WHEN IT COMES TO DATA, CONTEXT IS KING
Back in 2020, then President Donald Trump proclaimed that “The murder rate in Baltimore and Detroit is higher than El Salvador, Guatemala...
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B&G REPORT.
The B&G Report features newsy items relating to a wide variety of state and local government management topics, including state and local performance audit, state and local performance management, government budgeting, state and local human resource issues, and a variety of other public sector issues.
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greenebarrett
3 min read
FAILURE AS A KEY TO SUCCESS
We’ve just been catching up on one of our favorite podcasts, Freakonomics Radio, and came across a wonderful conversation with Samuel...
greenebarrett
3 min read
TASK FORCES: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
A few weeks ago, we wrote an item for this website about the executive orders that were pouring out of the offices of the nine most...
greenebarrett
2 min read
Government Management: Why don’t people care?
We are puzzled and frustrated with the ignorance of many people about the importance of state and local government management. They tend...
greenebarrett
4 min read
Budget Lessons from the States for the Feds:How to Radically Change Expectations about the Federal
by Dr. Carolyn Bourdeaux, Senior Visiting Scholar, University of Georgia; Board Member of the Concord Coalition; Former Member of...
greenebarrett
2 min read
Hide and Seek: A Researcher’s Quest for Contact Information
Leaders in state and local governments persistently claim that they want to be more transparent, and we believe that this is a sincere...
greenebarrett
3 min read
Bridging the Academic/Practitioner Gap: Public Finance Journal
by Craig S Maher, Director School of Public Administration, University of Nebraska, Omaha and co-editor of the Public Finance Journal...
greenebarrett
3 min read
A Road to Trust in Government
by Dawa Hitch, Communication and Public Engagement Director, Asheville, North Carolina. In historically disenfranchised communities,...
greenebarrett
3 min read
When the Vision Meets the Real World
We’ve just been reading a splendid book by Erik Larson, titled “The Splendid and the Vile,” that tells the tale of Winston Churchill in...
greenebarrett
2 min read
Negative Audits Can Be Good News
Several years ago – right before the start of the pandemic -- our book, The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance-Informed Management was...
greenebarrett
2 min read
A Celebration of National Women’s Month with State Budget Officers
This male-dominated 1953 photo of a National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) annual meeting would not have been a surprise...
greenebarrett
3 min read
Attack on Auditor Independence in Iowa
Last night, the Iowa Senate quickly passed a bill that effectively limits the State Auditor’s independent oversight by restricting his...
greenebarrett
3 min read
Measuring & Managing Business Tax Incentives
by Dr. Ellen Harpel, Founder of Smart Incentives and Randall Bauer, Director, PFM Group Consulting Randall Bauer Ellen Harpel As...
greenebarrett
4 min read
Harry P. Hatry, Leader and Performance Management Pioneer, dies at 92
On Tuesday evening, we got a phone call to tell us that Harry P. Hatry, the renowned, respected and remarkable leader in the world of...
greenebarrett
5 min read
Building Human Services Relationships
Public sector human services professionals tend to go into their field to spend time with lower-income families who are in need of...
greenebarrett
3 min read
Nine New Governors and a Generational Shift
Out of the 36 gubernatorial elections last November, 26 resulted in the return of an incumbent while only one, Nevada’s Steve Sisolak,...
greenebarrett
2 min read
The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good: Mini-RCTs
“Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been called the gold standard for identifying the impacts of public service-delivery...
greenebarrett
2 min read
Let’s Talk Performance!
A couple of weeks ago, we were invited by the National Center for Public Performance to be the inaugural panelists in its series of...
greenebarrett
3 min read
Keeping Focus on the Humans at the Heart of Human Services
After 23 years in government John Eller, the director of Social Services in Mecklenburg County, will leave his government job in...
greenebarrett
2 min read
THE B&G Reading List
Periodically, we make a request in the B&G Report for recommendations of books that provide worthy reading for people who are interested...
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