ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

Leadership
How Can the Next Administration Build A Strong Political and Career Leadership Team?
Dan Chenok, Business of Government
By focusing on “leadership talent” as a key priority, the next President can significantly enhance government’s capacity for political and career executives to deliver strong results.
COOs give President’s Management Council a mixed grade
Emily Kopp, Federal News Radio
Deputy secretaries and other COOs give lackluster reviews to the President’s Management Agenda and President’s Management Council in a new report.
Deputy secretaries: ‘Integrators-in-chief’ or sacrificial goats?
Emily Kopp, Federal News Radio
COOs are charged with tackling everything from complex, long-standing management problems to the execution of new program and policy goals.

Management
Rule #1: Policy Design Starts With Operational Capacity
Robert Behn, Government Executive
Before public officials ask an organization to do something, they need to ask two key design questions.

Open Government
Going big on Data Act implementation
Zach Noble, Federal Computer Week
Senior leadership’s message is clear that a half-hearted effort at tracking government spending data just won’t cut it.
Warner Pushes for DATA Act Follow-Through
Charles Clark, Government Executive
Sen. Mark Warner pronounced himself pleased with joint-agency progress on implementation.

Performance Management
Did Performance Measurement Cause America’s Police Problem?
Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene, Governing
Some argue it can be traced back to how governments evaluate officers.

Efficiency/Reorganization
Employees drive USDA culture change that leads to $1.4B in savings
Jason Miller, Federal News Radio
The Agriculture Department saved more than a $1 billion over the last three years by acting more like one organization. But maybe more importantly, the Blueprint for Stronger Service initiative initiated a culture change among USDA employees.

Open Government
Watchdog Finds Glitches in Governmentwide Effort to Track Spending Consistently
Charles Clark, Government Executive
Treasury has shown progress toward getting agencies to post consistent data on spending, but some lapses in tracking of workstreams suggest that planners view the vast project from too high an altitude.

Innovation
Why Steve Jobs’s Influence is Reverberating Through Government
Kevin Merritt, Quartz
Government is being re-shaped by data-driven digital innovators.

Performance Management
The Truth About Government Performance
Tom Shoop, Government Executive
What do we have to show for more than two decades of focus on results?

Analytics/Evaluation
12 Ways for Congress to Step Up US Data Innovation
Hallie Golden, Nextgov
As data becomes more important in shaping the country’s day-to-day decision-making, the Center for Data Innovation has some ideas for how Congress can fast track U.S. data innovation.
How to Successfully Harvest Value from Open Data
Jason Shueh, Government Technology
Experts offer advice on how civic tech firms, entrepreneurs and nonprofits — who are are pushing state and local governments to open up more datasets based on national standards — can best use the data they seek.

Efficiency/Reorganization
Defining and achieving efficiency in government
Steve Goodrich, Federal Times
Suggests a number of changes to increase the efficiency of federal agencies.

Innovation
OPM Lab Takes the Lead on Innovation
Katherine Archuleta, Government Executive
Team uses human-centered design to help agencies improve services.

Performance Management
Cobert: OMB goals go beyond Obama’s last term
Ryan McDermott, FierceGovernment
Governmentwide initiatives launched by OMB during the Obama administration are meant to extend well past 2016.

Customer Service
Can the government fix citizen services?
Andy Medici, Federal Times
In an age in which citizens’ expectations of services are rapidly increasing, the federal government must rise to the challenge — and government officials are pushing their agencies to transform how they deliver services.

Leadership
Exploring how outstanding public executives make tough decisions: An interview with Ronald Sanders, Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton
Andy Feldman, Gov Innovator Blog
How do outstanding senior government executives make tough decisions? Recent research suggests that these leaders need to be “ambidextrous,” meaning skilled at gathering input and conducting thorough analysis of complex decisions, while at the same time willing to make tough and courageous decisions.

Open Government
OMB starts DATA Act implementation in high gear
Jason Miller, Federal News Radio
OMB and Treasury released a set of 12 finalized data elements, 15 data elements for final review and 30 others that need to go through the public and agency comment phase.

Performance Management
Obama Management Chief: Senior Execs Must Set Tone for Better Performance
Charles Clark, Government Executive
Cobert stressed the importance of the Senior Executive Service in “setting the tone” for improved performance and leveraging new talent in government.
The Painful Management Lessons From Five Presidencies
Jonathan Breul and Paul Posner, Government Executive
Forget the next big idea, and focus on what’s already been hatched.
Using the Balanced Scorecard in the public sector: An interview with Kenneth Thompson, DePaul University
Andy Feldman, Gov Innovator Podcast
The Balanced Scorecard is a tool “for translating an organization’s strategy into action through the development of performance objectives and measures in order to fulfill its mission.”

Innovation
Why We Need to Get Away From Innovation by Anecdote
Kevin DeSouza, Governing
Feel-good stories are nice, but there’s a role for academia in bringing scientific rigor to the process.

Open Government
Better data, Better decisions, Better government
David Mader and David Lebryk, OMB Blog
The DATA Act requires agencies to use common government-wide data standards when posting that information to USAspending.gov.
How hackathons help with more than code
Steve Kelman, Federal Computer Week
New ways of thinking and competition for the status quo are also valuable by products of hackathons.
Outside techies clean up at Hackathon
Zach Noble, Federal Computer Week
More than 60 developers, designers and data scientists from academia and the private sector participated in GSA’s inaugural Hackathon.

Risk Management
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
John Kamensky, Government Executive
Six reasons agencies aren’t managing risk effectively.