John Kamensky

In 2004, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report touting how, after a decade, the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 had “established a solid foundation for achieving greater results.”  That may have been the first time GAO was overly optimistic!

The long hallways of the State Department’s headquarters building in Foggy Bottom are called “corridors.”  Over the decades, that is where people from different offices and bureaus ran into each other, informally got business done, and shared tips for being successful at different foreign posts.  And that’s where reputations were made, and unmade. 

However, several articles in a recent issue of Public Administration Review have caught my attention and challenge some of my assumptions. 

Performance measurement is about measuring the performance of government and its programs – but what about measuring the effectiveness of performance measures themselves?  Ironically, it turns out that it is harder than you might think.

John Kamensky

Clock Ticks. Government Executive reports:  “As the Obama administration winds down and a presidential transition looms, agency leaders insist they're committed to fulfilling the president's goals rather than trimming their sails as time grows shorter.”

The Urban Institute has launched a new web resource to explain Pay for Success, which it says is various forms of performance-based contracting used to support the delivery of targeted, high-impact preventative social services where an intervention at an early stage can reduce the need for higher-cost services in the future. Pay for Success funding systems can take many different forms and already operate in different policy arenas.

In the current issue of Harvard Business Review, two researchers who have worked with global commercial clients over the past 25 years offer some counter-intuitive advice for improving customer service.  Jochen Wirtz and Ron Kaufman say it is important to focus on deep cultural change in the workforce, not just tactical process changes.  Given this perspective, they recommend:

Chief Data Officers.  Route 50 reports that the Ash Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government announced the formation of the Civic Analytics Network.  This network will be comprise of city-level Chief Data Officers and will “collaborate on shared projects that advance the use of data vi

Quadrennial Reviews at Homeland Security. The Government Accountability Office reports that the Department of Homeland Security recently undertook its second-ever quadrennial review of its potential threats, opportunities, and potential consequences. However it concludes that improved Risk Analysis and Stakeholder Consultations could enhance future reviews. Benchmarking Best Practices.

Post-Award Management of Agile Contracts. What happens after a contract is awarded? Steve Kelman writes in Federal Computer Week that there is “fear that some principles of agile cannot be reconciled with existing procurement regulations. I argued that good practice suggests, and the procurement regulations allow, issuing a solicitation for an agile contract, or a task order under an umbrella IDIQ contract, without specifying requirements at the beginning, which would violate the whole idea of agile.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) surveyed the state of the art in developing and using comprehensive indicator systems in its 2004 report, “Informing Our Nation: Improving How to Understand and Assess the USA's Position and Progress.”  That report sparked an initiative by the National Academies of Science, with the support of several non-profit foundations, to explore the feasibility of developing a national indicator system.  This led to the creation of a non-profit, State of the USA,