John Kamensky

But President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2025 proposed budget also contains a section regarding progress made over the past year in improving how government works for Americans. And next steps.

Refreshed Agency Priority Goals. By law, large federal agencies designate a small subset of their ongoing initiatives as “priority goals” with a commitment to make specific levels of progress over a two-year period. Some agencies commit to joint goals. For example, the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce have jointly committed to a goal of ensuring all Americans have access to the internet by funding projects that connect 6,250,000 households to reliable, high-speed, affordable internet service.

There has long been a desire to be able to identify and encourage the development of agencies that are “high performing,” that demonstrate “performance excellence,” or “quality management,” and more. The OMB guidance memo describes this as Measuring, Monitoring, and Improving Organizational Health and Organizational Performance in the context of the evolving post-pandemic workplace.

* * * * *

Note: This column was first published in Government Executive and is republished here with its permission. A related backstory behind the development of the OMB memo can be found here.

* * * * *

Shelley Metzenbaum’s recent article for Government Executive, “A Missed Opportunity,” highlights a conundrum facing government improvement geeks for nearly three decades. She laments that federal agencies’ quarterly performance updates for their priority goals “deserve more attention.” She says this lack of attention is a “missed opportunity” to engage the allies and advocates for these priority goals, help agencies learn how to improve and inform

This essay and much more content about government leadership and management appears in The Business of Government magazine. 

The Biden Administration has announced a new “Customer Experience and Service Delivery” initiative, promising some pretty specific and measurable actions, not just high-minded rhetoric.  For example, it includes 36 customer experience commitments across 17 federal agencies focused on “the moments that matter most in people’s lives” such as retiring, travelling, and paying for college.

No wonder a recent survey of business CEOs believe restoring public trust needs to be at the top of the national agenda.

Grants expert Jeff Myers, and several of his colleagues, recently wrote in Government Executive: