ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

Summary of White House Evidence Forums

The White House and the Policy Lab at Brown University

This summary provides illustrative guidance on how to get started on such a partnership, this Evidence Forum showcased a variety of successful partnership models and dove into specific areas where researcher help was needed. 

Mid-Atlantic StatNet Meeting – A Decade of Learning Together

Barrett & Greene

Twice a year, county, city, and state performance officers from about 20 jurisdictions across the mid-Atlantic region gather to share similar challenges, experiences, and promising practices through a group called the Mid-Atlantic StatNet, a reference to a popular style of performance management in use across the U.S. since the mid-1990s.

Three Types of Performance Measure Relationships

Stacey Barr’s Blog

By understanding how measures are related to one another, we increase their power to help us understand and diagnose performance, and thus how we can report those measures together to facilitate a more holistic response to performance improvement.

Resource of the Week:  Rethinking Budgeting Initiative

Government Finance Officers Association

GFOA and its partners are working to better understand the municipal budgeting landscape and identify ways local governments can leverage best practices to build a modern, transparent and efficient budget process.  A recent survey helps prioritize areas for action.

Ending Chronic Homelessness in Hennepin County

Governing

Data-driven decisions, support from the state and a dedicated, collaborative team are helping Hennepin County, Minn., get a handle on an intractable problem, with the audacious goal of eliminating chronic homelessness by 2025.

What Can Government Learn from a Baseball Star?

Barrett & Green Report

Baseball, which has long been a sport full of statistics, seemed like the ideal environment for such a movement just as government (which also thrives on data) is a place where metrics can be powerful tools. But beyond the common sense of the issue, there are some, in both government and baseball, who feel this reliance can have some downsides.

Webinar: Let’s Talk Performance (Thur., Oct. 26, 1 p.m. Eastern)

National Center for Public Performance (free)

Learn how local governments can use data effectively to make informed decisions that promote both performance and equity. T. Michael Stavres, City Manager for the City of Winter Haven, Florida, and Dr. Tamara Dimitrijevska-Markoski, Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida ‘s School of Public Affairs will discuss the power of making data-driven decisions in local government with the goals of improving performance and equity.

States Showing the Way on Open Data

Governing

Too often, the data that states collect is inaccessible to those who need it to make decisions about education and careers. It’s encouraging that policymakers are moving toward cross-agency policies that ensure robust data access.

Broadband Infrastructure: Lacking Timely Performance Goals and Targeted Measures

U.S. Government Accountability Office

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration was authorized to set up a $1 billion grant program to improve this infrastructure’s nationwide availability. While NTIA followed some leading practices for the program, it didn’t set measurable goals with specific targets—which would allow NTIA to track the effectiveness of grant funding.

Resource of the Week:  Strategic Foresight Library

LBL Strategies

A set of useful resources gleaning recent work and news related to strategic foresight and scenario-based planning.

Measuring & Encouraging Performance Info in Government

World Bank (Donald Moynihan)

The existence of government analytics does not ensure its use. This chapter dis­cusses how governments can measure the use of government analytics—or, in other words, conduct analyt­ics on government analytics.

User Accountability in Contracting Out

Journal of Public Administration and Theory

How does contracting out affect service performance? Evidence to date is mixed. We argue that this is partially due to prior studies focusing often on whether—not how—services are contracted. Yet, how services are contracted matters.

Where Did Pandemic Dollars Go?

SubStack/Liz Farmer

Per a new GAO report on state-local spending of $350 Billion in Recovery Act monies, in some places, the money is nearly gone while other governments haven’t even touched their stash. And $606 million is totally unaccounted for.

New Problem-Solving Skills All Cities Need

Stanford Social Innovation Review

 If public officials are to effectively address our biggest global concerns—while also managing local challenges and the interplay between the two—they’ll need to expand their skill set to include “problem-solving capabilities.” Skills, mindsets, and practices are needed in four critical areas.

Invoice-Stat: Baltimore

The Baltimore Banner

Baltimore’s Department of Finance is steadily chipping away at the extensive backlog of outstanding invoices it owes to goods and services suppliers, thanks to the implementation of a new software system that is gradually transforming how the city runs.

