Search Results

More than ten years ago, leaders in West Haven, Connecticut (where the Greene of Barrett and Greene grew up), began planning a fabulous new development called “The Haven.” It is still described on its website as an “unprecedented waterfront destination that blends an inspired outlet experience with the ambience of luxury resort.”   Sounded like a dream to economic developers, and in preparation for the project, a section of the city was effectively decimated. So, far, however, nothing has happened. And the city is searching for a new developer.  Residents like Vicenta Gibbons are thoroughly angry. As she told us, “ People were forced to move out of that area and were deceived, as well as the rest of West Haven by promises of a high-end mall area, where sheiks would fly in to shop . . . It is (now) blighted and depressing. We could have a wonderful venue for concerts, sports, etc., (as they have in Bridgeport) since it is right off the highway and certainly is a large enough parcel. The city could have been collecting taxes for several years now.” We’ve been thinking a lot lately about trust in government, and it strikes us that delays like this are the kind of thing that detracts from people’s faith that their governments are functioning well. Once a project has been announced, when voters see that it hasn’t actually come to pass, that builds the sense that government simply doesn’t get things done.   Of course, a great many efforts do come to fruition on time and on budget, but given human nature, it’s often the ones that are sadly put off that stick in the public consciousness.   This phenomenon isn’t limited to giant infrastructure projects.     Consider the effort in Massachusetts to come up with proposals for a new state seal by July. Seems like the simplest of efforts, right? But it’s currently running months behind schedule. Worse yet back in 2021 a 20-member panel couldn’t come to any decisions about the new seal, after extending its deadline several times, prompting Secretary of State William Galvin to call the effort a “complete failure.” Debates currently go on, and nobody has any idea when a new seal will actually be accepted.   Then there was the effort we described a couple of weeks ago, in a Management Item  about the delays in Colorado’s efforts to cut back its owned and leased space by 1 million square feet by July 1, 2025.   As we explained, the goal was overly optimistic, and difficult negotiations over long-term leases have meant that the state has pushed that goal back to July 1, 2027 (and cut back its goal to 800,000 square feet.)   There are a number of reasons why governments frequently don’t deliver on time. Sometimes, as in Colorado, one element of the project wasn’t taken into account at the outset. Other times, it’s a matter of underfinanced projects or politics intruding on an announced plan. There are also any number of challenging factors that weren’t predicted at the outset (like rising costs of concrete).   In an opinion column in Governing last year, Stephen Goldsmith,  professor, former mayor of Indianapolis, and one-time deputy mayor of New York City, wrote that “officials should create a culture of urgency.” He cited the way former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg had “placed clocks on every conference room table, all set at a maximum of 30 minutes, in an attempt to render obsolete needlessly long meetings.”   The column quoted Brad Keywell, author of the "Story of Time," recommending  “killing bad regulations and processes, halting obsolete approaches, which would be a refreshing, even thrilling, way of governing.”   There’s one more element at play here, and that’s the efforts that are simply unrealistic, or badly planned from day one.   The poster child for this kind of thing is the Second Avenue Subway in New York City, which was intended to run 8.5 miles along Manhattan’s east side. It was (believe it or not) initially proposed over 100 years ago, and the first tangible progress made was in 2017 when three new stations opened. There’s no guarantee that anything more will be done anytime soon. It effectively lives large in the minds of many old-time New Yorkers as an example of how big projects don’t get done. There are no magic bullets to guarantee that government projects will be completed on time and plenty of hazards, as well, in setting highly unrealistic goals or rushing action without due consideration of potential negative consequences.  As for the more common reasons for delay, we do have one piece of advice . When action slows down, and residents begin to roil with disappointment, explain, as publicly as you can, the reasons. At least then, the public is less likely to lose trust due to a lack of understanding of the exogenous factors that aren’t under the government’s control. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalPerformance #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #CityGovernmentManagement #CityPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #StateandLocalTransparency #CityGovernmentTransparency #StateandLocalInfrastructureManagement #TrustInGovernment #CityInfrastructureManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentProjectDelay #NewYorkCitySecondAvenueSubway #TheHavenWestHavenCT #PublicSectorGovernmentTrust #CityProjectDelay #StephenGoldsmith #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

We’re looking forward to participating in a panel at the upcoming annual conference of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) about Trust in Government. With that in mind, we’re devouring anything we can read about that topic (though we’ll be focusing on states and localities at the conference). No surprise that an article jumped out at us from The New York Times that said early on:  “Voters across the political spectrum are disillusioned with a government that has become synonymous with “Groundhog Day”-esque spending battles, slow public works projects and political gridlock.” Since we’ve spent our professional careers focusing on management and policy, not on politics, it dismayed us to see that two of the three reasons the Times cited for wide-spread disillusionment had to do exclusively with politics. The real work of government -- delivering services like health care, transportation, education and public safety – seems to have taken a back seat. Now, we’re going to take a leap forward and theorize that to many Americans, government – and not just in the federal government -- has become understood as equivalent to politics. At least that’s the impression you’d get through the kind of social media upon which many Americans rely to get their news. A few decades ago, when we were being interviewed about articles we had written about state government, reporters would sometimes ask: “And what’s the governor’s party?” Believe it or not, we often had no idea. It didn’t seem important