ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

AI, Bureaucratic Discretion, and Accountability

PATimes (Josemaria Salazar)

Accountability that was once reserved for public institutions and officials is now grounded in algorithmic decision-making. Who audits the code? Who ensures that marginalized populations are not unfairly denied services by predictive systems? Most critically, who is accountable when AI fails?

UsingAI to Develop Evidence-Based Policy in New Jersey

The GovLab

A Working Group was tasked with understanding how artificial intelligence will shape the future of work. The challenge was significant: how to rapidly analyze vast amounts of evidence about AI’s impact on work while ensuring recommendations reflected the real needs and concerns of New Jersey’s workers.

Congressional Speeches Less Evidence-Based

StudyFinds

For decades, evidence-based reasoning has been losing ground in the halls of Congress, making way for a more intuition-driven approach to political discourse. According to a new international study, U.S. congressional speeches have undergone a profound linguistic transformation since the mid-1970s, with lawmakers increasingly abandoning factual arguments in favor of gut feelings and personal beliefs.

Developing Strategic Foresight Skills to Navigate Uncertainty – Podcast (56:00 min.)

IBM Center for The Business of Government 

Donna Dupont discusses how strategic foresight can sharpen decision-making when stakes are high, the common barriers that prevent government organizations from adopting a foresight-driven approach to preparedness, and the true resiliency for a government organization.  

Resource of the Week:  County Evidence-Based Budgeting Guide

Results for America

This resource is designed to help county leaders invest in proven policy solutions and ensure that taxpayer dollars deliver results that people can count on. The Guide details five action steps that county officials can take to deliver results for residents.

Harnessing Data and Analytics for Decision Making

RouteFifty

The adoption of process automation and artificial intelligence offers an opportunity to enhance efficiencies across both back-office functions and resident-facing services. In government administration, automation can take on repetitive, time-consuming tasks such as grant processing, procurement and compliance reporting — freeing up staff to focus on higher-value activities that require human judgment.

Resource of the Week:  Work Simplification Manuals

David Deek’s Governance Cybernetics Blog

What happened to the Eisenhower-era process improvement manuals that transformed federal efficiency during the 1940s-1960s? This blogger is collecting these materials from musty libraries and posting them on line in order to improve performance.

Strategic Planning Webinar

National Center for Public Performance (55 minutes)

This episode of NCPP’s Let’s Talk Performance Webinar is on Strategic Planning for Small Communities. Dr.  Stephanie Davis explains how to create effective strategies tailored to the unique needs of small communities. With over 20 years of experience in local government, Stephanie walks us through practical steps to drive meaningful progress where it matters most. 

Resource of the Week:  Managing for Results: Performance-Informed Budgeting in Maryland

Department of Budget and Management

Managing for Results (MFR) is a strategic planning, performance measurement, and budgeting process that emphasizes use of resources to achieve measurable results, accountability, efficiency, and continuous improvement in State government programs. This link provides access to multiple years of state agency performance data, the state’s comprehensive plan, and multiple years of annual performance reports.

“Pulse Report” on Changes to Federal Data Infrastructure

Data Foundation

The Data Foundation released its first “Evidence Capacity Pulse Report” documenting substantial changes affecting America’s data and evaluation infrastructure. The report reveals significant structural shifts in both public and private sectors that impact the nation’s ability to collect, analyze, and evaluate government program effectiveness.

Resource of the Week:  Foundations of Measurement/Metrics

John Cutler/LinkedIn

Eight pieces of advice on performance measurement/metrics (e.g., “all KPIs are metrics but not all metrics are KPIs”), followed by “class notes” on 10 concepts (e.g., leading and lagging indicators).