ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

Analytics/Evaluation
Making Taxpayer Dollars Deliver
John Kamensky, Government Executive
The President’s 2017 budget proposes to take “evidence-based approaches to scale,” strengthen the base of evidence available to future policymakers, and increase the analytical capacity of agencies to use evidence and data.
How Allegheny County’s Data Warehouse is improving human services through integrated data
Andy Feldman, Gov Innovator Blog
Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, is recognized as a leader in using data to improve the results of its human services programs.

Innovation
Scaling Up Innovations With Government
Rahul Nayar, Asif Saleh, and Anna Minj, Stanford Social Innovation Review
How to overcome the barriers that large institutions like the government put in the way of scaling up innovations.

Open Government
When Everyone Is an Expert
Stephen Goldsmith, Stanford Social Innovation Review
In an era of instant feedback and crowdsourcing, the government misses out when it relies solely on authorized voices.

Budget
11 Major Agency Reforms in Obama’s Budget
Eric Katz, Government Executive
President Obama’s budget proposal includes a number of significant proposals to revamp agency structures and programs.

Performance Management
Rethinking Federal Grants Management: From Oversight to Insight
Shelley Metzenbaum, Government Executive
The mindset and the skill sets of grant managers need to evolve from primarily thinking about “conducting oversight” to generating insights that help grantees learn from experience and improve performance.
Talk about an easy way to improve your organization’s performance!
Steve Kelman, Federal Computer Week
Kelman details a recent experiment into the impact of “public service motivation.”

Collaboration
Building Capacity Through Networks
Jennifer Chandler and Kristen Scott Kennedy, Stanford Social Innovation Review
Nonprofits that are part of a network can leverage resources and knowledge to build capacity more effectively than nonprofits that “go it alone.”

Customer Service
Customer service improvements moving too slowly, so now there’s a law
Jason Miller, Federal News Radio
Rep. Henry Cuellar authored a provision in the FY2016 spending bill to increase pressure on agencies to improve their performance.

Performance Management
Performance-based budgeting gets a kick in the pants for 2017 budget
Jason Miller, Federal News Radio
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) authored a provision instructing OMB to ensure budget plans are linked more directly to performance measures as required under the GPRA Modernization Act.

Efficiency/Reorganization
Government Reorganization 2016: No Magic Wand
John Kamensky, Business of Government
Bipartisan legislation was introduced last year to create a board that would make recommendations to “transform” government. With public trust in government at an all-time low, is there an appetite to act?
State Spending and the Search for Hidden Efficiencies
Charles Chieppo, Governing
It shouldn’t take a budget crisis like the one Kansas is dealing with to force a government to look for more ways to save taxpayer money.

Collaboration
Why the Next President Must Make Government More Collaborative
Don Kettl and Robert O’Neill, Government Executive
Failure to act before the next crisis — and there will be one — could doom the next administration.
New Report Explores the Use of Social Tools to Improve Interagency Collaboration
Dan Chenok, Business of Government
A new report on lessons learned from the use of internal collaborative tools across the intelligence community.

Open Government
GAO frets about ambiguity in Data Act standards
Chase Gunter, Federal Computer Week
GAO says some data element definitions offered by Treasury and OMB are potentially unclear, inconsistent and open to interpretation.
Commerce opens school for data
Zach Noble, Federal Computer Week
A new push is aimed at teaching users how to effectively put Commerce data to good use.

Performance Management
The performance measures that managers hate
Steve Kelman, Federal Computer Week
For metric-based management, Steve Kelman argues, it’s important that the measures not be specified from on high.
OMB, Agencies Need to Read the Fine Print in 2016 Budget
John Kamensky, Government Executive
The omnibus budget passed by Congress in late December contains some performance management surprises.

Collaboration
GAO: GSA, FPS collaboration weaknesses risk building security
Carten Cordell, Federal Times
GAO found that the agencies have drafted a joint strategy to foster better collaboration, but have not yet agreed on key practices to carry it out.

Innovation
Pay for Success Can Stretch Agency Budgets, and Already Has
Patrick Lester, Government Executive
With authorizing legislation that would extend the concept now stalled in Congress, the administration appears to be following an alternate path to supporting pay for success.
White House names new class of Presidential Innovation Fellows
Greg Otto, FedScoop
The White House has named its latest round of Presidential Innovation Fellows, bringing in 11 entrepreneurs-in-residence to help improve citizen services and the way the government operates.

Open Government
Data Trade Group: Transparency Isn’t Enough
Mohana Ravindranath, Nextgov
The Data Transparency Coalition, a trade association which advocates for federal data sharing, is rebranding to include data management as part of its mission.

Performance Management
How to take control of federal performance management
Liam Ackland, Federal Computer Week
Six steps human capital officers can take to improve performance at agencies.
The Importance of Logic Models and Theories of Change
Social Solutions
Logic models and theories of change should be viewed as an essential tool for supporting program design, management and evaluation.
Measuring What Matters
Marc J. Holley, Cheri A. Recchia, Valerie Bockstette, Stanford Social Innovation Review
The need to determine how best to allocate limited resources requires generating robust performance measures that drive accountability, learning, and impact.

Analytics/Evaluation
Government data is ‘weird’
Zach Noble, Federal Computer Week
The mandated dive into government data is revealing surprising value to agencies, but it comes with rigorous reporting that runs deeper than a typical audit.
What a Brown Delivery Truck Could Teach Government
Stephen Goldsmith, Governing
The technology that UPS uses to optimize its routes and achieve big savings shows how powerful data analytics could be across the public sector.
Reconsidering Evidence: What It Means and How We Use It
Lisbeth Schorr, Stanford Social Innovation Review
The tide that has swept experimental program evaluation to the forefront of knowledge building about social policy is suddenly ebbing.

Innovation
Sticky-note strategy: How federal innovation labs borrow from Silicon Valley
Carten Cordell, Federal Times
The government has started to use human-centered design to develop new policy solutions with a multifaceted group of stakeholders that can contribute a well-rounded slate of expertise. The product is a strategy that is developed from the creative thoughts of a team of experts, rather than a single specialized source.
Public Leadership and the Gift of Time Well Spent
Feather O’Connor Houstoun, Governing
Civic innovation can improve the way government works, but it needs a long runway.
The state of pay for success in 2015
Urban Institute
Recent developments in PFS.

Presidential Transition
How One Group is Trying to Prevent Procrastination on Presidential Transition Planning
Charles Clark, Government Executive
Exactly one year before the next inauguration, a major good-government group on Wednesday announced the formation of a unique and permanent resource center on presidential transitions.
What role career feds can play during the upcoming presidential transition
Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News Radio
Civil servants should actively approach the new leadership and remind them what the agency does and the work they do.