Several decades ago, when we first developed a passion for performance management, we leaned upon a cadre of people who were pioneering in that work. They were all willing mentors, happy to guide us with their accumulated wisdom.
At the top of the list were Jay Fountain, then at the Governmental Accounting Standards Board; Harry Hatry, whose work with the Urban Institute and other organizations made him a giant in the field, and John Kamensky, who was then with the General Accounting Office (as the U.S. Government Accountability Office was known until 2004.
Kamensky, who is an emeritus senior fellow with the IBM Center for the Business of Government, served for eight years as deputy director of Vice President Al Gore’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government, prior to which he worked at the GAO, where he played a key role in the development and passage of the Government Performance and Results Act.
As a long-time member of the American Society of Public Administration’s Center for Accountability and Performance and currently senior fellow there, he harvests the vineyards in the world of public sector performance and produces a valuable weekly compendium of the latest news and reports in that field. We asked him to assemble a reading list for people who are either new in this discipline or who are old-timers and want to know still more.
Typically, he said yes and what follows are many of his recommendations. We invite authorities in other government disciplines like budgeting or human resources to do the same.
And now . . . here’s John!
Performance Frameworks:
Alnoor Ebrahim (2019). Measuring Social Change: Performance and Accountability in a Complex World. Stanford University Press.
Geert Bouckaert and John Halligan (2008). Managing Performance: International Comparisons. New York: Routledge.
Robert Behn, (2004). Performance Leadership: 11 Better Practices That Can Ratchet Up Performance. Washington, DC: IBM Center for The Business of Government.
The Commonwealth Secretariat (2024). Towards Generally Accepted Performance Principles: Sixteen Principles for Creating Highly Effective Government. London: UK.
Measuring performance:
Harry Hatry (2006). Performance Measurement: Getting Results, 2nd Edition. The Urban Institute Press: Washington, DC.
David Ammons (2019). Performance Measurement for Local Government Management: Getting it Right. Melvin & Leigh.
Analyzing Performance Data:
Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa and Thomas H. Davenport, (2008). Strategic Use of Analytics in Government. Washington, DC: IBM Center for The Business of Government.
Managing Performance:
Robert Behn (2014). The PerformanceStat Potential: A Leadership Strategy for Producing Results (Brookings Institution, Washington, DC).
Robert Behn, (2009). What All Mayors Would Like to Know About Baltimore’s CitiStat Performance Strategy. Washington, DC: IBM Center for The Business of Government.
Melissa Wavelet, (2019). A Practitioner’s Framework for Measuring Results: Using “C-Stat” at the Colorado Department of Human Services, Washington, DC: IBM Center for The Business of Government.
Harry Hatry and Elizabeth Davies (2011). A Guide to Data-Driven Performance Reviews. Washington, DC: IBM Center for The Business of Government.
Linking Performance to Budget:
Andrew Kleine (2018). City on the Line: How Baltimore Transformed Its Budget to Beat the Great Recession and Deliver Outcomes, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Lloyd Blanchard (2006). Performance Budgeting: How NASA and SBA Link Costs and Performance. Washington, DC: IBM Center for The Business of Government.
Results-Oriented Governance:
Rodney Scott and Ross Boyd, (2017). Interagency Performance Targets: A Case Study of New Zealand’s Results Programme IBM Center for The Business of Government.
Program Evaluation:
Kathryn Newcomer, Harry Hatry, and Joseph Wholey (2015) Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation, 4th Edition, Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Overviews of Performance Management
Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene (2020). The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance-Informed Management, Rowman & Littlefield.
Paul Epstein, Paul Coats, Lyle Wray, David Swain (2006), Results that Matter: Improving Communities by Engaging Citizens, Measuring Performance and Getting Things Done Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons Publishers.
Christopher Wye, (2004) 2nd Ed.. Performance Management for Career Executives: A “Start Where You Are, Use What You Have” Guide. Washington, DC: IBM Center for The Business of Government.
Christopher Wye, (2004). Performance Management for Political Executives: A “Start Where You Are, Use What You Have” Guide. Washington, DC: IBM Center for The Business of Government.
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