ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

Performance Management
25 Years Later, What Happened to ‘Reinventing Government’?
John Buntin, Governing
The ambitious public management crusade of the 1990s has made a mark on governments everywhere. But it’s fallen short of some of its goals.

Analytics/Evaluation
How Academia Is Failing Government
Philip Joyce, Governing
Because the incentives for academic research are misaligned, it has little impact on the real world of public administration and policy.

Collaboration
Effective Leadership in Network Collaboration: Lessons Learned from Continuum of Care Homeless Programs
Michael Keegan, Business of Government
What does effective collaboration look like and does leadership matter? If leadership is important, what specific skills and qualities are valuable for leaders to possess and/or develop in order to lead successful collaborative efforts?

Customer Service
How Branding Can Transform Government Customer Service
Dannielle Blumenthal, Government Executive
Government agencies tend to suffer from an extreme form of myopia.

Open Government
Watchdog: The ‘Window’ Into Government Performance Is Pretty Cloudy
Eric Katz, Government Executive
GAO says the Performance.gov website doesn’t do a very good job of tracking whether agencies are meeting their goals.
The Responsibility of Government in Building Civic Engagement
Darcie Piechowski, Business of Government
Government organizations help improve the lives of citizens every day. Yet, in the best of circumstances, the betterment of society is the responsibility of everyone – public sector employees who work for the government and citizens who interact with it.

Presidential Transition
What presidential transition looks like from inside an agency
Jory Heckman, Federal News Radio
The upcoming presidential transition, once complete, will bring nearly 4,000 new political appointees into the federal workforce, but the new presidential administration will need the existing career civil service to get policy off the ground.

Risk Management
Faster Government: Rethinking the Risk Equation
William Eggers, Governing
In a time of rapid change, being ready to fail early and get past it is essential.

Performance Management
When Performance Measures are Counter-Productive
Robert Behn, Government Executive
Different measures create different incentives.
Creating a results-focused city government: An interview with Michael Nutter, former Mayor of Philadelphia
Andy Feldman, GovInnovator Podcast
What is the value of evidence and data for elected city leaders as well as how can those leaders create a results-focused culture within city government?

Analysis/Evaluation
Making rigorous program evaluation easier with RCT-YES software: An interview with Peter Schochet, Fellow, Mathematica Policy Research
Andy Feldman, GovInnovator Podcast
How can leaders determine if a proposed change is actually effective? New software, called RCT-YES, is designed to help public leaders (and the researchers who work with them) answer that question.

Innovation
Future-readying the federal workforce
Webster Mudge, Federal Computer Week
Most agencies have the data and domain knowledge needed to drive innovation. Now they need a culture that attracts and nurtures the necessary talent.

Open Government
A Scorecard for Public Engagement
Rod Gould, Governing
Involving members of the community in policymaking is tricky, but it’s worth the effort. Those who do it well share some approaches.

Presidential Transition
Presidential transition an opportunity to reset knowledge management
Meredith Somers, Federal News Radio
The presidential transition is a time of significant change, but it’s also an opportunity to strengthen the continuity of knowledge management.

Performance Management
Is Performance Budgeting an Unnatural Act?
John Kamensky, Business of Government
Performance budgeting has been a mantra of government reformers at least since the 1949 Hoover Commission. But its actual implementation has been sporadic. Why is something that seems sensible so hard to do?

Analytics/Evaluation
Analytics: Turning a Flood of Data into Valuable Information
Eyragon Eidam, Government Technology
At a recent event, state and local officials discussed insights to be gained from the exponential increase of data and where teams should focus their energy.
The Chief Data Officer’s Path to Success
Viral Chawda, Governing
A lot of obstacles need to be overcome to bring the power of data and analytics to government, but it’s doable.

Collaboration
Improving Implementation of Cross-Agency Priority Goals
Sarah Veale, Peter Beck, and Margaret Adams, The Public Manager
By building capacity for shared work, agencies are making progress toward their CAP goals.

