John Kamensky

Dr. Gina Scott Ligon, along with her University of Nebraska at Omaha colleagues JoDee Friedly and Victoria Kennel, offer an answer in a new report for the IBM Center, in the context of the broader national shortage of talent in the science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM) professions.

Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a veteran corporate executive search recruiter, shares his approach for talent spotting for senior executives in an article in Harvard Business Review.  He says that traditional approaches have emphasized assessing intelligence, experience, past performance, and the competencies of the individual being considered for an executive slot.

The Open Government movement has captured the imagination of many around the world as a way of increasing transparency, participation, and accountability.  In the US, many of the federal, state, and local Open Government initiatives have been demonstrated to achieve positive results for citizens here and abroad. In fact, the White House’s science advisors released a refreshed Open Government plan in early June.

Successful inventions often spring from the minds of individual inventors – we often think of Thomas Edison at the classic inventor. But successful innovation is a team sport, according to a new Harvard Business Review article by a team of researchers – Linda Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove, and Kent Lineback.

Agencies establish a variety of performance goals and objectives to drive progress toward key outcomes. Agencies outline long-term goals and objectives in their strategic plans, and annual performance goals in annual performance plans.

These four-year goals were first announced with the release of the FY 2015 budget back in March. Cobert’s announcement accompanies the first round of statutorily-required quarterly reports on the progress of the 15 Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) goals. 

The Obama Administration in 2009 directed agencies to identify a small handful of priorities that they would commit to achieving in a two-year timeframe.  This initiative was embedded into the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010.  Agencies are required to identify priority goals and report on their progress quarterly.  In late June, agency progress reports were posted on the governmentwide performance.gov website.

Increasingly, addressing public management challenges requires the use of collaborative networks across a range of agencies and non-governmental organizations. For example, the Obama Administration has designated a series of projects as “cross agency priority goals” and put networks in place to manage them. A lot of literature and practical experience show that a key element of success in any collaborative effort is the ability to create and sustain trust among stakeholders.

Background.  Early in the Obama Administration, OMB announced an initiative to create a small handful of High Priority Performance Goals in each agency, as a replacement for the Bush Administration’s

Harry Hatry is legendary.  His indefatigable commitment to measuring government performance stretches back to his days as a Pentagon analyst on Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s fabled “Whiz Kids” team before joining the Urban Institute in 1968.