to us at the time. Perhaps there was some naiveté attached to that approach, but we wish that we could go back to the good-old-ignorant days. Fortunately, even to this day, we’re able to have many conversations with people who work behind-the-scenes to make government work. It’s extremely rare for politics – and political preferences – to enter in. They may be democrats or republicans themselves, but they’re very happy to talk about the improvements they’re making in operations and services. We don’t want to make the bulk of this column a screed about our woes, but we’ll go on a little more and let it be known how frustrating it is for us when people ask what we do for a living. Our one-line answer is that we “analyze, research and write about state and local government.” If their eyes haven’t glazed over by this point, the next question they ask is almost always about the politics of their city, council or state – not how well they are managed or what exciting new programs they are developing. The problem here is that when Americans think it’s all about the politics, they can easily lose track of all the efforts that are made on a daily basis to try to make life better for residents of cities, counties and states. What’s more, we fear that agency heads and staff in states where the political sky is murky, will be reticent to boast about their accomplishments out of fear that this can make them targets of politicians who want to attack rather than to encourage. We’re not making this stuff up. We were recently at a conference and had a great conversation with an agency head in a state where the politics are rageful, and asked her if she’d like to write a guest column for this website about the good work she’s been doing. She said that wasn’t something she’d be able to do these days because she wanted to just go about her work, without getting publicity for it, thus keeping out of the line of fire of one of the two parties. This kind of thinking leads us to fear that if the people in government who are doing the hard work are reticent to talk about it, then we’ll be caught in a downward spiral in which government is equivalent to politics. And the work of the civil servants will recede ever further into a shadowland of stuff that only self-described wonks know or care about. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #CityandCountyManagement #TrustInGovernment #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #CityPublicAdministration #CityGovernmentManagement #CountyGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalPolicyImplementation #PoliticsVsGovernment #DedicatedToStateandLocalGovernment #CityGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalDataGovernance #CityTechnologyManagement #StateandLocalServiceDelivery #StateandLocalGovernmentHumanResources #PublicSectorHumanResources #StateandLocalWorkforce #GovernmentOversight #StateandLocalGovernmentEfficiencyandEffectiveness #StateandLocalInfrastructureManagement #AmericanSocietyForPublicAdministration #ASPA #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Nearly every city, county or state gathers huge quantities of data for a variety of purposes. Some of it is effectively used, some is entirely ignored, and some of it is denied. But one thing is clear: Data has become the language of government. With that in mind, it’s increasingly critical that government employees are bilingual; not only must they be traditionally literate in that they can speak clearly and understand what others have said, they also need to be steeped in something that’s become widely known as data literacy. This is not intended just for people who would identify themselves as data specialists, whose jobs are primarily to help create or analyze data. Data literacy efforts must spread throughout any well-run government organization.  The need for government leaders to understand data – and for data specialists to translate it into clear comprehensible English – has become especially critical for those who are using it to make important decisions or monitor the programs in which they’re involved in order to take steps to improve them. But, in the real world there’s no requirement that elected officials really understand the charts, graphs and spreadsheets that are put before them. When was the last time you heard someone running for city council or selectman boasting that “I’ll be able to do my job well because I’m data literate”? What’s more, it’s critical for staff at many levels to understand the data and its significance, even if they’re not using it to make decisions. That’s because many employees collect and input data. Multiple cities have found that data quality improves when their workforce understands the use to which the data is put, its importance to the taxpayers they serve, and its connection to the success of their departments. This idea was well spelled out in a 2022 Deloitte report , “Data Literacy for the Public Sector: Lessons from Early Pioneers in the U.S.” One of its most important findings was that, “In order for agencies to effectively engage in the ever-changing data landscape, organizational data literacy capacity and program models can help ensure individuals across the workforce can read, write, and communicate with data in the context of their role. Data and analytics are no longer ‘just’ for specialists, such as data engineers and data scientists; rather, data literacy is now increasingly recognized as a core workforce competency.” The ways that cities are achieving better staff data literacy come not only from live or online classes and, study-at-your-own pace materials, but also from established communities of interest that encourage employees to meet and learn from each other. Still, not all employees are going to be willing students, as the time they spend achieving data literacy can add onto an already overwhelming work week. We’ve never heard of a place that offered overtime hours for employees who were taking an online course in data literacy. Early efforts to foster data literacy in the public sector workforce began nearly a decade ago, when President Barack Obama signed an executive order that boosted the development of open data 3 – the notion that, absent an overriding reason, all government data be accessible to all Americans. That idea quickly gained traction with the nation’s cities, and they began to make their data more accessible to a broader range of people both inside and outside of government. But simply providing data to people is only half the battle. It’s equally important that they are helped to have the capacity to evaluate it, understand it and ask the appropriate questions about its meaning. Not only is it important for people in the public sector to be able to understand data, it’s also important that they use the words of data to mean the same thing as other people think they mean. In the first book of the Old Testament, the