ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

Learning Agendas Bring Evidence Into Policymaking

Federation of American Scientists

Evidence-based policymaking is not just about policy that draws on science, it’s about how decisions are made, evaluated, and improved over time. Learning agendas are a set of high-priority questions developed by an agency with input from external stakeholders to assess the effectiveness of their programs and policies. These multi-year agendas are intended to be a crucial component of evidence-based policymaking 

Outcome Reviews Realign Legislative Incentives

Substack (Jen Pahlka)

California Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas announced an intentional, structured process for evaluating whether the laws lawmakers pass actually do what they’re supposed to do. The program is called Outcomes Reviews, and it’s launching as a modest pilot in the state’s lower house, with the intention to look back at roughly 8-15 laws in 2026.

Resource of the Week: Public Services Performance Tracker 2025

Institute for Government (UK)

The Public Services Performance Tracker 2025 annual report provides a comprehensive stocktake. Using more than 250 indicators, it analyses spending, demand, staffing and performance across nine key public services: general practice, hospitals, adult social care, children’s social care, homelessness services, schools, police, criminal courts and prisons.

Four Ways to Measure Progress

LinkedIn – Stacey Barr (Australia)

Leaders know how essential it is to demonstrate if the time, money and effort being spent is having the intended impact on the organisation’s success. Using these four types of progress measures, in balance, makes it much easier.

Aspirational vs. Achievable Goals

Barrett and Greene, Inc.

The city of San Diego, CA’s auditor found the city met 48 percent of its targets for key performance indicators (KPIs). Some city departments selected KPIs that were aspirational while other selected KPIs that were realistically achievable. Conclusion? The majority of KPIs should focus on achievable goals that can be reached within the budget allocated.

Measuring Safety, Right

Barrett and Greene, Inc. (guest blogger: Alexander Trembley)

Crime rates shouldn’t be discarded as a measure of public safety, but they should be one indicator in a broader approach to measurement. Relying on crime statistics alone to judge safety is like judging a car’s performance only by engine failures.

Public Value and Public Strategy

Vaugh Tan – Blog Post (Signapore)

Public sector organizations have spent decades importing private sector strategy tools (KPIs, risk management frameworks, planning processes, etc) without acknowledging a fundamental flaw: Private companies can optimize for a small set of outcomes and stakeholders, and work to short time horizons, but the public sector must serve diverse stakeholders and desired outcomes, and work to indefinite time horizons.

Finding Leading vs. Lagging Indicators

LinkedIn (Ayca Tumer Arikan)

In many cases, key performance indicators tell us what happened, but not what’s going to happen. The real power in measurement lies in having leading indicators that predict results before they show up in lag measures.

Bridging the Future and the Present

IBM Center for The Business of Government (Michael Keegan) via LinkedIn

Strategic foresight addresses a critical limitation in traditional strategic planning. A mechanistic approach to strategic planning loses sight of its fundamental purpose: preparing organizations to navigate an uncertain future.

Resource of the Week:  Taking America’s Pulse

Barrett & Greene

An ambitious new undertaking, a free app that tracks and compares state performance across 50 key indicators, has been announced by America’s Pulse, a nonpartisan, nonprofit initiative.

Responding to Response Times

Barrett & Greene

For emergency services, every moment can spell the difference between a minor incident and a crippling injury or a death. To the general public, fast response times are the most tangible evidence that they are getting good service. But most people who read about response times aren’t aware that they can be measured very differently by first responders.

Embedding Strategic Foresight into Strategic Planning

IBM Center for The Business of Government (Bert George)

Despite strategic foresight’s popularity, it is often detached from more ongoing strategic planning and management in government. This goes against the origins of strategic foresight, which was developed as an approach to making strategic planning and management more future-oriented. This report makes the claim that when strategic foresight and strategic planning and management are better integrated, the effectiveness of both approaches in government and for government enhances greatly. But how to provide such integration? Four cases of strategic foresight from across the globe are analyzed in this report.

Resource of the Week:  City Health Dashboard

NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health

This project’s goal is to provide communities and city leaders with an array of regularly updated data specific to neighborhood and/or city boundaries – such as life expectancy, park access, and children in poverty – to improve the health and well-being of everyone in the community. Launched in 2018, the Dashboard offers data on over 45 measures of health and drivers of health for over 1,200 cities across the U.S. 

Strengthening Performance Management

Barrett & Greene

Here’s a recap of Do’s and Don’ts in strengthening performance management systems, based on the last Urban Institute report by the late Harry Hatry. They a grouped into five categories! 

11 Data Champions

What Works Cities

WWC highlights 11 community-level data champions from different backgrounds; they are experts in technology, energy, geography and more. Some spent years in the private sector while others were city interns straight out of school.

Resource of the Week:  Performance Management in the Public Sector, 3^rd Edition

Wouter Van Dooren, Geert Bouckaert, John Halligan

This newly updated book moves beyond the traditional New Public Management paradigm, the book critically examines how performance measurement, incorporation, and use can be purposefully designed to enhance public management and governance.