From the Acquisition Corner In light of the recent memos by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to improve government performance and save on contract costs, focus has turned to the use of award fees on incentive contracts. Earlier this week, the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and InternationalRead… Read more »
About a month and a half ago, OMB released the Federal reporting requirements for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It’s taken me a little while to look through the requirements, and I had read that the focus was on job creation, but I was still a little surprised at the lack of Federal interestRead… Read more »
Over the weekend my father-in-law decided to take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program and went car shopping. Unfortunately the Dodge dealer he went to in his home town of Paris, Illinois informed him that they had put the program on hold. Apparently they had sold five cars and had yet to be paidRead… Read more »
Ken Miller (author of “We Don’t Make Widgets” and monthly columnist for Governing Magazine) recently wrote an article discussing the impact of Lean in government. With budget constraints and travel restrictions across the board, times are tough for many federal, state and local government agencies. In these times, we need to focus more than everRead… Read more »
With the recent confirmation of the first federal Chief Performance Officer (CPO), Jeffrey Zients, a sprig of hope has emerged among the performance management and improvement crowd. The appointment marks the first time that a seasoned performance improvement leader has been selected to provide structure, vision and real, accountable results. Every administration has had aRead… Read more »
Information on recovery.gov recently reported that the Department of Agriculture was paying $1.2 million for 2 pounds of frozen ham. In fact the contract in question actually purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191 million for food banks and homeless shelters. In response to misstated information the board overseeing recovery.gov refused to correct the informationRead… Read more »
In the final installment on a performance management framework, we’ll look at using performance metrics and analysis in order to effectively manage agencies and their programs by using remediation and corrective actions. We’ve already covered the first and second steps, and will focus on the final two in this posting (all four are listed justRead… Read more »
Continuing our exercise in developing a performance management framework, a summary of the necessary steps for a successful program follows: 1. Report performance metric data on pre-defined schedule. 2. Analyze data for troubling trends or missed targets. Operationally research root cause of problems. 3. Provide corrective action for metrics where target was missed or dataRead… Read more »
In my previous post I outlined a 4 step process for a successful performance management program. to recap: 1. Report performance metric data on pre-defined schedule. 2. Analyze data for troubling trends or missed targets. Operationally research root cause of problems. 3. Provide corrective action for metrics where target was missed or data is trendingRead… Read more »
Performance management and measurement have taken on a number of different meanings with regard to application in the public sector. In some cases it’s regarded strictly as data reporting and in others it takes on a more qualitative form. It may be useful to start a dialogue on coming up with an actionable, consolidated setRead… Read more »