Posts Tagged: performance

Perfection in Government Work

Sterling is an Acquisition Freak and keeps a blog at AllThingsSterling.Posterous.com. This touches on ontology (the study of existence), but it has a lot to do with government work. What is perfection? We normally think of it as ever-constant, singular, and unattainable. Whenever I think I’ve found the Perfect, and I’m perfectly calm and happy,Read… Read more »

Employee Retention or Employee Loyalty?

Reprinted from: Success Performance Solutions by Ira Wolfe | June 23, 2010 Which is better: employee retention or loyalty? The answer isn’t as obvious as you think. These are some common remarks shared by disgruntled, long-term employees: · “All the owners care about is the money.” · “They’ll never pay me what I deserve anyway.”Read… Read more »

Usability Tutorial: what is web usability and how do you measure it?

Cross-posted from: http://usability4government.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/ Originally created for Girl Geek Dinner in Ottawa, you can use this tutorial to start a discussion about how you can integrate usability principles into your website planning at your department or organization. Alternatively, re-use the prezi to create your own presentation. If you do, I’d love to know about it. TheRead… Read more »

Developing Client-centric Government Sites: A video tutorial

This is a video tutorial I created to help share the web performance measurement strategy shown in my previous blog post. It’s called Developing Client-centric Government Sites. If you don’t see anything above, maybe you can check it out on vimeo : http://www.vimeo.com/10567707 Modified from original posted: usability4government.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/creating-citizen-focused-sites/

Transcendent Purpose, Ability to Master and be Self Directed – Chief Factors for great Creativity!!!! Not MONEY….

One of the best presentation that captures artist’s idiocy to become highly skilled contributor to society defeating all economic prudence – transcendent purpose. Working for any public office must be this – Transcendent Purpose and Highly Creative.

Performance Management Software Tools

This is an open question to all readers. What kinds of performance management software tools do you use in your agency or organization and can you provide the names of software tools? We have a tool we’ve developed called Gov-Metrics but I’m curious what others are using to assist them in gathering and reporting data.Read… Read more »

Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire and What To Do Instead

This is the title of one of my favorite books on this topic, authored by Mary Jenkins and Tom Coens. Many people have strong opinions about how to do performance appraisals, what improvements we can make and whether they even work at all. One of the best management thinkers of our time said: “(The annualRead… Read more »

President’s Budget Proposal Continues to Delay Taking a Closer Look at Tax Breaks

In recent hearings before the House Budget Committee, both Peter Orszag (OMB Director) and Jeffrey Zients (OMB Chief Performance Officer) have acknowledged the need to scrutinize “tax expenditures” — i.e. special tax breaks aimed at achieving specific policy goals. Mr. Zients even went so far as to express “100% agreement” with the notion of evaluatingRead… Read more »

NIST Baldrige National Quality Program Launches New Blog

We have created this blog for you because so many people share our passion for excellence and a desire to improve organizations. It’s THE place to discuss, debate, and exchange ideas and lessons learned on all things performance excellence and improvement related. It won’t be the same without your comments, so please join the conversation!Read… Read more »

Key Areas to Consider in Open Government Strategy and Planning

The release of the Open Government Directive on December 8, 2009 has prompted many Agencies to wrestle with what a comprehensive Open Government Plan for their Agency would look like. According to the Directive, Open Government Plans are due for each Agency in 120 days. (The Sunlight foundation provides a good high level summary ofRead… Read more »