John Kamensky

Federal IT Reform Inches Closer to Passage. Adam Mazmanian, Federal Computer Week, writes that the must-pass Defense Authorization Bill includes compromise language that “would give federal agency CIOs a "significant role" in programming, budgeting, management, and governance of IT across bureaus and components of all civilian departments.” More from Federal Times. DOD Acquisition Reform Options Laid on Table.

Years ago, career executive David O. “Doc” Cooke was informally called the “Mayor of the Pentagon.” He was responsible for the internal administration and management of the Pentagon and had broad influence on its operations. He like to remind people that he served every Secretary of Defense since the department was created in 1949. While he died in 2002, the role he served has been expanded to focus on transforming the department’s thousands of business systems.

Dan Chenok Big Data continues to make its presence known. Perspectives on the current impact of the cyber threat landscape. Contract Management Association leader discusses how procurement complexity impacts managers. John Kamensky A New Undersecretary for Management at Defense.

Dan Chenok NIST releases metrics for assessing effectiveness of cloud by government. DOD cloud guidance gives more authority to services for buying, clarified cloud security requirements. Implications of recent cyber events for Federal agencies. John Kamensky Yes, Transformational Change Is Possible. Rajiv Shah is stepping down after five years as administrator of the US Agency for International Development. Amid bipartisan praise for his leadership efforts, Government Executive’s Tom Shoop reports: “Sen.

Cross –agency collaboration is a critical element to solving many of the hardest challenges that government faces in providing effective services to citizens.  In his report, “The Next Government of the United States,” noted public administration scholar Don Kettl writes that “effective 21^st century government requires new mechanisms for coordinating government agencies to ensure they can connect organically as they seek to solve the manifest problems they confront.”

My goal in blogging has been to provide context, insight, and inspiration on government management challenges for public sector managers, especially at the U.S. federal level. Following are blog posts from the past year organized around several themes, largely reflecting the trends reflected in the IBM Center’s research agenda. Hope you find this useful!

Reinventing Government was organized around ten values, such as government being catalytic, community-owned, competitive, etc. Today, a new management reform trend is evolving, with its own models and values, again inspired by private sector and societal trends. A recent Harvard Business Review article by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms examines this 2010s trend, at least as it has evolved in the private sector, and they call it “New Power.” Not catchy, but their article does crystalize some powerful ideas.

Fiscal sustainability continues to drive the impetus to reduce backroom costs, more from necessity than from a desire for government organizations to dramatically change the status quo. OMB is already moving aggressively in this direction through its Federal IT Shared Services Strategy (“Shared First”) and the issuance of its Memorandum to agencies in 2013, Improving Financial Systems Through Shared Services (M-13-08).

Harvard’s Bob Behn writes about the spread of “PerformanceStat” across the U.S over the past two decades. But the creation of “Delivery Units,” which is another name for Bob’s phenomena, has spread across the world – even Latin America!

Greenleaf’s statement is pretty strong. And most people would think that he refers to political leaders. But his observation is pointed at leaders at all levels. Efforts to create a strategic foresight capacity in the U.S. federal government have experienced fits and starts over the past 40 years. But in recent years, there has been some progress at the agency level, largely at the behest of political and career leaders who appreciate the value of foresight as part of their decision making processes. They might not think of it in terms of an ethical issue, but as good leadership.