story is told of the Tower of Babel. At heart, the tale concerns the effort of Babylonians to create a tower that would “reach to the heavens.” But that lofty goal proved to be a failure because the people building the tower spoke many different languages. This ancient story has a lesson for cities now that data has become the language of government. It’s critical for them to speak the same language – to be data literate – or else their programs and policies can risk facing the fate of the Tower of Babel. One challenge that confronts people who are pushing data literacy programs in their cities, counties and states is the lack of resources for adequate training. Like all other government efforts, promoting data literacy isn’t free. As a result, it’s important for elected and appointed leaders to have sufficient buy-in to this process for them to make the necessary resources available. This is particularly worrisome, as many states and localities are confronting a “fiscal cliff,” and when expenses outpace revenues, the first thing to be dropped are often training programs. But despite this tendency, governments that cut back on this kind of education are shortsighted, and their reliance on data is ultimately doomed to be less than successful.  #StateandLocalDataGovernance #CityDataGovernance #StateandLocalTechnologyManagement #CityTechnologyManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #CityandCountyManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #CityEmployeeDataLiteracy #CountyEmployeeDataLiteracy #StateEmployeeDataLiteracy #PublicSectorDataLiteracy #StateandLocalGovernmentHumanResources #StateandLocalWorkforce #DataLiteracyTraining #DataLiteracyAndElectedOfficials #CityDataQuality #CountyDataQuality #StateDataQuality #CityDataUse #CountyDataUse #StateDataUse #DedciatedToStateandLocalGovernment #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

As anyone who has been reading our work in the past knows, we’re strong believers in making sure that there’s ample use of evidence when states and localities decide to take one policy or programmatic turn or another.   Despite our faith in the value of evidence-based practices, it’s become clear to us that this is a case where, as Greek fable writer Aesop put it “Too much of a good thing can be bad.” He was referring, by the way, to flies who got attracted to a honey jar, where they got stuck in the sticky stuff and died.      Back to our concerns about evidence-based practices (which aren’t nearly as extreme as the plight of those flies): When entities rely too much on evidence-based practices before they embark on a new program or policy, there’s a hazard that they may be finding their proofs of concept from dissimilar places. (This is one of the issues we discussed when we wrote  about the hazards of the phrase “best practices,” a while ago.)   As the Center for Law and Social Policy argued a few years ago , “In generalizing knowledge, EBPs fail to consider the cultural relevance of practices, thereby failing to provide certain communities, especially communities of color, with solutions that respond to and understand their individual lived experiences and cultural contexts. An effective practice in one community may not be effective in all communities.”   Additionally, simply finding evidence from another jurisdiction that something works well, doesn’t mean that it’s easy to replicate with fidelity, while also providing the flexibility and ability to innovate for those who want to improve upon established practices.   By definition, when places want to make true innovations, there isn’t evidence from elsewhere that a new idea works. This makes us think about a conversation we had with a close friend who was then in television programming. We were having fun coming up with ideas for tv shows that we think would be successful, but he shot them down, one a time on the premise that this kind of program had never been done, so no one was likely to do it now.   The same thing we suspect (but can’t prove) is that when executive or legislative branches require that their agencies show proof from elsewhere that a new idea works – and they can’t, because it’s never been tried before, true progress can come to a grinding halt.   We’ll take this a step further and argue that risk-taking is an essential element for progress, and the safety belt of evidence can be overused to provide cover so that it doesn’t appear something new will fail.   What’s more, for smaller communities, the amount of time and money that’s required to unearth evidence from elsewhere, can provoke a lack of initiative as agency heads watch every budgetary dollar they get.   A few more challenges on this front are sited in a paper titled “ What are the limitations of evidence-based practice ?” by the Center for Evidence Based Management, from which we’ve drawn the following excerpts:   “Sometimes the best available evidence is not available. This is particularly the case with regard to novel management techniques or the implementation of new technologies.” “Another limitation is that the current management environment changes more rapidly than in the past, which limits the relevance and applicability of scientific and experiential evidence that was generated in an organizational context that was different that today’s.”   “Some managers see evidence-based practice as a tool to reduce staff expenses: use the best available evidence to determine the best model or technique, hire young, inexpensive practitioners and equip them with an evidence-based protocol to guide their decisions. This would not only be a misuse of evidence-based practice but also suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of its principles”   #StateandLocalGovernementManagement #StateandLocalManagement #EvidenceBasedPractices #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #EvidenceBasedManagement #EvidenceBasedPracticeMisuse #EvidenceBasedPracticeShortcomings #GovernmentRiskTaking #StateandLocalInnovation #CityInnovation #CenterForEvidenceBasedManagement #CenterForLawAndSocialPolicy #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

