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A couple of weeks ago, our B&G Report published a series of answers to the question: “What should members of the press know in order to more effectively cover their governments?" We published a post about it on LinkedIn, and received a comment from a friend, a journalist whose opinion and work we respect enormously. He wrote “Always find the effective date of a new rule or law. It may not be when you expect.” Good council, and it set us to thinking about the difficulties we confront on a regular basis hunting for the date on many of the documents we use as sources. At least with new laws, as our friend mentioned, this is findable information. Unfortunately, with reports, studies, data and more, it’s often nearly impossible to figure out when it was written. That’s a problem for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the world of state and local government is forever changing, and re-using old information and thinking that it’s current can lead to all kinds of mistakes. Just the other day we came across a powerful report published by a well-known consulting firm (though we’re not going to name any names here) and after reading it thoroughly, searching everyplace for a date of publication we nearly decided not to use it at all. Then it struck us that we could possibly find a press release about its publication. We found one and – lo! – there was the date we needed. Turned out it was way out of date. Covid-19 only amplified this issue, as nearly everything about the fiscal status of governments in the depths of the pandemic is no longer true. As a result, reports using pandemic-era based data can easily be misleading, unless the reader knows that was the time period during which they were issued and can take that into account. And now time for a confession – and a little news about this website. From its inception, we have neglected to put dates on pretty much anything – with the single exception of our B&G Weekly Management News Selection – including our B&G Reports and Guest Columns. There was really no good reason we didn’t. Now, inspired by our reflections as we decided to write this B&G Report, we’ll be making a change to that sometime in the next month or so, and will be adding dates to the most of the material we publish, in hopes that it will make it more useful to our readers (especially those who find a particular item  on Google or some other search engine, and have no idea when it was actually published).   Why aren’t dates included on all research? We can only speculate that some authors aren’t eager for their work to appear to be out of date (even when it genuinely is) and so can cultivate its use into the future, by omitting this important piece of information. Yet another somewhat scurrilous reason that’s been suggested is that some papers are published by technical associations, who make their profit by selling access to papers. The idea is that when researchers can’t tell when a paper is published, they buy it, only to discover subsequently that it’s out of date. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentData #StateandLocalGovernmentStudy #StateandLocalGovernmentReport #StateanddLocalGovernmentManagementNews #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformanceNews #CityGovernmentStudy #CityGovernmentReport #CountyGovernmentStudy #CityGovernmentManagement #CityGovernmentPerformance #CountyGovernmentReport #CountyGovernmentManagement #CountyGovernmentReport #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #BarrettandGreeneInc #BandGReport #GovernmentPressCoverage #StateandLocalMedia #CityMediaCoverage #StateMediaCoverage #CountyMediaCoverage #StateandLocalTransparency #DatingGovernmentReports #DatingConsultantReports #GovernmentReportTimeliness

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 Thing s 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.   #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceAudit #CityGovernmentPerformance #CountyGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #CityPublicAdmnistration #StateandLocalProgramEvaluation #StateandLocalEvidenceBasedPractice #StateandLocalGovernmentExpertBookRecommendation #StateandLocalGovernmentData #StateandLocalGovernmentBudgeting #ResultsOrientedGovernance #AnalyzingPerformanceData #StateandLocalPerformanceFramework #ReaderGuideToGovernmentPerformance #JohnKamensky #IBMCenterBusiness of Government #AmericanSocietyforPublicAdministration #ASPA #CenterForAccountabilityandPerformance #BarrettandGreeneInc #BandGReport

Last week’s B&G Report included the second in a series of lists, compiled by experts, about managing performance. The first such list, compiled for us by performance management guru John Kamensky, kindly included our own book about the topic “ The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance-Informed Management ” (Rowman & Littlefield)   Our book party on March 5, 2020, occurred just before the pandemic shut down the country, but we continue to be proud of its contents, even though it may not have received quite the attention we had anticipated just days earlier.   When we originally wrote the book,  we were aware of a sea of writing that ballyhooed the potential of performance management to cure what ailed state and local government. And so, we’ve always thought that some of the most useful sections pointed out the many challenges, including insufficient resources; a lack of data expertise; weak internal training; counterproductive incentives; fear of adverse reaction; flaws with targets; legislative indifference and lack of sustainability.   But though we wanted to paint a full picture, we didn’t want to leave readers feeling a sense of futility, so we published a sidebar called Rx for Pitfalls. We believe that this counsel has withstood the test of time and so we’re re-printing it here: It is important to acknowledge that performance management systems are an integral part of government – like budgeting or procurement – and not just an adjunct effort.   Performance management efforts are more likely to be sustainable if they are not overly identified with an outgoing political administration.  