As a speaker, writer and leader I’m always looking to follow in the mind-prints of, or at least understand and hopefully emulate, Nobel-prize winning scientist, Albert Szent Gyorgyi’s “elegantly simple” words: “Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought!” With originality as frame, form and function, whatRead… Read more »
President Obama said he wanted to spur innovation, in his State of the Union address. Actually, this effort started in earnest last year through the use of prizes and contents as a complement to traditional research and development. As promised in an earlier blog post on this topic, the IBM Center now has a report,Read… Read more »
On Sunday, Tom Shoop of GovExec’s Fedblog reported that President Obama’s Chief Performance Officer, Jeffrey Zients, will lead the government reorganization effort announced during last week’s State of the Union address. I don’t know about you, but I was ecstatic to see Civil Service reform get a high-profile nod during the address. (Full disclosure: IRead… Read more »
President Obama committed to reorganizing the government during his State of the Union address. He pointed to examples of how government agencies duplicate and overlap each other in their programs, and how this needs to be fixed. He also noted that it has been decades since the last major reorganization. And he’s right. The lastRead… Read more »
Okay, the contest is over, the results are in and they are statistically valid (okay, so 18 responses may not cut it for statisticians but it’s good enough for me!). 1. GPRA 2.0 (highest number of votes, but it’ll be so retro in 10-15 years!) 2. Other (a close second, but with many options) a.Read… Read more »
The new law codifies an existing governance framework for performance across government by designating chief operating officers in each major agency and requiring the designation of program improvement officers in each agency. It also authorizes a governmentwide performance improvement council and requires a governmentwide performance website. Governance of Overall Performance System. After the original GPRARead… Read more »
The new law includes new requirements for quarterly reviews and progress assessments of governmentwide and agency-level priority goals. Federal Priority Goal Reviews. According to the Senate committee report, the new law: “attempts to lay out a process for reviewing progress towards the federal government priority goals on, at minimum, a quarterly basis. For each federalRead… Read more »
The new law includes new requirements that the governmentwide performance plan (already required by GPRA) include cross-cutting priority goals and it requires agencies to set priority goals as well – and each has to consult with Congress in the development of these goals. The original GPRA requires OMB to develop a governmentwide annual performance plan.Read… Read more »
The new law revises agency performance reporting requirements under GPRA by shifting its emphasis from annual reporting to more regular reporting. It also creates a forcing mechanism that requires OMB to take action on agency “unmet” goals. Agency Performance Updates. According to the Senate committee report, the new law: “. . . requires agencies toRead… Read more »
Bipartisan legislation signed by President Obama last Tuesday will significantly change the way the government monitors and reports on its own performance. One of the most important reforms contained in the new law is a requirement that targeted tax breaks — or “tax expenditures” — finally be analyzed based on their success in contributing towardRead… Read more »