RatStat: New York City

The Economist (paywalled)

Using crime fighting tactics, like CompStat, the city takes on its rats and rubbish.

Resource of the Week:  The Government Analytics Handbook

World Bank

This free handbook presents frontier evidence and practitioner insights on how to leverage data to make governments work better. Covering a range of microdata sources—such as administrative data and public servant surveys—as well as tools and resources for undertaking the analytics, it transforms the ability of governments to take a data-informed approach to diagnose and improve how public organizations work.

Three Reasons to Avoid Using Indexes and Scores

YouTube (4:14 min.)

Stacey Barr

You might think that rolling up your performance measures or KPIs into a weighted score or composite index is a great strategy to simplify your dashboard, to deal with lots of measures, or to create proxies for intangible goals. Think again. They hide the real problem of too many measures, they hide the real signals of change, and they hide the results you are trying to monitor. 

What Counts as Evidence in the Eyes of Policymakers?

Public Administration Review

What counts as evidence depends on the context, the nature of the questions that are being addressed, and the evidence that is available. Policy actors’ perceptions of what counts as evidence often change as their careers progress, and are influenced by the roles they take on, the organizations they work in, and the policy issues they work on.

Federal Agencies Can Better Measure Performance of Innovation Offices

U.S. Government Accountability Office

Federal regulators of financial institutions have offices dedicated to financial innovation and technology, but they don’t have performance goals and measures for this work. GAO offers recommendations for action.

Seven Things to Know About Outcome-Based Contracting

Centre for Public Impact

The evidence shows that outcome-based contracting (sometimes called outcome-based performance management or payment by results) doesn’t produce good outcomes in real life. This article lists seven things you should know about outcomes-based contracting based on the extensive research evidence about these practices.

WEBINAR: Attacks on Auditor Independence (Thursday, Oct. 5, 1 p.m. Eastern)

ASPA Center on Accountability & Performance

There is a perennial threat to auditor independence at the state and local levels. A panel of veteran practitioners take attendees behind the scenes to better understand the need for independence and the difficulty some have in preserving it.

Evidence 2.0: The Next Era of Evidence-Based Policymaking

Stanford Social Innovation Review

It has been five years since the passage of the Evidence Act. While most federal agencies have created fairly robust evidence bases, unlocking that evidence for practical use by decision makers remains challenging. One might argue that if Evidence 1.0 was focused on the production of evidence, then the next five years—let’s call it Evidence 2.0—will be focused on the effective use of that evidence. 

Explore the September 2023 Agency Priority Goal Updates

U.S. Office of Management & Budget

Two years ago, federal agencies committed to 85 “priority goals” with a series of milestones to be completed by September 30, 2023. This set of progress updates cover the April-June 2023 period. The final progress reports for the two-year goals will be released in early 2024.

What Happens When We Measure People?

YouTube (5:15 min.)

Stacey Barr says you can’t prove that measuring and monitoring people’s performance actually improves the performance of the organization.

The Promising Evolution of Performance Management

Governing/Kennedy School

Nowhere in the U.S. can we better see the evolution and promise of local government performance programs than in Washington, D.C., thanks in no small part to the work of City Administrator Kevin Donahue. His career evolution parallels the evolution of the “-Stat” movement.

How Data Conversations Can Address Pressing Challenges

RouteFifty
Faced with water shortages, Henderson, Nevada, has turned to a data-driven approach to solve it. It’s now rolling out its approach to other departments citywide.

The Emerging Challenge of Budgeting and Performance

Government Finance Research Center

We tend to budget by agency and then, typically, by program within the agency. However, the actual implementation of almost every program depends on complex networks involving multiple programs, agencies, levels of government, sectors of society, and even foreign governments. The flow of action needs to make connections among all these pieces, but the flow of budget decisions typically doesn’t match up.

Connecting the Dots: Rethinking Data Systems to Improve Outcomes

Results for America

There are inspiring pockets of work happening around the country that show the potential for integrating data across sectors and over time to achieve better outcomes.

Using Citywide Data Strategies to Connect Dots, Drive Results

Bloomberg Cities Network

Data is more central than ever to improving service delivery, managing performance, and identifying opportunities that better serve residents. That’s why a growing number of cities are adding a new tool to their arsenal—the citywide data strategy.