5 Steps To Get Better All The Time

Improvement is easy. But only if it emerges over time, has buy-in from the people involved, and tracks with reality instead of the fantasy in some manager’s head. This approach comes from a long study of Lean and most recently inflences from the great book by Eric Ries, The Lean Startup. It’s simple and canRead… Read more »

Innovation and Accountability in Fighting Poverty

In 2006 New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg created the Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO). The purpose of CEO is to implement innovative ways to reduce poverty in New York City. With access to a $100 million innovation fund, CEO has financed 40 targeted performance based initiatives. The CEO operates out of the Mayor’s office,Read… Read more »

Admitting the Problem is Only the First Step

The recent New York Times Op-Ed piece, “The Unaddressed Link Between Poverty and Education” laid bare the facts that many of us know all too well, that is, students from disadvantaged households have many more educational challenges that their peers from more socioeconomically affluent households. While economic challenges certainly impact a child’s academic performance, there’sRead… Read more »

Roundtable Promises Meaningful (Online) Conversations

Reading Clay Johnson’s response to the White House’s request for input, I came across Roundtable, a new take on building an online environment for “meaningful conversations” currently under development. From their blog: At Roundtable we’re all about empowering meaningful conversations – between thought leaders, between friends, and between curated communities of strangers. There is littleRead… Read more »

MITA maturity levels in states

Deltek Analyst Kate Tussey reports. At the end of November, I wrote a blog and an analyst perspective (log-in required) about the draft Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) 3.0 document that has been released for comment. A large part of MITA rests on the State Self-Assessment (MITA SS-A), which is used to determine a state’sRead… Read more »

Relationertia

The relational database has long been regarded as the backbone of today’s government IT infrastructure. However, the 21st century information landscape is rapidly changing and the traditional approach of solving data challenges is no longer feasible. The International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the volume of digital content will increase by nearly fifty percent fromRead… Read more »