Posts Tagged: budgeting

Social Networking in Government Agencies: Pipedream or Imminent Reality?

How your organization can adopt social media tools internally to drive results and become a social business. Wading into Social Media The terms “enterprise social networking” or “social media” often conjure up images of hip, savvy startups. But many of you are on the forefront of using applications like GovLoop to share best practices andRead… Read more »

Defining & Communicating Expectations: A Critical Component of a Healthy Workplace

I believe the number one cause of conflict in both the workplace and your personal life is unfulfilled expectations. The number one reason for expectations going unfulfilled is – you guessed it – nobody knows what they are. We are diligent in ensuring that a high level of detail, complete with key performance indicators, areRead… Read more »

Measure and Manage

In his blog The Thorp Network, author John Thorp suggests that we should, “Measure what’s important and manage what you measure.” When a strategy for improvement is identified it’ll be important to measure performance and success. Performance is important to measure because improvement depends on change, and there’s an inherent presumption of efficiency and momentumRead… Read more »

Why are our bosses so eager to warn us we’re laid off?

It’s Friday night, December 16th about 10:00 p.m. and my boss called me to let me know I’d been laid off. “But wait, it’s not midnight yet and the House passed the budget“, I say. “No, if things don’t get passed you can’t come to work on Monday”, he said. So I’m a little ticked,Read… Read more »

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 »

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 »

Congressional Ovesight of Performance

There may be widespread public dissatisfaction with Congress’s performance, but GAO has issued a new report that highlights Congress’s role in overseeing agency performance. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a set of briefing slides, “Managing for Results: Opportunities for Congress to Address Government Performance Issues,” which it is using to bring Members of CongressRead… Read more »