It is better for them to be identified as a tool of the city than as “the former mayor’s thing,” says Zach Markovits, who was then director of city progress at What Works Cities and now is vice president and local practice lead of Results for America.   The Urban Institute and others strongly recommend that narrative explanations are presented side-by-side with performance measurement information or other data.  This provides the opportunity to put the numbers into context and to make sure that readers understand any exogenous factors that influence results. If numbers used in performance measurement systems are thrown wildly off by a forest fire, flood or hurricane, for example, it is important to communicate that.   Communication of performance measurement information to legislators should be kept short and to the point to increase the likelihood that it is read. Knowledge of committee schedules and study assignments are extremely helpful in determining when information may be most useful and when it will overload legislators or their staff.   Sharing experiences with individuals in other cities, counties and states who are involved in performance management efforts provides an ongoing support system and way to share ideas and experiences. The ability to gather with other people who are working in neighboring or even faraway governments and dealing with the same issues and frustrations has enormous payoffs,   Building an organized information infrastructure can help both central offices and agencies know the work that has been completed in the past that may be relevant to current efforts. Central data inventories help managers know what information from other agencies would be useful to them. Centralized easy to access websites that provide retrievable copies of government reports and evaluations make sure that past work is not lost.   Caution should be exercised when utilizing incentives as an inducement to meet performance targets. Too often, incentives whether in contracts, pay-for-performance plans or linked to increased funding, lead to gameplaying with performance results.   The beginning of a new program or policy initiative is the best time to consider the data that will be needed to analyze and evaluate how well it is doing and what changes may be needed to make it work better. Building up workforce data skills is a pressing need that can be accelerated through both internal and external resources, with train the trainer and mentor relationships helping to spread the knowledge. Coaching is also needed to keep building skills among workers without technical training.  Networks help to encourage participants to see performance management as a living breathing process that they can support through their participation in training forums, strategic conversations, and design workshops and which will break down silos, erase feelings of loneliness and fear of change and bring joy to the performance management effort.   Performance management benefits from a dash of realism in what can be accomplished with the resources available. This means avoiding over expectations and over-selling of the initiative and not under-projecting staff and resource needs.   The importance of building relationships between government and academia, with an emphasis on better communication on both sides, is already in the air. One example: A half-day forum that was focused on bringing policymakers and academics together in 2017, sponsored by APPAM and the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Some of the key messages: 1) The need for safe spaces to have discussions without the threat of publicity, 2) A more systematic way for practitioners to know what research universities are currently engaged in, 3) The importance of considering research needs at an early stage of a project rather than down the road. #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceMeasurement #StateandLocalPerformanceMangement #StateandLocalPerformanceAudit #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalGovermentData #StateandLocalDataAnalysis #CityGovernmentManagement #CityGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalDataGovernance #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #StateandLocalTechnologyManagement #CityPublicAdministration #CityDataManagement #CityDataAnalysis #CityTechnologyManagement #PerformanceMeasurementPitfalls #PerformanceInformedManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentBudgeting #StateandLocalPerformanceReporting #CityPerformanceReporting #PromisesAndPitfallsOfPerformanceInformedManagement #WorkforceDataSkill #PerformanceIncentiveCaution  #StateandLocalEvidenceBasedPractices #StrategicPlanning #GovernmentProgramEvaluation #CountyPerformanceManagement #CountyPerformanceMeasurement

When we were attending the most recent Southeastern Conference for Public Administration in Memphis (SECOPA), we sat in on a number of sessions in which researchers were given the opportunity to share their work. We came away with lots of notes on a yellow legal pad, one of which we underlined several times. It was a quote from one of the presenters who said: “We have lots of research that leads to no results.” As some of you know, we’ve written a book with Don Kettl to help academically trained researchers write in a way that would be understandable by decision makers who could make use of their findings. But the keys to writing well are only a small part of the picture. Elected and appointed officials have the capacity to ignore nearly anything, no matter how well written it is. This is more than just a frustration to researchers, it’s a gigantic loss to the world of public administration. We spend lots of time reading through reports and frequently come across nuggets of insights that we believe could help make improvements in nearly every public sector endeavor from human resources to budgeting to performance management to procurement and on and on. We, and others, can do our best to get attention for this kind of information, but that doesn’t mean that the decision makers have the time or the inclination to take steps toward taking advantage of great ideas. We don’t want to place the blame for the disconnect between academia and practitioners on either party. To one degree or the other they’re both at fault, with taxpayers and the people who rely on government services – and that’s pretty much everybody except for people who have gone off the grid – as the losers. Following, from our experience , are six reasons we believe that it’s difficult to close the gap between the world of research and the realm of utility. The first three are aimed at government leaders, the last three have academics in mind.   