Performance Management

Our goal with this report is straightforward: to begin thinking about the future of government and the trends and new ideas in government management that a new president should consider as he or she takes office in 2009. The intent of this project is to stimulate new ideas among several key audiences. We wish to spark the imagination of government leaders to look beyond their day-to-day "urgencies" and reflect upon the important challenges the nation will face tomorrow.

This report examines five diverse case studies in which collaboration depended on the effective use of information technology. The authors assess the political, administrative, and technical challenges that occurred in each of these five case studies and find commonalities across the cases in both the challenges faced and lessons learned. They conclude, "Interestingly, the technical challenges tended to be the least difficult to surmount...."

Professor Gilmour’s report examines OMB's PART initiative from a practical standpoint: How have federal agencies dealt with the requirements of PART? What strategies have they employed to be successful? What challenges do they face? His report highlights four challenges that confront both agencies and OMB as they work to complete assessments of all 1,000 programs and describes approaches that agencies are taking to meet these challenges. The first challenge is for departments and agencies to organize for success. The second challenge of using PARTis communicating accomplishments.

Metzenbaum sets forth five building blocks - tools and techniques for constructing a good measurement system for an organization. And she describes six practices that leaders need to use to make appropriately designed systems work properly.

Since 1998, the IBM center for The Business of Government has been studying the substantial changes that are under way at all levels of government within the United States and in other nations across the world. These changes are being driven by a series of new imperatives in the United States. Fortunately, there is now a set of trends that seems to be responding to these imperatives and is leading to more results-oriented government.

There are new and exciting opportunities to engage citizens by informing, consulting, involving, and collaborating with them through a number of techniques; for example, the use of online surveys and peer-to-peer communication tools such as blogs and wikis. Many of these are now being piloted and used by states, localities, and nonprofits. There is also an increased interest by federal agencies. But the challenge of reaching those who don’t already participate as activists or interest group members remains.

Perrin’s report provides substantial evidence that countries are moving toward a results-oriented approach in a wide variety of government contexts. Until recently, the process and performance of government has been judged largely on inputs, activities, and outputs. Based on a two-day forum sponsored by the World Bank and the IBM Center involving officials from six developed and six developing countries Perrin identifies state-of-the-art practices and thinking that go beyond the current literature.Managing for Performance and Results

So, what happens next? The next president will face a very different set of management challenges from the ones that confronted the current president when he took office. Can we begin to predict and start preparing to respond to these challenges? That is the task that Dr. Kettl took on, through our encouragement, using his insightful essay in Part I of this report to promote discussion during a two-day forum that the IBM Center for The Business of Government convened this past summer.

This research reviews a highly successful model of network collaboration that contained the outbreak of Exotic Newcastle disease, (a highly contagious disease among poultry), in California in 2002. The success of the effort was in part the result of the incident management system approach taken, a model of collaboration broadly applicable to all infrequent emergency situations. disaster preparedness, disease, contagious, fatal, public emergency, emergencies, california, caCollaboration: Networks and Partnerships

This report details a methodology that may be used to assess educational return on investment (ROI), in particular in the area of technology investments. The analysis of ROI in education is fundamental in the management philosophy and application of data-driven decision making. School leaders must know which programs deliver the biggest value for the dollar spent in order to target funding where it is needed most.