In the wake of the pandemic, we co-wrote a paper for the IBM Center for the Business of Government in collaboration with renowned government expert Don Kettl. It was titled “ Managing The Next Crisis: Twelve Principles For Dealing With Viral Uncertainty .” At the time, we weren’t anticipating another pandemic coming around very quickly, but we thought that lessons learned from COVID could – and should -- apply to other catastrophic intrusions on life. As we wrote at the time, “Crises will come and go, regardless of the lessons learned (or ignored) Good governance will not stop hurricanes, terrorists, floods, wildfires, heat waves, or cyberattacks from disturbing society’s smooth functioning.” With the horrific losses of property and life in the Los Angeles area wildfires, we thought it might be worthwhile to borrow from our work back then and share ten of the principles we espoused that continue to seem very pertinent now:   1. Data is key to understanding a problem well enough to develop a solution, but the various players responding must be able to communicate with one another using consistent terms, definitions, and methodology for the data. 2.  Solutions to many major crises, from wildfires to hurricanes to the pandemic, require assets like hoses, sandbags, masks, and vaccines.  Central coordination for their procurement prevents various involved players from competing against one another, which can lead to higher prices and unnecessary shortages. 3. The pandemic demonstrated an increasing absence of the necessary personnel to deal with a health care crisis. The nation must develop better means for growing the next generation of experts in multiple fields who can serve in times of need. 4. Technology is a central element to solving most modern problems, though not the only element. Used with care, artificial intelligence can help governments to better understand problems and form solutions. 5. Unlikely events that have high potential consequences still require preparation. Risk management can help weigh the odds and spell out plans for future calamities.   6. When addressing a major crisis, organizing all the participants trying to respond is necessary. Unfortunately, these kinds of networks must be consciously formed. They do not come together spontaneously.  7. When many people face great risk, they must trust those who lead response and recovery—or those interventions are severely impeded.  8. States and localities often help find solutions by trying a variety of different approaches to solving a problem. Ignoring the lessons learned across the states makes their experiments less productive. 9. For the United States to progress, the population as a whole must be treated fairly. The pandemic revealed that without addressing social and economic inequities, disasters will harm huge segments of the population disproportionately. 10. Holding institutions and individuals accountable helps ensure responsible actions. This requires knowing exactly how to define and measure success #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalRiskManagement #ManagingACrisis #LessonsFromCovid #StateandLocalEmergencyManagement #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #StateandLocalTechnologyManagement #StateEquityPolicyandManagement #StateandLocalInnovation #LAWildfireCrisisManagement #StateandLocalCrisisManagement #StateandLocalWildfireManagement #ManagingTheNextCrisis #StateandLocalDataQuality #StateandLocalTechnologyManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentHumanResources #IBMCenterBusinessOfGovernment #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc #DonKettl

Recently, we were involved in a project that involved reaching out to dozens of officials in cities across the United States.  As you might expect, we did this through an e-mail volley – carefully sending out the e-mails one at a time to avoid them appearing to be potential spam. But the responses were far fewer than we had anticipated. So, we sent out another volley and got a few more. Our problem was that we had little idea of whether the e-mails were reaching the desired recipients. Our solution: We set about a time-consuming process of finding phone numbers and calling directly (and, by the way, given the concern about privacy, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to find phone numbers on websites). We reached a handful of people directly and for others we left messages. Within a couple of days we had made contact with many of the people we had been chasing electronically. In a day when e-mails and text messages seem to rule the world of interpersonal contact, this process reminded us of a far simpler time, when everybody used old-fashioned telephones to make contact. It certainly was more time-consuming than sending out e-mails, but also was often more effective. For one thing, phone calls weren’t caught in spam filters. Beyond that, when an assistant, secretary or the actual source answered the phone, you could be pretty sure that you had actually reached the right office.   This isn’t the only instance in which we miss an earlier time, when people kept their list of contacts on Rolodexes full of phone numbers. Another one is linked to the dependence on using Zoom and other visual platforms in order for people to make personal contact. We always give our public sector sources the option of meeting online or on the phone, and they almost always select the former. We get it, kind of. It’s pleasant seeing a person’s face and getting a sense that people will get to know one another better when they can see them on their computer screens. But how many times have you arranged for a video meeting only to find yourself frustrated? If your experience is anything like ours, this happens quite a bit of the time. For example, we’ve experienced repeated online meetings in which, for reasons nobody understands, one party or the other can’t be heard or seen.  Sometimes people have just left themselves muted or for other reasons the audio doesn’t work or in mid-sentence, the person freezes entirely. Sometimes, everybody just gives up and reaches for a phone. The transition often takes time. And when we’re speaking with public officials who rarely have a minute to lose, it just abbreviates the total conversation. Then there are the instances in which one of the parties is running a little late.  If people were using telephones, then the party waiting for the call can get some work done, send out e-mails, or do paperwork. But when you’re tied into a screen, awaiting for the arrival of another person, pretty much all you can do effectively is stare at your own image while waiting for somebody else to pop up.   When we’ve been hanging around online for more than five or ten minutes, we send an e-mail asking (far more politely than we feel) if the appointment is still on. And the answer to that question leads us to another way that we think that new technologies can stand in the way of progress. With great frequency the answer to our outreach is an apology that puts the blame on the person’s lost email, spam folder or digital calendar.   We know this dates us, but we keep our calendar on a long, long Microsoft word file that we double check regularly. People tell us we’re inefficient, but we’re hanging onto something that works. And we don’t miss appointments. (Hardly ever, anyhow.) We can’t honestly say that the use of e-mail, texts and online video conversations haven’t been a good thing overall. But in a reversal of the words in Joni Mitchell’s beautiful song Both Sides Now , “Well something’s lost but something’s gained.”   #StateandLocalSurveyResearch #NewVersusOldComunicationTools #StateandLocalGovernmentInterpersonalContact #OnlineMeetingLament #TelephoneNostalgia #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc #DedicatedToStateandLocalGovernment #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance

For years, we’ve been writing about the importance of good data, based upon which states, counties and cities can make good decisions. But as a growing number of practitioners and academics are relying on artificial intelligence as a source for all the information in the world (when we were children, the equivalent was the Encyclopedia Brittanica), the necessity of care for the accuracy and completeness of data rises even more in importance The well-written, if sometimes pedantic prose that AI can produce can create the impression that the information it spits out will be accurate. That’s not the case. Consider, for example, a B BC  February report  that examined news summaries generated from artificial intelligence (AI) engines including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity AI. Here are a few of the report’s alarming findings: “51% of all AI answers to questions about the news were judged to have significant issues of some form. 19% of AI answers which cited BBC content introduced factual errors – incorrect factual statements, numbers and dates.” “13% of the quotes sourced from BBC articles were either altered from the original source or not present in the article cited.” The basic problem is this: as a growing number of people rely on AI to get the information they need, their attention is being diverted from the basics of data management. With so many government officials focused on artificial intelligence, the critical issue of data quality is getting less attention. A conversation with Rudy de Leon Dinglas, Chief of Staff of the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence (GovEx) at Johns Hopkins University, revealed his concerns about this issue: “I don’t think we should turn our back on basic data management strategies, because they’re very foundational. AI is here, but we cannot turn our backs on making sure that we’re shoring up the infrastructure about data strategy and data policy.” Added Kel Wang, manager of applied data practices at GovEx, “All around, everybody talks about AI, but it’s honestly hard to come across articles around the lines of data quality or data inventories or data governance. Data quality is not the shiny icing on the cake.” Ultimately this goes back to the old adage: garbage in garbage out, a phrase that’s been around since the early days of wide-spread computer use. We brought up one significant issue with the accuracy of information drawn from AI, in a piece we wrote based on a roundtable discussion about the topic hosted by the IBM Center for the Business of Government. As we wrote , “A I can pick up opinions and understand them as fact, which are then used to make decisions.  But the confusion between opinions and fact is a significant one, and when they are conflated, public sector leaders can be misled.”   We’re hardly alone in this concern. The MIT Sloan School of Management had this to say, “ AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini have been found to provide users with fabricated data that appears authentic. These inaccuracies are so common that they’ve earned their own moniker; we refer to them as ‘hallucinations’. “For an example of how AI hallucinations can play out in the real world, consider the legal case of Mata v. Avianca. In this case, a New York attorney representing a client’s injury claim relied on ChatGPT to conduct his legal research. The federal judge overseeing the suit noted that the opinion contained internal citations and quotes that were nonexistent. Not only did the chatbot make them up, it even stipulated they were available in major legal databases.” In a recent e-mail conversation with Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State CIOs, he underlined this point, writing that “GenAI models are trained on and use massive amounts of data to be successful.  You need to feed the beast!  We've identified data quality as one of the most essential elements of GenAI adoption in the states in our  blueprint.   If you can't trust the quality, integrity and reliability of your data,  you can't trust the results of the analysis.” Last year , NASCIO collaborated with EY on a national survey of the states  about this concern, and discovered that “very few states comprehensively address data quality and integrity,” wrote Robinson. Despite that unfortunate bit of news, the same report indicated that “Ninety-five percent of the respondents believe that increased adoption of AI and generative AI (GenAI) will impact the importance of data management.” Robert Osmond, Virginia’s Chief Information Officer was referenced in the report as reinforcing the importance of keeping close watch on data quality before allowing AI algorithms to thrust the information into the world, “emphasizing the state’s commitment to ensuring that the foundational data for AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), must be reliable and of high quality. So that AI is ethical, responsible, and transparent, the foundational data used for AI must be accurate, and the results of the AI must be thoroughly tested for accuracy.” You’d think that the advent of AI, which makes data vastly more accessible would have encouraged governments to focus more closely on cleaning up their data than ever. Sadly, that doesn’t appear to be the case in many places. The glittery prospects of AI are taking up a huge amount of government capacity, and it’s easy to get so lost in the prospects for the future, that the basics of data management that are essential for AI to be useful can lose traction. #StateandLocalGovernmentData #StateandLocalDataAccuracy #StateandLocalGovernmentGenerativeAIPolicyandManagement #DataAccuracyAndArtificialIntelligence #ArtificialIntelligenceDataAccuracy #DataQuality #StateLocalDataGovernance #CityData #CityDataGovernance #StateLocalGovernmentAIPolicyAndManagement  #CityDataQuality #StateandLocalDataQuality #StaeandLocalGovernmentManagement #GovEx #BadData #StateLocalArtificialIntelligenceManagement #CityTechnologyManagement #StateandLocalTechnologyManagement #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #CityPublicAdministration #BloombergCenterForGovernmentExcellence #RudydeLeonDinglas #KelWang #DougRobinson #NASCIO #IBMCenterBusinessOfGovernment #RobertOsmondVirginiaCIO  #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