For Government Leaders: Politics trumps information. When a politician gets elected to office by advocating popular policies, there’s little likelihood that new research that indicates that they’ve been taking a misguided path will be met with great enthusiasm. We live in a world of information overload. It’s understandable that with all the elegant research being done, it’s probably impossible to get to even a fraction of it – even if there’s a support staff to do so. Academics don’t universally agree about much anything.  It’s easy to find two reports about the same topic that come to differing conclusions. So just because a glittery new piece of research advocates a particular policy, it can be difficult to follow along when there’s equally persuasive evidence to the contrary. For Academics  For professional reasons a great deal of valuable research appears primarily in academic journals, which can be an overwhelmingly expensive proposition. It’s not a rare event for us to come across a study that we’d like to share with the world, but when it’s behind a journal’s firewall, and the cost to purchase it is prohibitive, we just move along and find something else to write about. When it comes to public sector decision makers, information that’s hidden behind a firewall may not ever be utilized. There can sometimes be a tendency to do research for its own value and leave it to others to figure out what kinds of policy decisions it can lead to. Busy folks in the public sector need to know what to do with even the most compelling data, not just to be faced with charts and graphs with no actionable items addressed. As we suggest in the book, it’s important to write for the audience. Whatever new research says will be ignored by policy makers if it’s aimed only at an audience of other academics.  #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalPerformance #StateandLocalPolicyImplementation #CityGovernmenManagement #CityGovernmentPerformance #GovernmentAcademicConnection #StateandLocalInnovation #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #CityInnovation #AcademicGovernmentCommunications #AcademicJournalFirewall #SouthEasternConferenceForPublicAdministration #SECOPA #WritingForImpact #BarrettandGreeneInc #BandGReport

We received a tremendous response a few weeks ago when we published “A Reader’s Guide to Government Performance”  by John Kamensky, a longtime leader in the performance field who we’ve known since the early 1990s when we visited him at his GAO office and he shared knowledge about performance management in New Zealand, Australia and other countries. We were happy to see that his recent recommendations sparked enthusiasm from other well-known experts in the performance field. The following new suggestions of books, reports, articles and presentations about performance management come from David Ammons, Maria Aristigueta, Marc Holzer, Michael Jacobson, Andrew Kleine, Aroon P. Manoharan and Robert Shea.   A Performance Reader’s Guide Continued:   Shelley Metzenbaum, Demetra Smith Nightingale and Batia Katz, Communicating Evidence , Urban Institute, September 22   Ken Miller, We Don’t Make Widgets: Overcoming the Myths that Keep Government from Radically Improvement , Governing Books, 2006   Theodore H. Poister, Maria P. Aristigueta and Jeremy L. Hall, Managing and Measuring Performance in Public and Nonprofit Organizations: An Integrated Approach , 2nd Edition, Jossey-Bass, 2015.   Marc Holzer (editor) and Andrew Ballard (editor) Public Productivity and Performance Handbook , 3rd Edition, 2021, plus Roadmaps for Performance   Donald Moynihan, The Dynamics of Performance Management: Constructing Information and Reform ,  Georgetown University Press, 2008. Martin O'Malley, Smarter Government: How to Govern for Results in the Digital Age , Esri Press, 2019; Plus the helpful accompanying workbook, Smarter Government Workbook: A 14-Week Implementation Guide to Governing for Results . Brian Elms with J.B. Wogan, Peak Performance: How Denver’s Peak Academy is Saving Money, Boosting Morale and Just Maybe Changing the World. (And How You Can, Too! ) , Governing Books, 2016   John Pickering, Gerald Brokaw, and Anton Gardner, Building High-Performance Local Governments: Case Studies in Leadership at All Levels , Greenleaf Book, 2014   Kaifeng Yang and Marc Holzer, The Performance-Trust Link: Implications for Performance Measurement , Public Administration Review, January/February 2006   Also, Managing For Results in Government , an abundance of materials that focus on performance management, published by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO)     Our thanks to the following illustrious individuals who contributed to this growing reading list: David Ammons , Albert Coates Professor Emeritus of Public Administration and Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, whose expertise in local performance and benchmarking is unparalleled;   Maria Aristigueta ,  inaugural dean of the University of Delaware's Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration; Marc Holzer, well-known for his performance measurement scholarship and attention to practice at Suffolk University and the Rutgers School of Public affairs and Administration, where he was founding dean; Michael Jacobson , award-winning leader on organizational measurement, monitoring, and performance management and  deputy director of Performance and Strategy in King County;   Andrew Kleine , former Baltimore budget director and national expert in municipal finance and performance management; Aroon P. Manoharan , executive director of the National Center for Public Performance at the Institute for Public Service (IPS), Sawyer Business School at Suffolk University; Robert Shea , chief executive officer of GovNavigators and former associate director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, with a longtime commitment to improve government performance. More recommendations from these and other performance management enthusiasts will follow in future weeks. And, if you have additional suggestions, please send them in!   #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement   #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement   #StateandLocalPerformanceAudit   #CityGovernmentPerformance   #CountyGovernmentPerformance   #StateandLocalPublicAdministration   #CityPublicAdmnistration   #StateandLocalProgramEvaluation   #StateandLocalEvidenceBasedPractice   #StateandLocalGovernmentExpertBookRecommendation   #StateandLocalGovernmentData   #StateandLocalGovernmentBudgeting   #ResultsOrientedGovernance   #AnalyzingPerformanceData   #StateandLocalPerformanceFramework   #ReaderGuideToGovernmentPerformance   #JohnKamensky  #DavidAmmons #MariaAristigueta #MarcHolzer #MichaelJacobson #AndrewKleine #AaronManoharan #RobertShea #AmericanSocietyforPublicAdministration   #ASPA   #CenterForAccountabilityandPerformance   #BarrettandGreeneInc   #BandGReport

Just the other day, we were editing a Guest Column for this website (we won’t bother to mention the name of the author) and discovered that a whole handful of initiatives mentioned were called “best practices.”   As far as we could see. there was no evidence that these efforts were really the 100%, absolute, no-questions-about it, best. They were ways that had worked before to approach a particular set of problems.   In this case, we were able to edit the piece – with the author’s approval – and used the term “proven practices”. Sometimes when we’re quoting someone in a column (or citing a phrase from a study or a report) we’re stuck with the phrase “best practice,” as we don’t change direct quotes to suit ourselves.   There may be cases in which best practices can apply from city to city and state to state. Best budgeting practices, for example – such as those developed by the Government Finance Officers Association – can certainly be useful. It’s an accepted best practice in budgeting, for example, that entities should cover current year expenditures with current year revenues -- not revenues borrowed from the future. Outside of budgeting, there are some other areas in which the phrase best practice is appropriate. And many of them. which may not have held true in the past, are now thankfully self-evident. In human resources, for example, it's certainly a best practice to make every effort to avoid explicit or implicit racism in hiring or recruiting. Or consider the realm of information technology, where no one can deny that sufficient training can be fairly called a best practice. Before we go on, it seems worthwhile for us to provide our own definition of "best practice." Others may disagree, but it's the way the words sound to us. We believe that the ubiquitous phrase should be used to describe management policies that can be applied pretty much universally. Best practices, we'd argue, should be something like plug and play models that others can pick up and use with a solid assurance of success. But that's often not the way the words are used. For example, the latest glittery idea that seems appealing (but has only been proven as worthwhile in a smattering of places) can often be dubbed as best. People writing reports for any number of significant organizations will take the study of a handful of cities or states and list approaches they’ve uncovered as “best.” Not to seem cynical, but we've noticed that often the words "best practice" are used in consulting firms to sell their own approaches. For years, it was considered a best practice that states set aside exactly 5% of revenues in their rainy day funds. No more. No less. When we researched the topic, we discovered that precise number emanated from an off-the-cuff comment in a speech given by a leader in one of the ratings agencies. As years have passed, thinking on the topic has grown more sophisticated. The Volcker Alliance, for example, has thrown that 5% figure out the window and encourages states to tie their reserve funding to the volatility of revenues. Here are five reasons we are concerned when a best practice is ballyhooed by a government official. 1) Ideas that work in rural areas often don't apply well to densely populated cities/   2) Approaches for homogeneous regions may leave out elements important in places with greater diversity.   3) Things that work well in healthy economic times may need to be forgotten in the depths of a recession.   4) Changing times generally require new solutions. For example, in the depths of the pandemic, it was a best practice not to shake hands. Nowadays, people even hug hello.   5) The label is too often applied before a notion has been properly evaluated and proven to be generally workable.   Fortunately, there are alternative phrases that can be somewhat more accurate. We prefer "promising," "leading," or "accepted" practice. None of these reflects a universally, unquestionably, absolutely superior way of doing government business.   We don’t think this is all a matter of semantics. When a practice is labeled as the “best,” that can easily stand in the way of the evolution of thinking that’s necessary for progress in states and localities. If we know the best way to do something, then why look for a better way? And the search for better functioning government is the core of what we do for a living. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #EvidenceBasedPractices #BestPracticeCynicism #ErroneousBestPracticeLabeling #AvoidingBestPracticeLabels #StateandLocalBudgeting #StateandLocalGovernmentHumanResources #CityBudgeting #StateManagement #LocalManagement #PerformanceManagement #EvidenceBasedManagement #EvidenceBasedDecisionMaking #EvidenceBasedDecisionMakingShortcoming #GovernmentConsultantOverreach #CityGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalSocialEquity #CityGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #CityPublicAdministration #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Over the years, we’ve written a great deal about ways in which government officials can improve their relationship with the press. We know there’s a lot of frustration in state and local governments about the coverage (or lack of coverage) they receive. But there’s another side to this coin: What should members of the press know in order to more effectively cover their governments? There’s lots of interesting stuff out there that doesn’t have anything to do with the upcoming election. So, based on decades we’ve spent writing about state and local management and policy, here are some ideas we’d like to share with people in the press who are covering state and local government. Their numbers are diminishing, sadly, and so we think it’s important that the remaining statehouse and city hall reporters are as close to exemplary as possible. Since most of our readers are the sources, not the reporters, we’d like to invite you to add thoughts to the following half dozen pieces of counsel: 1.     