additional analyses.  Each recipient will also receive a formal Award of Excellence plaque of recognition. 

Emerging Leaders can be self nominated or be nominated by others and will be chosen by a subcommittee of current CAP Board members.  There will be no more than five awardees per year, they should represent a variety of governments (local, state, and federal), and help promote racial and geographic diversity in the field.  Nominees should have approximately 5-10 years of experience within a government organization and shown leadership, innovation, and/or accomplishment.

The following individuals are recipients of the CAP 2020 Emerging Leaders Award of Excellence:

Adrienne Schomeker, New York City

        Adrienne is the Director of Civic Engagement and Strategy for the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, where she leads the NYC Open Data initiative’s civic engagement strategy. Prior to joining MODA, she worked at the Mayor’s Office of Technology & Innovation led by NYC’s first-ever Chief Technology Officer in 2015 as a founding team member. She has spent 8+ years leading strategic initiatives across sectors, starting her career in a leadership development program at a Fortune 500 company before moving into the NYC startup space, where she spent 3 years working at Catchafire, a technology-based social enterprise serving nonprofits and corporate social responsibility programs nationwide. Adrienne holds a degree in Public Policy and Economics from the University of Chicago. 

Carmen Moreno-Rivera, Chief of Performance Improvement at Louisville Metro Government

Carmen Moreno-Rivera joined Louisville Metro Government in 5November 2017 as the Senior Process Consultant in OPI2. Prior to this role, Carmen worked for fourteen years as an engineer for UPS in its Small Package, Aircraft Maintenance, Flight Operations, and Safety and Compliance business segments.

Progressive, solution-oriented engineering professional with 15 years of process improvement and project management experience. Demonstrated history of creating business value and leading organizational change using statistical analysis, risk mitigation, budget and resource management, and operational assessment and design.

Kate May, Chief Performance Officer, Rochester 

Kate May is the Chief Performance Officer for the City of Rochester, where she helps departments use their data to drive evidence-based decisions and increase operational efficiency. Prior to joining the Office of Innovation in July 2017, Kate worked as the City and County of Denver’s Senior Operational Data Scientist and leader of the Denver Data Lab, where she used lean process engineering and statistical modeling to improve how departments worked with their human and financial resources and taught classes in data analytics and visualization. Kate has a Masters Degree in Data and Policy Analysis from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs and a bachelors from the University of Rochester.