As regular readers of this website know, we generally avoid covering politics or the federal government. That said, we’re beginning this column with a prediction about the federal government, which is tied closely to politics. That will be followed with some thoughts about the impact of each on state government management and policy. From all we can see in the press, notwithstanding plans of the incoming administration, it’s going to be tough to get much done. That’s attributable to a razor-thin majority margin in the House of Representatives, coupled with a new administration, many of whose members have had little experience in executing significant changes in the way the actual work of government gets done. It seems likely to us – and to others whose opinions we respect – that there’s going to be a while before big alterations are made for some months (maybe years), outside, perhaps, from a few areas that are of particular concern to the new administration. But just as we learned in eighth grade science that “nature abhors a vacuum,” many Americans want to see forward motion to address the problems that assail them. For a little while at least, it’s likely that much of that forward movement is going to be coming from the states. In the last year, we’ve been happy to report about a number of advances in programs and management at that level and anticipate that there’ll be a great many more to come. In fact, if the federal government doesn’t move forward quickly to make a mark on pressing issues – like the need to streamline government, health care, housing affordability, homelessness, public safety and so on – the pressure will be greater than ever to move forward. A fair amount of action at the state level was already taking place in executive orders from the last quarter of 2024 , which showcase some of the areas that states are likely to be tackling this year. In fact, as the federal government begins to consider ways to streamline government, in the fourth quarter of last year this area was often addressed by governors of both parties. Louisiana’s governor, for example, ordered a review aimed at efficiency improvements  with an eye to streamlining the granting of permits and licenses to help resolve environmental hazards and prepare for expansion of nuclear energy. A report on reforms was to be due to the governor by July 1, 2025. As for housing and homelessness, Virginia was just one of a number of states taking action. In fact, housing solutions there were directly tied to economic development through “Catalyzing Housing Development for Critical Workforce and Economic Development Needs with Interagency Collaboration,” an executive order signed in mid-November , which states that maintaining Virginia’s economic growth requires increased housing development and cites negative competitive factors in the pace that Virginia metro areas have created housing compared to metro areas in states that are economic competitors. And those are just the executive orders, which, though quite important, tend to get less attention than do the actions that emanate from state legislatures, and the actions there are already being felt. In early December, the National Conference of State Legislatures  took a stab at predicting a number of the areas that states are likely to address this coming year. As the organization pointed out, “A bout 137,000 bills have been introduced in state legislatures in 2024. And with every state legislature in the country, District of Columbia and territories meeting in 2025, similar numbers are expected next year.” A few of the areas that stood out on the NCSL’s List: ·         Tax reforms ·         Disaster mitigation ·         Artificial intelligence ·         Behavioral health ·         The health workforce ·         Energy ·         Transportation ·         Broadband ·         Academic performance Precisely what the states will be doing is still uncertain, and they’ll surely encounter challenges of their own in making progress. But it’s a sure bet that changes are in the air, and you can follow this website to make sure you don’t miss them. #DedicatedToStateandLocalGovernment #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StatePolicy #StateandLocalPerformance #GovernorExecutiveOrders #StateandLocalPolicyImplementation #StateEfficiency #StateTaxReform #StateArtificialIntelligenceManagementandPolicy #StateHealthManagement #StateEconomicDevelopment #StateDisasterMitigation #StateTaxReform #StateHousingManagementandPolicy #StatePublicSafetyManagementandPolicy #StateBroadbandManagementandPolicy #StateHousingAffordabilityManagementandPolicy #StateHomelessnessManagementandPolicy #StateTransportationManagementandPolicy #StateEnergyManagementandPolicy #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #NationalConferenceStateLegislatures #NCSL #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Over the course of the years, we’ve happily written about scores (probably hundreds) of reports that are focused on broad areas of state and local government, like budgeting, human resources, performance management, infrastructure and so on.  And we’ve been involved in creating some of these, too. When we read one of these documents, we always try to see how the authors have reached their conclusions. We tend to be persuaded by quotes from experts who have strong reputations, clear-cut methodologies and most of all persuasive data. Here’s the unfortunate news, that we hardly want to admit to ourselves. Despite the best intentions of many of these research exercises, there are often hidden flaws. Sometimes, these are just sloppy errors. Anyone can make a mistake. But we’ve come to believe that all too frequently, the authors were fully aware of these issues, but didn’t want to share these dirty little secrets with the world. Often, we only become aware of this situation when we get somebody on the phone to learn more about their research and discover that they can’t answer many of the basic questions that we pose, including concrete examples of the phenomenon about which they’ve written. We’re tenacious about such things, and generally we’ll ask our source to follow up and send us the missing facts or anecdotes, and in most cases they agree. Then a day or two passes and we follow up with an e-mail asking for the missing numbers or the stories that will help us to illustrate their contentions. Sometimes the answers are forthcoming with a little nudging. But often those e-mails go ignored until we contact the person a few more times and are ultimately told that they can’t get the information we’re seeking, either because they don’t have time or because the data aren’t available. On our more misanthropic days, we conclude that they knew all along that there were no answers that they’d be able to find but were hoping that we’d forget and  go away. Ultimately, this leads us to using hedge words in our write-ups because we’re not entirely confident of the findings, and so we don’t want to hang our reputation on their absolute accuracy. Or in more extreme cases, we just drop the example from our own published work. Here’s a real-world example: About six months ago, we were writing an article about a city survey. Our question was simple: “How many people responded?” There was no answer immediately forthcoming, but (using the approach we’ve just written about) we waited to find this out. if there weren’t enough responses, then we didn’t want to use the findings. Finally, our source told us that this information wasn’t public. We could conceivably have used the Freedom of Information Act to dig deeper, but this was just one illustration we planned to use out of many. And we were on deadline. Our solution: We dropped mention of the survey from our piece. But had we not thought to ask the original question, we would have run the risk of using the results of a survey that was problematic.   