Don’t expect rapid change when new policies or practices are introduced. Articles that take governments to task for the absence of results shortly after a new policy is put into place can miss the fact that it takes time to implement almost any new policy — and if the results aren’t immediate, it doesn’t mean that it’s a failure. 2.     Social policy issues are complex and despite the publicly absolutist stance taken in political discussions, government practices and policies are rarely all bad or all good. They usually have some elements that are working well and others that cause problems. A flaw, or even a bunch of flaws, in a new policy may not signal the need for the policy to be abandoned. It’s kind of like the proverbial dike with a hole. The solution isn’t to tear down the dike, but to stick a finger in the opening. 3.     Government officials who are trained to deal with the press (actually just about anyone who is trained to deal with the press) have learned to skirt questions asked so they can answer entirely different questions of their choosing. At various times we’ve had media training, and this is exactly what we’ve been told: “Don’t worry about the questions you’re asked. Just answer the question you wanted to be asked.” We try hard not to let government officials get away with this frustrating bait and switch.   4.     Tamp down on cynicism. All journalists covering government have been lied to at various points in their careers, but in our experience — and we’ve had thousands of interviews covering every state and large city and county in the country — we’ve found that most government employees are diligent, hardworking and inclined to be as candid as they’re permitted to be. 5.     Just because a policy or new program is passed by the legislature and is signed by a governor doesn’t mean it’s actually going to happen. If a bill isn’t funded, the fact that it passed may only be symbolic. We wish more journalists would follow up on important new policies to see what’s actually happened after some legislator ballyhoos this grand accomplishment. 6.     Most ideas in government have been tried before. Just check out our slide show on transparency and you’ll see all the new ideas about budget transparency that were on exhibit in 1908. Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with trying them again. “Whatever government tried before in performance management, can be tried again, with the new technologies available,” John Kamensky, emeritus senior fellow with the IBM Center for the Business of Government, told us some years ago. It’s truer than ever now. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #GovernmentPressRelations #GovernmentPressCoverage #CityPressCoverage #StateandLocalMediaRelations #StateandLocalMedia  #AdviceForJournalistsCoverningStateandLocalGovernment #GovernmentTipSheetForJournalists #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #CityGovernment #CityPublicAdministration #CityPerformance #CityGovernmentManagement #CityMediaCoverage #StateMediaCoverage #CountyMediaCoverage #StateandLocalPressRelations #StateandLocalGovernmentCommunications #BudgetTransparencyHistory #Early20thCenturyBudgetExhibits #StateandLocalGovernmentBudgeting #StateandLocalGovernmentTransparency #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Over the course of time, we’ve written repeatedly about the confusion many Americans have about which level of government provides which services. The example we typically use deals with roads: How many people can tell you whether a road near their home is owned and managed by their city, county or state? The answer is very few.   But in the past, we’ve largely omitted confusion about the services provided by localities that are generally thought of as the province of the federal government. This kind of civic illiteracy means that blame or credit for the success of efforts is often misplaced.   A few weeks ago, we pointed to one strong example; the widespread impression that threats of climate change are exclusively a federal problem. But as a recently released report from the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) , points out that,  the feds aren’t the only level of government that must be involved in meaningful solutions. That’s true in large part because adapting infrastructure to climate change is fundamentally a local government issue. As   we wrote , “the potential impact is site-specific, local governments are primary responders to their communities' needs, and local governments have authority over land use.”   That’s just one example. Medicaid is another. A physician we know long talked about the Medicaid system as being very generous. Of course, that was because he was based in New York State, which provides a solid package of benefits. But just because New York did so, that didn’t mean that other places did, which would be the case only if Medicaid were exclusively a federal function. In fact, as most of the people reading this are aware, Medicaid is funded in large part by the states which administer the program. Still, when candidates for national office talk about the potential of cutting back on Medicaid, it’s easy to believe that the program belongs exclusively in their province. Education is yet another area where there’s a vast amount of confusion. While the threat to defund the Department of Education is politically charged, that  department only provides less than 14% of funding for public K-12 education. That doesn’t mean its role isn’t important. But it’s not where the big dollars come from. One more: The Environmental Protection Agency gets credit for its hugely successful efforts to ensure that people have clean air and clean water. But the local governments play a huge role. They use zoning laws to control land use in a way that prevents water contamination; they manage water supply systems and it’s their job to determine the effectiveness of national water management programs. We think this is a particularly pertinent time as election day draws near. Confusion over the place where services are delivered can translate into voting for the principles you believe; but not for the right person. