I am a true believer of the following statements: That government employee’s work for less than what they could earn in the private sector. That our best public sector employees should be compensated with the best paychecks. That pay-for-performance is a great concept that should be applied as an incentive to encourage great workplace performance.Read… Read more »
Bob Stone, the head of Vice President Gore’s reinventing government initiative, focused his attention on what was going on at the front line. He said helping them understand and get their jobs done was the most important activity of a leader. That insight led to the creation of both Hammer Awards and Reinvention Labs asRead… Read more »
April 28-29, 2011 in North Bethesda, MD This course will offer you techniques, templates, checklists, and opportunities to develop win themes, management sections, risk sections, past performance references, resumes, and technical volumes. This course focuses on solution development, including Concepts of Operations (CONOPS), and explores in detail the type of content that goes into compliant,Read… Read more »
What if the President and Congress made spending decisions based on what they wanted to achieve rather than on individual agencies and programs? That’s the premise of portfolio budgeting. Has its time arrived or is it still . . . A Pipe Dream? Maybe, but it is actually being done by other countries, such asRead… Read more »
Listening to the media discuss our debt can be exhausting. Every day we are bombarded with huge dollar figures to be dealt with: $14.3 trillion in debt, $38 billion cut this year, $4 trillion proposed cut for 2012. Is that really the discussion that we should be focusing on? Is the 50,000 foot discussion whereRead… Read more »
GAO revisited a report it did in 2004 on creating a comprehensive indicator system to track the progress of our nation’s economy, people’s health, social well-being, and the environment. GAO looks at 20 different system used by other countries and by states and localities and offers a road map on how to develop a nationalRead… Read more »
When I worked for Vice President Gore’s reinventing government initiative, he told us “don’t move the boxes, fix what’s inside the boxes.” He also talked expansively about creating “virtual agencies” organized around the needs of each individual citizen. We had no idea what he was talking about when he was describing the Virtual Department ofRead… Read more »
George Washington University professor Kathy Newcomer likened the Obama Administration’s performance agenda to a game of “Where is Waldo?” at a Brookings Institution forum last week on improving government performance. She says “you have to look carefully” to find it. She said there was no orchestrated campaign with a band leading the way. Newcomer’s insightRead… Read more »
In Congress the stakeholders’ desire to put just one more ornament on a piece of legislation leads to “Christmas Tree Bills” which often collapse under their own weight. Trying to pack too much into a project (or our lives) can lead to a diffusion of priorities and efforts. Keeping in mind an instructive saying thatRead… Read more »
Obama signed the GPRA Modernization Act in January. While OMB has yet to issue any formal guidance to agencies on what they should do, there has been a flurry of conferences, forums, and seminars that have focused on the new law’s meaning and intent. In the past month, I’ve participated in more than a halfRead… Read more »