Another issue: Reports that make a strong point, include supportive evidence, but ignore a stockpile of facts that take the other side. We’re not suggesting that reports needs to say “on the one hand and on the other hand,” equating minimal evidence of one point of view with more powerful proof of the other. But when there’s sufficient research showing a contrary point, we’d argue that the researcher owes it to the audience to acknowledge that. All this brings us back to a time, many years ago, when we were writing a documentary about Walt Disney, for which we interviewed 77 people, most of whom knew him well, while others were well-known historians. In a filmed conversation with one of the historians, he told us that Disney’s father had never had any success in life. We pointed out something we knew that was contrary to that, and the historian said the following: “Yes, that may be true, but it doesn’t fit into the theme.” Years ago, an editor of ours (who we’ll not mention by name, for obvious reasons), complained that we hadn’t come to our conclusions before we did the reporting. We were somewhat younger then and didn’t have the courage to say that we thought this was ridiculous. We couldn’t conjure up any conclusions on the spot, which didn’t make him happy. This kind of mindset was extreme, and we think it’s relatively rare. We believe most people try their hardest to be fair and honest and complete in their work. But too often that’s not the case. And that’s a problem, particularly when other researchers rely on false published narratives, the false conclusions can be repeated until everyone believes they’re true.  #DedicatedToStateandLocalGovernment #StateandLocalGovernmentResearch #HiddenResearchFlaws #DataQuality #StateandLocalResearchFlaws #QuestionableSurveyResearch #ReportBias #MissingData #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentResearch #CitySurveyResearch #StateandLocalSurveyResearch #StateandLocalGovernmentReports #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

In 2024, our professional life was very busy (as our colleagues, family and friends know), and so we hardly had the energy in our evenings to read as much as we’d like, or to learn to crochet, or practice the piano. Instead, we found ourselves watching streaming television programs. The three at the top of our list were past seasons of reality shows. Perhaps you might guess that the first two were Amazing Race and Survivor. But the last one was something of a surprise to us:  America’s Next Top Model. Because we have difficulty turning our minds away from work entirely, we found ourselves drawing lessons from these shows about the dynamics of state and local government workforces and the efforts they undertake. The result: We've come up with a half dozen tips derived from reality tv and how they relate to state and local government management. 1)    Be prepared for a surprise along the way.  On Amazing Race (which usually consists of teams of two traveling on a series of legs around the world) unexpected obstacles often emerge. On a long drive, a team that is ahead of others gets a flat tire or the car breaks down altogether. That’s enough to turn a leader into a laggard. With this in mind, it’s good for government project teams to always be prepared for the unexpected. 2)    Leaders can accomplish a great deal more by getting buy-in than by making pronouncements . This one is from Survivor, a show in which a bunch of people compete, usually in teams, and one member of the losing team is voted out of the game by their cohort. We’ve repeatedly seen a smart, determined individual, trying to lead the strategy for their team by announcing what the plan should be. These folks tend to be voted out of the show by teammates who are sick and tired of being lectured to, instead of being brought into the decision, 3)    Spend your time trying to improve, not to beat down the competition . On America’s Next Top Model, aspiring models live in the same place, where they squabble with one another while they’re waiting for a series of photographs and sample commercials which will determine who stays on the show. There’s almost always one model who is so attuned to beating down the rest that she stops focusing on the things she can be doing to heighten her chances of being named America’s Next Top Model. Something fairly similar can happen in an office when an individual is so intent on getting a promotion that they aren’t good team players – and typically, this doesn’t work out well. 4)    Don’t make excuses. This is a big one on America’s Next Top Model. Contestants who photograph badly in an episode, often explain that the problem was that “it was too cold on the shoot,” or “I had a headache,” and so on. We’ve talked to enough government supervisors to have learned that they don’t want to hear incessant moaning about the unfortunate circumstances or personal difficulties that led to a botched assignment. 5)    Learn from your mistakes. This one comes up in all three programs in which the contestants who are introspective and thoughtful about the reasons for failure tend to last much longer before they’re eliminated (or they win). The same thing, obviously, is true for people who work in the public sector. 6)    Take risks. On reality shows, people who try to get through by doing the same thing over and over again, tend not to stand out and they’re generally eliminated from the show (like the models who have temporary success by posing sideways, and get bounced from the show because the judges want them to finally pose face on). In the public sector, a willingness to take risks tends to lead to the biggest triumphs, as long as agency heads aren’t risk adverse, in which case risk-taking isn’t going to be happily encouraged. #StateandLocalGovernmentHumanResources #StateandLocalGovernmentWorkforce #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #CityGovernmentManagement #CountyGovernmentManagement #StateGovernmentManagement #LessonsFromRealityTV #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

