Dan Chenok

The U.S. Government spends nearly $500 billion every year on contracts, where purchases range from office supplies and automobiles to professional services, information technology, and complex weapon systems. The efficiency and effectiveness with which the government makes acquisitions increasingly determines mission success. Perhaps nowhere is this more important than at the Department of Defense (DOD), which accounts for over two-thirds of all federal contract spend­ing, and where sound acquisition enables mission accomplishment and saves lives.

The scenario: A House government oversight subcommittee chairman and ranking member have a strong interest in how agencies are managing technology, in light of a new law that gives agency CIOs more leverage over operations. The subcommittee leaders ask the Government Accountability Office to assess agency performance in key areas, and the subcommittee then takes the assessment and assigns grades that come back with far more Ds and Fs than As and Bs.

How can new leaders quickly gain situational awareness?  How can they harness ongoing processes like budget formulation and performance reporting as inputs for decision- making? How can they use and integrate expertise such as risk management and strategic foresight into actionable information? Are there decision-making frameworks and models that leaders can adapt to produce faster decisions based upon evidence? 

This post is a continuation of our first blog on decision making, which highlighted a number of challenges for the next administration to address. In this blog, we present the key findings and recommendations in four areas. These action areas include: Decision Processes – finding ways to harness government decision processes and not getting bogged down. Define clear parameters - use career staff to help incoming appointees translate governing priorities into clear goals and action plans that take into account existing budget and statutory constraints.

Over the past decade, the federal government has systematically increased the use of evidence-based, data-driven approaches in decision making, sometimes called “Moneyball for Government.” These efforts embrace traditional fields such as program evaluation, but now include the use of open data, business analytics, and social and behavioral sciences for describing problems, predicting needs, and testing new approaches.

Innovation plays a key role in government transformations at all levels. Over the past several years, governments have increasingly established chief technology officers, chief innovation officers, chief data officers, entrepreneurs-in-residence, and simi­lar roles to promote new approaches to innovation.

Today, the IBM Center for The Business of Government is pleased to release the report, Mitigating Risks in the Application of Cloud Computing in Law Enforcement, by Paul Wormeli, Executive Director Emeritus, IJIS Institute.

Over the coming weeks and months, perhaps no issue will dominate the attention of leaders in Washington like reaching a deal to address the “fiscal cliff”.  The components of these discussions are well-known:  sequestration if a budget deal does not find sufficient savings to reduce the deficit over the next 10 years, tax increases across a range of areas, a looming debt ceiling deadline in early 2013, and the need to pass the annual 2013 budget as opposed to the current continuing resolution. 

 - to move to a new model of managing activities from a cross-program view, leveraging resources to more effectively serve a citizen or business.

We intend to look at a variety of emerging trends, offer innovative approaches to address challenges today and tomorrow, and update a number of widely read reports from prior election cycles.  We hope to engage in a dialogue with government and industry leaders, and welcome broad and deep discussion going forward.