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #CityandCountyManagement #IntergovernmentalPartnership #StateLocalPublicAdministration #DedicatedtoStateandLocalGovernment #StateLocalManagementClimateChange #ClimateChangePerformanceManagement #CityClimateChangeManagement #StateandLocalInfrastructure #CityGovernmentManagement #CityGovernmentPerformance #CityZoningManagement #IntergovernmentalInfrastructureManagement #StateMedicaidManagement #IntergovernmentalEducationPolicyandManagement #CivicEducation #IntervovernmentalEnvironmentPolicyandManagement #LocalStateFederalPartnership #NationalAcademyPublcAdministration #NAPA #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

We recently came across an online report by a local NPR station that began with a headline that stated that, “Philadelphia and Wilmington (are listed) as some of the least safe cities in the country, according to a new report.” It followed up by saying “While Wilmington ranks as one of the least safe cities, it has some of the largest number of law enforcement employees per capita.” This intrigued us and so we followed through with the original report , which had been created by WalletHub in its Safest Cities In America (2024) study. Very quickly, we were struck by the fact that we had been woefully misled by the headline, which was dramatic, and got us to explore further, but didn’t represent what the study was really about. To WalletHub’s credit, it was entirely transparent about the factors considered in determining “safety.” They went far beyond what you might expect – murders, manslaughters, rapes, thefts and so on. In fact, the research looked at a very broad definition of safety, which included things like traffic fatalities, the likelihood of earthquakes or hurricanes, and even the financial safety of residents, measured by factors like unemployment rates and the share of the population that is uninsured. Leaving aside our personal questions about whether or not such a broad swath of indicators should be mixed together to create a genuinely useful document, the point we want to make here is that, when it comes to lists of bests and worsts, the devil is in the details, but those details are often obscured when the lists are publicized by others. A few months ago, we wrote a B&G Report titled,   Why Many State and City Rankings Defy Reality , in which we complained about the many ways in which these rankings can be intentionally or unintentionally misleading. But that’s not our point in this column. The idea we want to stress is that in a day when headlines are designed to conjure up clicks, it’s more important than ever to look carefully behind the bold type. In fairness to those who want to report about the findings of a rating or a ranking, there are many instances in which the methodology can be difficult to find or decipher. Not only are the criteria used in assembling ratings and rankings of major consequence, so is the methodology used in creating them. Academic literature, by and large, is careful to explain precisely how findings were reached. But often the language used in the methodology section is so dense that comprehension may be difficult for all but those who are trained to understand and fairly utilize a scholar's work. We'd like to borrow from the famous Latin phrase "Caveat Emptor," which means, of course, "Let the buyer beware," and suggest a new one, "Caveat lector index," which Google translate tells us means "Let the list reader beware." #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalManagementRanking #StateandLocalPublicSafety #CitySafetyRanking #CitySafetyPerformance  #SafestCitiesInAmerica #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #CityGovernmentPerformance #ResidentSafetyRanking #GovernmentPressCoverage #CityPressCoverage #StateandLocalMedia #StateandLocalGovernmentCommunications #StateandLocalGovernmentPressRelations #StateandLocalHeadlines #MisleadingHeadlines #WalletHub #CityPublicAdministration #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #DedicatedtoStateandLocalGovernment #CityRankingCaution #BandGReport  #BarrettandGreeneInc

A little over a year ago, we wrote a column for Route Fifty  about the remarkably ambitious host of efforts that Fort Worth, Texas was making to re-invent its budgeting processes, on eight fronts: including, as we wrote in the column, “ implementing priority-based budgeting; improved use of data analytics and benchmarking; comprehensive planning; a strategic investment plan and bond program; departmental strategic planning; “sunrise” reviews; use of Lean Six Sigma principals; a Government Finance Officers Association Rethinking Budgeting fellowship; and strategic foresight studies done with the aid of futurists.   The day after the feature appeared, we got a note from a well-respected official in one of the nation’s largest counties who wrote to say that, while he was impressed at the city’s goals, he’d be surprised if it accomplished more than one or two of them. That got us to thinking about the many times when we write about a city, county or state that is embarking on an ambitious agenda and then never go back again to see what really happened when inertia meets momentum, and political power gets in the way of managerial progress.   We’ve complained over the years about the lack of follow through on new programs by the entities involved. So, this felt like a good time to put ourselves to the test. We forwarded an e-mail to ourselves at the time to remind us to check in with Fort Worth in a year to see what had happened in the intervening months.   