ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

Performance Management
Solidifying the Foundation for Performance Management
John Kamensky, Business of Government
The next president will have an opportunity to build on the real progress agencies have made in performance management.

Analytics/Evaluation
White House Taps Techies to Apply Federal Data to Beating Poverty
Charles Clark, Government Executive
Private software developers attend first demo of Opportunity Project.

Innovation
Encouraging and Sustaining Innovation in Government for the New Administration (Part II)
Dan Chenok and Alan Howze, Business of Government
Key ideas, findings and recommendations for sustaining innovation in the new administration.
OMB: All agency acquisitions get innovation labs by May 2
Carten Cordell, Federal Times
OMB released guidance requiring the acquisition departments of all federal agencies to develop innovation labs by May.
Agencies beginning to seed roots of digital service culture change
Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News Radio
More than a year after agencies began to embed digital services teams into their organizations, some are challenging often outdated and misinterpreted federal policies to develop new customer-focused products and tools.

Open Government
6 Ideas to Help Government Realize Open Data’s Transformative Power
Jessica Mulholland, Government Technology
Government thinks open data is an add-on that boosts transparency, but it’s more than that.

Presidential Transition
Brace Yourself for the Transition Management Jumble
David Chu, Government Executive
The ranks of the departing team can thin rapidly as January 20th approaches.

Analytics/Evaluation
Obama’s Final Budget Holds Some Surprising Hidden Pearls
Shelley Metzenbaum, Government Executive
Data on issues as varied as crime, disposable income, and heavy drinking offer valuable insight into what’s working and what isn’t in government.
Do Universities, Research Institutions Hold the Key to Open Data’s Next Chapter?
Ben Miller, Government Technology
Where government has raw data, professors and researchers have expertise and analytics programs.

Customer Service
Seven Steps to Becoming a CX Leader in Government
Martha Dorris, Government Executive
Improving customer experience could greatly benefit both employees and taxpayers.

Innovation
The Digital de Tocqueville
John Kamensky, Government Executive
Governing in the future is going to depend upon treating the public and the civil service as skilled partners in problem solving.
Encouraging and Sustaining Innovation in Government for the New Administration
Dan Chenok and Alan Howze, Business of Government
Government has made great strides in creating pathways for innovation over the last several years. The next Administration faces the challenge of how to leverage the continuously accelerating pace of change to make the government more effective.
‘Pay for Success’: An Idea With Bipartisan Appeal
Charles Chieppo, Governing
Two new initiatives show the increasing sophistication of an approach that pays social-services providers only for programs that work.
When agile development is change management in disguise
Mark Rockwell, Federal Computer Week
When it comes to digital services, the tech is often secondary at best.

Risk Management
OMB Prepares to Ratchet Up Enterprise Risk Management
Charles Clark, Government Executive
Expected in April, the new version of OMB’s Circular A-123 will likely impose new requirements that agencies formalize the discipline known as enterprise risk management.

Performance Management
Is past performance working better than we thought?
Steve Kelman, Federal Computer Week
Does the government’s past performance evaluation system help the government during post-award contract management?

Analytics/Evaluation
Hidden In the Partisan Budget Divide: An Agreement on Evidence-Based Policy
Patrick Lester, Government Executive
Buried in the President’s budget are recommendations on evidence-based policymaking that may prove more influential than some expect.

Customer Service
Agencies Advised to Be More ‘Customer-Centric’
Charles Clark, Government Executive
Though “pockets of excellence” exist in government, most agencies are falling short on providing services that satisfy taxpayers.
Use Data, Not Assumptions, to Improve the Customer Experience
Eric Keller, Government Executive
Agencies misunderstand their customers when datasets are not integrated or widely shared.

Leadership
Poor Leadership Derailed Obamacare Rollout, Not Technology
Katherine McIntire Peters, Government Executive
Management really does matter. That’s the takeaway message of a case study of how the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services fumbled the implementation of HealthCare.gov.
High-level management failures doomed HealthCare.gov
Adam Mazmanian, Federal Computer Week
A comprehensive inspector general report blames high-level government mismanagement for the failed launch of HealthCare.gov.

Open Government
Flint and the Case for Open Government
Ron Fournier, The Atlantic/Government Executive
Averting crises like the one in Flint requires re-inventing government to be more efficient and connected to a tech-empowered public, where mutual transparency and data sharing can leverage the wisdom of crowds.

Presidential Transition
Must Presidential Transitions End with Sabotaged White House Keyboards?
Charles Clark, Government Executive
Scholars and alumni of past presidential transitions strive for bipartisan planning.

Analytics/Evaluation
Making Taxpayer Dollars Deliver
John Kamensky, Government Executive
The President’s 2017 budget proposes to take “evidence-based approaches to scale,” strengthen the base of evidence available to future policymakers, and increase the analytical capacity of agencies to use evidence and data.
How Allegheny County’s Data Warehouse is improving human services through integrated data
Andy Feldman, Gov Innovator Blog
Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, is recognized as a leader in using data to improve the results of its human services programs.

Innovation
Scaling Up Innovations With Government
Rahul Nayar, Asif Saleh, and Anna Minj, Stanford Social Innovation Review
How to overcome the barriers that large institutions like the government put in the way of scaling up innovations.

Open Government
When Everyone Is an Expert
Stephen Goldsmith, Stanford Social Innovation Review
In an era of instant feedback and crowdsourcing, the government misses out when it relies solely on authorized voices.

Budget
11 Major Agency Reforms in Obama’s Budget
Eric Katz, Government Executive
President Obama’s budget proposal includes a number of significant proposals to revamp agency structures and programs.

Performance Management
Rethinking Federal Grants Management: From Oversight to Insight
Shelley Metzenbaum, Government Executive
The mindset and the skill sets of grant managers need to evolve from primarily thinking about “conducting oversight” to generating insights that help grantees learn from experience and improve performance.
Talk about an easy way to improve your organization’s performance!
Steve Kelman, Federal Computer Week
Kelman details a recent experiment into the impact of “public service motivation.”

Collaboration
Building Capacity Through Networks
Jennifer Chandler and Kristen Scott Kennedy, Stanford Social Innovation Review
Nonprofits that are part of a network can leverage resources and knowledge to build capacity more effectively than nonprofits that “go it alone.”

Customer Service
Customer service improvements moving too slowly, so now there’s a law
Jason Miller, Federal News Radio
Rep. Henry Cuellar authored a provision in the FY2016 spending bill to increase pressure on agencies to improve their performance.