Innovation
Challenge.gov takes wing
Steve Kelman, Federal Computer Week
What the General Services Administration calls “challenges” are a way for the government to buy solutions by announcing a specific goal and inviting anyone who is interested to submit a solution.
Encouraging and Sustaining Innovation in Government: Technology and Innovation in the Next Administration
Dan Chenok, Business of Government
When a new Administration takes office in January 2017, a new set of leaders will drive the nation’s innovation agenda. These leaders can build on significant progress from previous administrations, overcome continued challenges in modernizing technology infrastructure, enact flexible policies and regulations, and build innovation leadership and skills in the federal workforce.
VA demo day showcases employee-driven innovation
Chase Gunter, Federal Computer Week
The Department of Veterans Affairs is turning to its employees for technological approaches to improving health care delivery for veterans.
USAID crowdsources 21 ideas for fighting Zika
Amanda Ziadeh, Federal Computer Week
The U.S. Agency for International Development’s crowdsourcing efforts to fight the Zika virus have produced some cutting-edge solutions from global innovators.
When Innovation Goes Wrong
Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair, Stanford Social Innovation Review
Efforts by social enterprises to develop novel interventions receive a great deal of attention. Yet these organizations often stumble when it comes to turning innovation into impact.

Presidential Transition
The Presidential Transition Should Include Civil Service Reform
Howard Risher, Government Executive
Efforts to upgrade agency management over the past two decades have largely ignored the workforce.
A Blueprint for Improving Government Performance
Howard Risher, Government Executive
While it’s long overdue, there’s plenty of reason to believe Civil Service reform could be successful.

Performance Management
Can Self-Managed Teams Work in Government?
John Kamensky, Business of Government
Federal leaders are in a quandary about how to improve employees’ engagement on the job.

Analytics/Evaluation
The value of Integrated Data Systems for states and localities: An interview with Dennis Culhane, Professor, University of Pennsylvania, and Co-Principal Investigator, Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy
Andy Feldman, GovInnovator Podcast
Programs and agencies in government often exist in silos, where the efforts of one aren’t necessarily connected with others and their data are not shared between them. That slows the process within government of learning what works, coordinating efforts, spurring social innovation, and continuous improvement.

Customer Service
6 steps to align agencies to citizen experience
Josh Plaskoff, Federal News Radio
Six steps to improving an agency’s customer experience.

Innovation
What is 18F?
Government Technology
Founded in March of 2014, 18F is a federal digital consultancy that helps other agencies buy, build and share modern software using agile development and human-centered design.

Open Government
Can Citizen Governance Save Our Republic?
James Toscano, Governing
Some governments are moving to give citizens more of a direct role in policymaking. It’s a promising experiment.

Presidential Transition
‘Superstar’ executives lend advice to career SES on upcoming transition
Nicole Ogrysko, Federal News Radio
The Senior Executives Association has a new guidebook for SES members.

Performance Management
New playbook trying to make performance metrics more than just a compliance exercise
Jason Miller, Federal News Radio
The Performance Improvement Council is trying to bring together tools and people to take better advantage of technology and data.

Analytics/Evaluation
Path to DATA Act rollout hits another roadblock
Meredith Somers, Federal News Radio
A four-month delay to deliver a process for tagging and transmitting federal spending information under the DATA Act might jeopardize the rule’s final rollout.

Collaboration
A new face of interagency collaboration
Steve Kelman, Federal Computer Week
The Urban Waters Federal Partnership’s entrepreneurial spirit and flair for true collaboration can be a model for other cross-agency efforts.

Customer Service
It’s Time to Cut the Long Lines for Government Services
Shelley Metzenbaum, Government Executive
Government can—and should—collect, organize, and share data about the timing and duration of government visits and other transactions in ways that are easily found, accessed, and understood.

Innovation
Beyond the Lab: Government Innovation in Unlikely Places
Darcie Piechowski, Business of Government
Innovation – and the creativity that goes along with it – can be applied to a myriad of organizational issues that may not garner the same attention.

Leadership
How Do You Do a Start-Up in the Government?
Dan Chenok, Government Executive
Leaders who have helped to stand up new agencies points to a number of lessons.
The Key to High Performance
Howard Risher, Government Executive
Research has confirmed that managers have more impact on an organization’s performance than any other factor.

Risk Management
Have Candid Conversations Before Bad Things Happen
John Kamensky, Government Executive
New guidance from the Office of Management and Budget offers a fresh approach to managing risk.
How TSA jump-started enterprise risk management
David Thornton, Federal News Radio
Two years before OMB released the updated A-123 to include Enterprise Risk Management guidance, the Transportation Security Administration was experimenting with implementing its own ERM system.
Managing Organizational Integrity Risks
Michael Keegan, Business of Government
A new report from the IBM Center aims to help federal managers meet the requirements of A-123 by providing them with a better understanding of organizational integrity risks (e.g., reputational risk) and offering approaches they can use to effectively manage those risks.
GSA releases playbook for enterprise risk management
Bianca Spinosa, Federal Computer Week
The CFO Council and the Performance Improvement Council have released guidance to help agencies meet new risk management requirements in OMB’s revised Circular A-123.