The reason for our optimism last year was the city had an unusually collaborative ethos, with the city manager and the council working closely together and that it had a running start thanks to many years during which it had acidulously gathered data about many of its activities, which provided a powerful launching pad for the budgetary equivalent of a rocket ship to Mars.    Following, are some of the efforts that we highlighted a year ago, and the progress that’s been made. The purpose of this B&G Report isn’t so much to pat Forth Worth on the back or even to provide a model for other cities to follow, but rather to make the point that while it’s easy to be dubious about ambitious undertakings, with concerted effort they can be made to happen.   Back a year ago, for example, we wrote that phase one of the city’s efforts – notably priority-based budgeting (PBB) –involved three departments: police, human resources and transportation and public works. Today, there are nine: p olice, transportation and public works, human resources, development services, information technology, library, municipal court, environmental services, and neighborhood services.   From something close to a standing start a year ago, with the help of Resource X (now a division of Tyler Technologies), the city now has a full inventory of the programs and services it offers internally and externally and knows what it costs to provide them.  “This is a level of programmatic transparency that we never achieved at the line-item level,” reports Cooke. “In police, for example, we guided the department through an intensive time study in order to allocate each position to its related program/service.  The process illuminated gaps in services and areas where resources were stretched thin, which led to decision packages (budget requests) that were submitted – and some approved – through the FY2025 budget process.  Without the PBB program inventory and related data, police’s submissions would have been created and ranked differently.”   Another one of the city’s major efforts was to do comprehensive planning, and it’s moving forward on that front as well. “We’re in the process of doing our next comprehensive plan,” says Cooke, “It’s called Re-imagine Fort Worth 2050 Comprehensive Plan, and is the first time in the last 20 years that we have had a high level of public engagement rather than it being a staff-driven effort.”   On the data analytics front, the city has inventoried all its numerous databases to lead toward the development of a data warehouse for a “one-truth” source of information for City use. Additionally, it has built numerous dashboards and modeling that analyze fire overtime, appropriate minimum wage for our economy, and housing inventories.   A couple of other initiatives that Cooke talked about a year ago were  to begin implementing both Lean Six Sigma and Sunrise Reviews. Though the city is still at the very beginning of its current foray into the world of Lean Six Sigma (though it had made efforts in the past to do so) and it hasn’t done any sunset review yet, “We hired a new strategic initiatives manager in June to implement both Lean Six Sigma and sunrise reviews,” says Cooke “These are both part of the program/process evaluation toolbox we will use when we identify trends.”   Fort Worth has hardly crossed any finish lines yet, and Cooke describes all these efforts as long-term ones, but progress is being made and the train is still on the tracks. To hear Cooke go into more depth about the work being done in Fort Worth, sign up for a November 15 Government Finance Officers Association webinar  in which he is participating.   #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #CityGovernmentManagement #FTWorthCityManagement #CityGovernmentPerformance #CityDataGovernance #CityTechnologyManagement #CityInnovation  #FortWorthPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalDataGovernance #CityPublicAdministration #PriorityBasedBudgeting #CityGovernmentBudgeting #StateandLocalgovernmentBudgeting #LeanSixSigma #CityManagerDavidCooke #CitySunRiseReview #ResourceX #TylerTechnologies #FortWorthPoliceBudget #GovernmentFinanceOfficersAssociation #GFOA #RethinkingBudgetingInitiative #FortWorthDataAnalytics #CityDataAnalytics #FortWorthComprensivePlan #CityStrategicPlanning #CityBenchmarking #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc #RouteFifty

Back in March, in collaboration with Donald F. Kettl professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, we wrote a book titled “The Little Guide to Writing for Impact” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) The goal of the book was to help academically-trained writers communicate in a way that will make it more likely that practitioners, policy-makers, legislators, legislative staff and the general public will read what they’ve written – and ideally take actions based on the good ideas presented. Here are eight of the recommendations made in the first chapter of the book. Choose a good title. This can be the first introduction to readers about your work and what it’s about. If the title is long or confusing, impatient readers may move elsewhere rapidly and never have a chance to learn from what you’ve written. Many people who are trained in academic writing are inclined to write titles that go on and on until they’ve basically written the first line of the piece. Frame your thesis early on. Any informative writing ought to have a thesis. Having that clearly in your mind and then presenting it in a straightforward way will lure your readers in Once you’ve intrigued your readers thoroughly enough to get them to keep reading, be sure to write a great conclusion. A short excursion into “questions for future research” can work, but you don’t want the paper to end by appearing to push the biggest questions off to another researcher or to your own future project. KISS is shorthand for “Keep it simple, stupid,” which keeps readers going after you’ve gotten them to start. Avoiding jargon is key. Careful technical language helps to avoid confusion, of course. Air traffic controllers for the Federal Aviation Administration, for example, have developed very precise terms for