performance

In May, the VA announced a partnership with two veterans service organizations --  the Disabled American Veterans and The American Legion -- to reduce the backlog of claims for veterans benefits by encouraging the filing of “fully developed claims.”  Such claims can be expedited in half the time it takes to process a regular claim.

The Center’s new report is the result of multiple interviews with government leaders, an assessment of research and reports on challenges and opportunities from the Center and many other sources; and a roundtable involving key government, academic, and industry officials last May.  

These days, more detailed, near real-time data can be collected because of improvements in technology and new reporting systems.  However, these more detailed data – if not well-explained and put in context -- can alarm the public and cause political problems, even while improving performance.  Recent examples include:

Governments today face serious, seemingly intractable public management issues that go to the core of effective governance and leadership -- testing the very form, structure, and capacity required to meet these problems head-on.

The 2010 revision of the Government Performance and Results Act requires federal agencies to identify a limited number of two-year Agency Priority Goals.  These action-oriented goals appear in their recently-released fiscal year 2015 budget proposals and are aligned with their newly released strategic goals and objectives.

In meeting varied missions, government executives confront significant challenges. Responding properly to them must be guided and informed by the harsh fiscal and budgetary realities of the day. It can no longer be simply a wishful platitude that government do more with less. Leaders need to change the way government does business to make smarter use of increasingly limited resources—leveraging technology and innovation to be more efficient, effective, anticipatory, adaptive, and evidence-based in delivering missions and securing the public trust.

Last week, OMB released a new and substantially improved Performance.gov website, with in-depth performance information on individual agency priority goals. This represents a significant step forward from the initial release in August 2011, which listed and described the goals, but did not provide much detail about them.  I had a chance to talk with some OMB staff about what’s new about the website, and take a quick browse through it. Here’s a summary of what I learned.

The IBM Center is releasing an update to its 2009 “The Operator’s Manual for the New Administration” for the use of new executives in the federal government. This updated chapter reflects statutory changes since 2009 and provides insights on how executives can improve performance in their agencies’ programs.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: Performance

A Government Accountability Office survey last year reports that the percentage of federal managers saying they used performance information in allocating resources actually dropped between 1997 and 2013.  Is it worth another try? In a new report for the IBM Center, Dr.

We are pleased to announce our latest round of awards for new reports on key public sector challenges, which respond to priorities identified in the Center's long-term research agenda, see businessofgovernment.org/content/research-stipends.

We expect the following reports to be published in early 2015.  Details of each report are included in the below short summaries.