As we approach the last several weeks of December, our plan is to take a full vacation starting on December 14, continuing through New Year’s Day. With the assumption that other performance measurement and program evaluation lovers will be looking for results-oriented inspiration over the holidays, we’re now presenting our third installment of books (and a couple of journal articles) recommended by the many government performance experts who have enthusiastically shared their favorite book suggestions with us. This list does not repeat any recommendations that were made in our previous B&G Reports, which started with, A Reader’s Guide to Government Performance , in which performance management expert John Kamensky generously shared recommendations with our readers, based on his decades of experience at the GAO, the IBM Center for the Business of Government and the National Partnership for Reinventing Government. That inspired multiple other experts -- David Ammons, Maria Aristigueta, Marc Holzer, Michael Jacobson, Andrew Kleine, Aroon P. Manoharan, and Robert Shea.  to introduce their own recommendations in our Performance Reader’s Guide (Part 2) , which also included identifications of each of these individuals. In this edition, we’ve drawn from the same sources, but have also added contributions from Don Moynihan, who recently left the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University to become a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. The recommendations below start with three books with outlooks that extend beyond government. These are followed by others that are more directly targeted at the public sector, ending with a couple of non-book offerings. Enjoy – and have a pleasant holiday. Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game , W.W. Norton & Company, (2004)   Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness , Penguin Books (2009) and the more recent revision, Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge: The Final Edition , Penguin Books (2021.   Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us , Penguin (2009)   Ken Miller, Extreme Government Makeover: Increasing Our Capacity to Do More Good , Governing Management Series, 2011   David Ammons and Dale Roenigk, Tools for Decision Making: A Practical Guide for Local Government , Third Edition, Routledge (2021)     Results for America’s Evaluation Policy Guide , (a free book-length pdf)  (2024) A nton Gardner, John Pickering, Philip Harnden, and Gerald Brokaw , Building High-Performance Local Governments: Case Studies in Leadership at All Levels , (Greenleaf Book Group)   Oliver James, Asmus Les Olsen, Donald P. Moynihan, and Gregg G. Van Ryzin,  Behavioral Public Performance: How people make sense of government metrics , Cambridge University Press (2020)   The U.S. Government Accountability Office’s Managing for Results in Government   Jakob Majlund Holm, Successful Problem Solvers? Managerial Performance Information Use to Improve Low Organizational Performance , Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 28 (3), 303320, open access version (2018)   #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformanceManagement, #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformanceMeasurement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalGovernmentBudgeting #StateandLocalGovernmentData #CityGovernmentManagement #CountyGovernmentManagement #CityGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalDataGovernance #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceAudit #StateandLocalTechnologyManagement #CountyGovernmentPerformanceManagement #CityGovernmentPerformanceManagement #StateGovernmentPerformanceManagement #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc #GovernmentAccountabilityOffice #BarrettandGreeneReadingRecommendations #PerformanceReadingRecommendations #JohnKamensky  #DavidAmmons #MariaAristigueta #MarcHolzer #MichaelJacobson #AndrewKleine #AroonManharan

We were involved in a meeting the other day, in which a couple of participants were talking about agile government. We hear that term with frequency these days but admit to being a bit foggy on the meaning. We thought we were the only ones, but then someone asked for a definition (which made us happy) and it turned out that there were at least a few acceptable definitions. That set us to thinking about the many words that gain currency in the public sector but are understood differently, depending on the speaker and circumstances. Some years ago, for example, when we were working on projects with the Pew Charitable Trusts, there was a huge amount of talk about “big data,” and how it could be used by the states. We got approval to do a series of interviews with smart people asking simply what “big data” meant. It turned out that in about a dozen interviews, we came up with at least four separate meanings. We couldn’t help but wonder about the potential for miscommunication when people with varying definitions worked together without knowing they were talking about different things. The list goes on. Just the other day we were having a conversation with a well-known expert in human resources, and we made mention of performance management. The conversation that followed was a little confusing until we realized that we meant the broad area of measuring and managing performance in the public sector, while he was referring specifically to the performance evaluations for employees that are commonplace in HR. This reminded us of a nightmarish story from deep in our past when a high-ranking official with the now defunct publication, Financial World, was a guest on a radio program, talking about an early effort of ours to evaluate management capacity in the cities and states. We had written in the piece that one state was weak in performance management, but in the interview the magazine’s representative complained about how badly the state was evaluating its workers.  That wasn’t what we meant and wasn’t true. A representative of the state took umbrage at the interview, and it was all quite a mess, which required a few apologies. Then there’s the confusion about what’s meant by “merit” and “merit systems” in compensation. To some, merit pay implies that employees who exceed performance goals get bigger than typical raises. But we’ve come across plenty of places in which nearly everyone gets a merit pay increase as long as they’ve done enough to avoid being fired. In fact, when we conjured up a B&G Report list of  “ Twelve Big Lies About State and Local Government , we included this one: “Merit pay is based on merit.” We don’t think these distinctions are trivial.  Words matter. As George Orwell wrote, “ if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”   #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #CityPerformaneceManagement #StateandLocalHumanResources #CityHumanResources #StateandLocalCompensationManagement #StateandLocalMeritSystem #CityMeritSystem #AgileGovernment #EmployeePerformanceEvaluation #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #PublicSectorTowerOfBabel #StateandLocalGovernmentCommunication #FnancialWorld #FinancialWorldGovernmentRanking #BandGReport