guiding aircraft both in the sky and on the ground to prevent collisions, as several crashes in the past occurred when controllers thought they were saying one thing and pilots heard something different. A poor reason for using technical language is to make it sound like you know what you’re talking about. That obstructs easy reading and drives readers away. Though it can be tempting to write in the order in which ideas occur to you, that’s likely not the order a reader can find most helpful. The World Bank’s guide to report writing offers some counsel and a variety of alternatives: “In addition to having good topic sentences, paragraphs must have a clear and logical organization.” Avoid Offense. There’s no place for gender-limiting language in writing. For a very long time, “he” was the pronoun of choice for writers, and that left out a whole lot of human beings. Writers tried to correct that by using “he or she,” but that often turned out to be awkward. “They” has begun to emerge, but not everyone has yet accepted it. An easy solution is to pluralize. Instead of writing that “He couldn’t defend himself” when referring to a person who could be male, female, or nonbinary, try the plural: “Public figures have a hard time defending themselves when they’ve been the target of media attacks.” That is smoother and avoids the awkward use of “they” in the singular. Talk to your dog. The most important point of all is formulating an idea that is sharp and clear. The early 140-character limit on Twitter had one great virtue: if you can capture the point of your paper in 140 characters, you can explain it to everyone. How do you do that? Our co-author Don Kettl talks to his dog, who, he reports, never argues back and who often proves an exceptionally good audience. Intrigued? Want to know much more about writing for impact? Then here’s an unabashedly self promotional idea. Buy the book. You can do that by clicking here.   #WritingForImpact #StateandLocalGovernmentCommunication #StateandLocal #StateLocalPolicyImplementation #DedicatedToStateandLocalGovernment #BarrettandGreeneInc #BandGReport #DonaldFKettl #KatherineBarrett #RichardGreene #RowmanAndLittlefield #TheLittleGuideToWritingForImpact #WritingTipsForGovernmentImpact #WritingGuideForPolicyImpact

In conversations that we’ve had lately with people in human resources and elsewhere in government, we’ve found ourselves repeatedly chatting about challenges with their newest cadre of employees: members of the so-called Generation Z. Generally, members of Generation Z are labeled as those who are currently aged 12 to 27. A number of traits tend to be associated with this group, including a desire for real-time feedback. But one of the most significant characteristics associated with them is a yearning for a solid work-life balance. That’s a good thing, especially as there’s been growing recognition about the hazards of workplace burnout, but we’ve heard repeatedly that it can create difficulties when employers would like a little more focus on work and a little less attention to everything else. In a conversation about this phenomenon a friend of ours described a young employee who shocked her boss by abruptly leaving an important meeting at precisely the time she had been told her workday was to end. We bring this all up out of concern that in a search for easy solutions falling back on generational stereotypes can have perverse effects. (And it’s not only the older generations who fall prey to stereotyping. Some members of Gen Z are inclined to complain that baby boomers are too fixed in their ways. Have you heard the phrase, “OK Boomer?” It’s not intended as a compliment.)   While there may be truth to some of the understandings about members of Gen Z,, these kinds of broad generalizations lump people together with a one-size-fits-all approach that ultimately isn’t helpful. The assumption that individuals born in a certain time frame all share similar traits, may be somewhat more accurate than judging them by their sign of the Zodiac, but it doesn’t provide the entire picture by any means. We know that people from Gen Z – or any other generation – are going to vary as much by the region of the country in which they live, their level of education, ethnicity, family culture and background as they are by the year in which they were born. Beyond that, descriptions of any generation run the risk of describing them at a certain point in time, before years pass, the world changes, and their attitudes towards things morph as well. The baby boomers, like us, are currently labeled as optimistic, competitive, effective at decision making and self-sufficient. And yet any number of people we know – some of them well – who are part of our generation are pessimistic, non-competitive, wishy-washy and dependent on others. And that’s how our generation is perceived right now. Consider this from Generation Check  which writes about how baby boomers, like us were thought of when they first emerged on the scene:  “Sometimes called "flower children," they advocated for peace and non-violence, coining the phrase ‘Make love, not war.’ They typically follow vegetarian diets and have their unique fashion sense: long hair, long dresses for the women, and large rimless glasses. Hippies listened to folk and rock music and were inspired by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, and similar musicians.” Of course, we understand that it’s important for employers – whether in the private or the public sector – to try to create an environment in which employees are most likely to succeed. But when employers lean too much on the year an employee was born, instead of an understanding of individual needs and aspirations, there’s every chance that they’ll be aiming their human resource arrows at the wrong targets. #StateandLocalGovernmentHumanResources #StateandLocalWorkforce #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #CityGovernmentManagement #CityHumanResources #CityWorkforce #CountyGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #DedicatedToStateandLocalGovernment #WorkplaceGenerations #GenerationalStereotyping #B&GReport #PerformanceManagement #PublicSectorHumanResources #PublicSectorWorkforce #CityandCountyManagement #BarrettandGreeneInc