ASPA Center for Accountability & Performance

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.

Performance Management
Performance-based budgeting gets a kick in the pants for 2017 budget
Jason Miller, Federal News Radio
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) authored a provision instructing OMB to ensure budget plans are linked more directly to performance measures as required under the GPRA Modernization Act.

Efficiency/Reorganization
Government Reorganization 2016: No Magic Wand
John Kamensky, Business of Government
Bipartisan legislation was introduced last year to create a board that would make recommendations to “transform” government. With public trust in government at an all-time low, is there an appetite to act?
State Spending and the Search for Hidden Efficiencies
Charles Chieppo, Governing
It shouldn’t take a budget crisis like the one Kansas is dealing with to force a government to look for more ways to save taxpayer money.

Collaboration
Why the Next President Must Make Government More Collaborative
Don Kettl and Robert O’Neill, Government Executive
Failure to act before the next crisis — and there will be one — could doom the next administration.
New Report Explores the Use of Social Tools to Improve Interagency Collaboration
Dan Chenok, Business of Government
A new report on lessons learned from the use of internal collaborative tools across the intelligence community.

Open Government
GAO frets about ambiguity in Data Act standards
Chase Gunter, Federal Computer Week
GAO says some data element definitions offered by Treasury and OMB are potentially unclear, inconsistent and open to interpretation.
Commerce opens school for data
Zach Noble, Federal Computer Week
A new push is aimed at teaching users how to effectively put Commerce data to good use.

Performance Management
The performance measures that managers hate
Steve Kelman, Federal Computer Week
For metric-based management, Steve Kelman argues, it’s important that the measures not be specified from on high.
OMB, Agencies Need to Read the Fine Print in 2016 Budget
John Kamensky, Government Executive
The omnibus budget passed by Congress in late December contains some performance management surprises.

Collaboration
GAO: GSA, FPS collaboration weaknesses risk building security
Carten Cordell, Federal Times
GAO found that the agencies have drafted a joint strategy to foster better collaboration, but have not yet agreed on key practices to carry it out.

Innovation
Pay for Success Can Stretch Agency Budgets, and Already Has
Patrick Lester, Government Executive
With authorizing legislation that would extend the concept now stalled in Congress, the administration appears to be following an alternate path to supporting pay for success.
White House names new class of Presidential Innovation Fellows
Greg Otto, FedScoop
The White House has named its latest round of Presidential Innovation Fellows, bringing in 11 entrepreneurs-in-residence to help improve citizen services and the way the government operates.

Open Government
Data Trade Group: Transparency Isn’t Enough
Mohana Ravindranath, Nextgov
The Data Transparency Coalition, a trade association which advocates for federal data sharing, is rebranding to include data management as part of its mission.