ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

WEBINAR: Local Strategic Planning & Community Engagement (May 17 – 11 a.m. Eastern)

National Academy of Public Administration

Leaders from Baltimore County, MD, and South Bend, IN, will talk about their communities’ needs and lessons learned on the importance of strategic planning and public engagement.

Foresight: Reimagining American Democracy as Governance for the Future

The Fulcrum (Suzette Brooks Masters)

The United States — at all levels and across all branches — lags many other countries in adopting and making full use of strategic foresight and futures thinking to chart a course towards our North Star — a more equitable, pluralist, sustainable and abundant society and planet.

It’s Time for a Health Check Up!

IBM Center for The Business of Government

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s mid-April memo to agencies on the post-pandemic workplace directs agencies to establish ongoing routines to assess, monitor progress and diagnose issues relating to organizational health and performance matters, such as improving employee engagement, customer service and employee-to-contractor ratios. It also directs agencies to develop an “organizational health and performance framework” that encompasses a set of indicators to measure, monitor, and improve organizational health and performance.

New Organizational Health and Performance Directive for Federal Agencies: A Fertile Field for Research

PATimes (Bill Brantley)

Over the years, I’ve refined the concepts of organizational health and agility with a focus on the role of leadership . . .  As federal agencies implement the OMB Org Health Memo, they can provide the data to study the links between leadership, engagement and organizational health and performance.

Our Accountability System is Broken. Fix It First

Government Executive

In an op-ed column, Ron Sanders says our accountability system — the way we hold federal employees accountable for meeting reasonable standards of performance and behavior—is badly broken. As a result, it’s become a political albatross around the neck of other civil service reform efforts.

Does Performance-Related Pay Work?

Policy Design & Practice

A meta-analysis of studies finds a statistically significant, positive but small population effect size between performance-related pay and employee and performance outcomes.

Resource of the Week:  Example of a Great Federal Performance Report

U.S. Department of Commerce

The Commerce Performance Data Pro webpage provides key data sources about the department’s work, its FY 2022-2024 Annual Performance Plan and Report, and a separate set of “tiles” for each agency strategic objective and sub-objective in its four-year strategic plan. 

Podcast: OMB Guidance on Steps to Measure and Improve Organizational Health and Performance

National Academy of Public Administration

This half-hour interview discusses the new OMB guidance to federal agencies to develop measures of organizational health and performance, along with plans to improve. The interview provides background on the development of the OMB guidance, which includes the results of a 2018 NAPA report to OMB on this topic.

Does Performance Info Receive Political Attention?

Public Administration Review (early access)

This study gathered administrative data on Danish student test scores and the minutes of local school committees. The results show that political entities leverage performance data to discover problems in need of attention in ways similar to other organizations. 

Is the Biden Administration’s Management Agenda Back on Track?

FCW (Steve Kelman)

Kelman felt the Biden Management Agenda was missing a performance goal — to deliver better value for taxpayers and agency missions through the procurement system. But when he talked to agency career contracting professionals, he found the system is working better in practice than in theory.

New Dashboards to Increase Federal Agency Access to OPM Data Products and Services

U.S. Office of Personnel Management

OPM released its FY 2023-2026 data strategy on a new OPM Data Portal that also includes a set of initial data dashboards and FedScope data sets. It includes data from the annual federal employee viewpoint survey, a cyber workforce dashboard, and a hiring manager satisfaction dashboard.

Resource of the Week:  Another Strategic Planning Guide

Cascade

A reader of the Weekly Accountability & Performance Update pointed me to a 2023 series of blog posts that offer a step-by-step guide on “How to Write a Strategic Plan that Gets Results + Examples.”  . . . . H/T to Dr. Mihail Sadeanu

Biennial Update to GAO’s High-Risk List

U.S. Government Accountability Office

This biennial update describes the status of high-risk areas, outlines actions that are needed to assure further progress, and identifies new high-risk areas needing attention by the executive branch and Congress.  Substantial progress has been made, with 16 of the 34 areas making improvements since 2021. This the most progress in the eight years GAO started rating high-risk areas. Two of the 16 were removed from the list. Three new areas were added.

New Initiative to Measure Agencies’ Organizational Health and Performance

U.S. Office of Management and Budget

This memorandum outlines steps executive departments and agencies will take to ensure that agency decisions regarding work environments continue to improve organizational health and organizational performance. Agencies’ organizational health and organizational performance frameworks and approaches must support delivery of the agency’s statutory missions.

CAP WEBINAR: The Evidence Act and Performance (Tuesday, Apr 25 – 1 p.m. EDT)

American Society for Public Administration

Nick Hart, the policy director of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking and current president of the Data Foundation, and Kathryn Newcomer, George Washington University professor and co-author with Hart of Evidence-building and Evaluation in Government, will discuss current challenges to evidence-building efforts in federal agencies. 

RECORDING: CAP Awards Ceremony and Harry Hatry Tribute

American Society for Public Administration

The Center for Accountability and Performance’s annual recognition award ceremony was held April 12. It was supplemented by a special tribute to the late Harry Hatry, a pioneer in modern performance and program evaluation at the Urban Institute.

Six Steps to Make Your Strategic Plan Really Strategic

Harvard Business Review

Many strategic plans aren’t strategic, or even plans. To fix that, try the six-step process described in this article.

Using Evidence-Based Management to Drive Change

LinkedIn – “Change Management”

Change is inevitable in any organization, but how do you make sure that your change initiatives are based on sound evidence and not just intuition or assumptions? Evidence-based management (EBM) is a systematic approach to using the best available data and research to inform your decisions and actions.

Agencies Report Quarterly Progress on Priority Goals

U.S. Office of Management and Budget

Agencies report progress on a quarterly basis. The two-year (FY22–23) performance period will end on September 30. These quarterly updates across 90 APGs from major agencies provide insight to the public about progress made in the Federal Government and highlight key milestones toward achieving these goals.

Can Performance Pay Helps States & Localities Hang onto the Best & Brightest?

RouteFifty

There has been growing interest in adopting performance pay. Cara Woodson Welch, executive director of the Public Sector HR Association says that anecdotally she has been “hearing more people talking about it recently.”

Federal Agencies to Develop Measures of Organizational Health & Performance

U.S. Office of Management and Budget

OMB released new guidance to agencies, requiring that they identify a set of indicators, which may be adjusted over time, that each agency- identified major operating unit will use for measuring, monitoring, and improving organizational health and organizational performance. These include indicators that support agency assessment of and decision-making related to current and future work environments. 

Resource of the Week:  Inventory of Data-Driven Local Governments

Office of Performance Analytics, City of Alexandria VA 

Here is a map and list of 116 city and county governments that use data, analysis, process improvement, and/or evidence to continuously improve their services. If you know of others, you can have them added to the list!

Improving Transparency of Cross-Agency Priority Goals

US Government Accountability Office

GAO found that the administration’s designated Cross-Agency Priority goals do not address all relevant GPRA Modernization Act requirements, and related guidance and practices. OMB designated CAP goals for three of the five management areas required by GPRAMA.

Negative Audits Can Be Good News

Barrett & Greene

A performance audit of the City of Austin’s strategic direction takes issue with the timeliness and quality of the performance measures used to measure strategic outcomes in the Texas state capital.

White House Progress Report on Advancing Equitable Data

Office of Science & Technology Policy

OSTP released a report on the progress the Biden-Harris administration has made in collecting and analyzing data to help identify disparities in federal policies and programs in order to deliver more equitable outcomes for the American people.