Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene

Managing The Next Crisis: Twelve Principles For Dealing With Viral Uncertainty

Submitted by on Thu, 10/07/2021 - 09:00

The experiences of the last 18 months have pointed to the importance of well-managed actions at the local, national, and cross-border levels. Many of these steps address issues that are now well-documented, including medical support for testing, contact tracing, and vaccine management; supply chain challenges around vaccine production and distribution; impacts on local job markets; and the importance of addressing equity in delivering needed social services.

Getting the 'Bosses of Procurement' to Understand its Strategic Value

Submitted by on Mon, 05/17/2021 - 14:25

As a rule, focus on government procurement grows particularly acute during crisis situations. There has likely been no more vivid example of this phenomenon than that experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. With daily headlines blaring words about shortages of medical devices and personal protective equipment, many procurement officials found themselves in a prominent hot seat at the table of government decision-makers.

Algorithms: Black boxes or fishbowls?

Submitted by on Fri, 02/26/2021 - 09:19

A few months ago, we wrote a piece for Route Fifty about the use of algorithms in state and local governments. As we read through a number of articles about the issues surrounding the use of these devices, we discovered repeated instances in which the word “algorithm,” was preceded by the words, “black box.”

Why the Phrase Best Practices Makes Us Jittery

Submitted by on Thu, 11/12/2020 - 09:47

There may be cases in which best practices can apply from city to city and state to state. Best budgeting practices, for example – such as those developed by the Government Finance Officers Association – can certainly be useful. It’s a universally accepted best practice in budgeting, for example, that entities should cover current year expenditures with current year revenues -- not revenues borrowed from the future.

Who can argue with that?

Reducing Unreasonable Overtime with Data

Submitted by on Mon, 08/17/2020 - 11:51

Just weeks ago, under the sponsorship of Kronos, a report titled The Great Overtime Dilemma, was published, which we researched and wrote. We retained editorial control over the report.

Results-Driven Telework

Submitted by on Thu, 06/04/2020 - 11:22

A significant exception has been in Tennessee, which started aggressive telework policies several years ago. (This, of course, hasn’t included certain jobs, like correctional officers, where it is truly impossible to effectively break up an inmate altercation from a home office).

The perennial siege on performance auditors

Submitted by on Tue, 02/25/2020 - 09:13

A little under a year ago, Glendale Arizona’s City Council passed a proposal that terminated the position of the City Auditor, moving the city’s one auditor to a new city department, which now outsources its reviews and evaluations of the city’s agencies and services.  A manager and an audit committee, which include three city council members was established to oversee the new effort.

In Workforce Planning, Data Is King

Submitted by on Mon, 02/10/2020 - 14:58

We occasionally did the same for cities and counties. The news in those days, unsurprisingly, was not happy.

Mousetraps for Flawed Data

Submitted by on Mon, 11/18/2019 - 10:47

For the most part, we’ve pointed to issues that require careful examination of the information to determine if its trustworthy or not.

But, as time has passed, we’ve come across a great many signals, easily spotted and identified, that point to quicker recognition that information should be scrutinized. Here are a half dozen examples:

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Principals
Barrett and Greene, Inc.
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Over the course of about 30 years, Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene, principals of Barrett and Greene, Inc. have done much-praised analysis, research and writing about state and local governments.  Described by Peter Harkness, founder of Governing Magazine as "by far the most experienced journalists in the country covering public performance," they pioneered "grading the cities, counties and states" in management.

They are currently engaged as Visiting Fellows at the IBM Center for the Business of Government, Senior Advisors, Columnists and co-chairs of the Advisory Board for Route Fifty, Special Project Consultants at the Volcker Alliance, Advisors and Columnists for the Government Finance Officers Association, Senior Advisors at the Government Finance Research Center at the University of Illinois in Chicago,  and Fellows at the National Academy of Public Administration. 

Over the course of years, Barrett and Greene have served in an advisory or contractual capacity to many organizations central to the study of states and localities. For more than 20 years they were columnists for Governing magazine and they have also served as senior advisors at the Pew Charitable Trusts; senior fellows for the Council of State Governments and more.

One of Barrett and Greene’s most significant contributions was as founders of the Government Performance Project, which was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and published in Governing Magazine.

Though they work on virtually all projects as a team, the one exception is that Greene has served as a long-time chair of the Center for Accountability and Performance at the American Society for Public Administration.