Government Executive - Authors - Robert Shea

Innovation from the ground up: How state and local leaders are shaping the future of performance management

Robert Shea, Sarah Cunningham, and Mary Goldsmith — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0400

We’ve known for a long time the best ideas in government performance don’t always start in Washington. They come from state capitols, city halls and county offices, places where leaders are solving real problems for real people and showing that performance management can be a driver of impact, not just a reporting requirement.

At the 2025 Performance Counts Summit, hosted by AGA, we saw this creativity and innovation on full display. Leaders from across the country shared how they’re using evidence, data, and collaboration to improve outcomes for their communities. These aren’t theoretical frameworks. They’re practical, adaptable approaches that can — and should — inspire performance management at every level of government.

In Tennessee, for example, the Department of Finance and Administration has built a statewide learning agenda and a complete program inventory mapping every state program to its outcomes and level of evidence. This gives policymakers a clear, data-driven picture of where investments are working and where adjustments are needed. By linking performance metrics directly to budget requests, Tennessee ensures that funding decisions are grounded in results, not just tradition.

Colorado offered another standout example. Faced with the challenge of deploying more than $3 billion in federal recovery funds, the state aligned those resources with community priorities and built a public-facing performance dashboard. Residents can see in near real time how investments from the American Rescue Plan Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act are affecting their neighborhoods. That kind of transparency doesn’t just build trust — it builds momentum.

Cities are leading, too. In Alexandria, Va., department heads’ performance contracts are tied directly to the city’s strategic plan. Metrics are designed to be meaningful not only to officials but to residents, making the connection between city services and community outcomes clear.

These examples share a common thread: performance management is embedded in decision-making, resource allocation, and communication. It’s not a one-time exercise or a compliance requirement. It’s part of how these governments operate every day.

We also heard about the power of experimentation. Jon Baron of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy highlighted how targeted pilot programs and tiered funding models allow governments to test new ideas before scaling them. This approach recognizes that what works in one community may not work in another — and that the smartest investments are informed by real-world results.

Importantly, state and local innovation is happening in partnership with strong data governance. Leaders in Arkansas and the Coleridge Initiative are building secure, privacy-aware data-sharing systems that enable agencies to work together while protecting sensitive information. This kind of infrastructure ensures that innovation rests on a solid foundation of trust.

Taken together, these stories point to a clear future for performance management: one that is proactive, integrated, and people-focused. By aligning budgets with outcomes, using data to anticipate needs, and making results visible to the public, governments can deliver more effective services and strengthen public confidence.

The federal government has much to learn from these examples. The creativity, agility, and problem-solving we saw at the state and local levels show what’s possible when performance management is treated as a tool for innovation. Scaling these practices nationally and adapting them to the unique needs of federal agencies could transform how we measure and deliver results.

The 2025 Performance Counts Summit reminded us that the path to better government isn’t just about new policies or new systems. It’s about leaders willing to try new approaches, share what they learn, and keep improving. That’s happening right now in communities across the country.

The challenge, and the opportunity, is to take these ideas and make them the norm, not the exception. If we follow the lead of the innovators in Tennessee, Colorado, Alexandria and beyond, performance management can become what it was always meant to be: a driver of better outcomes for the people we serve.

Sarah Cunningham is a Partner at Summit. Mary Goldsmith is National Federal Sector Director at RSM. Robert Shea is CEO of GovNavigators.

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Rushing the Return to Office: Why Forcing Feds into In-Person Work Could Backfire

Robert Shea and Andrew Stegmaier — Thu, 11 May 2023 06:00:00 -0400

The Office of Management and Budget issued guidance recently to ensure the policies governing agency work environments optimize organizational health and performance. Embedded in the 20-page document is a clear expectation that agencies “substantially increase meaningful in-person work at federal offices.” House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., suggested OMB’s guidance was not enough, saying, “It’s essential the federal workforce get back to the workplace and provide better service to the American people.”

Let’s not be hasty. For those of us working with federal agencies to create effective hybrid and remote work postures, it is clear both OMB and Rep. Comer’s stances invite significant risk with no clear reward. How do we know? As part of our support for a leading federal agency, we conduct quarterly workforce pulse surveys to assess employee perspectives on their work environment. In the most recent iteration of the survey, more than 40% of respondents stated they would seek alternative employment if current telework flexibilities were changed. That is a huge number – and one that should cause both the executive and legislative branches to take a collective pause.

It is fair to attribute at least some portion of that 40% to survey bluster, but we would argue the potential impact is even more compelling than first glance suggests, given the federal government’s ongoing challenge to fill open positions. If even an extra 10% of agency staff left, where would their replacements come from? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 138,000 openings across federal departments and agencies in February 2023, but just 48,000 people were hired. It also takes too long to hire in the federal government – many positions take more than 100 days to fill. The system is simply not ready for a mass exodus of federal employees, and Congress and OMB’s concerns over quality of customer service would only be exacerbated by staff shortages.

So, what should policymakers and agency leadership do to ensure optimal work environments in this new climate of uncertainty and risk?

Empower executives to create agency-specific guidelines, and individual supervisors to make decisions on telework frequency. OMB’s recent guidance rightly stresses the importance of mission and service delivery. However, the requirements to achieve missions are unique to individual agencies. Each agency leadership team should be empowered to set work environment guidelines that maximize their ability to achieve the mission and promote employee flexibilities. Similarly, individual supervisors who are accountable for work group performance, should be allowed to set employee telework frequency, while executives carefully assess those decisions to ensure they are not self-serving, monitor organizational performance, and demand improvement when needed.

Create effective methods to ensure accountability. OMB’s guidance strikes the right tone on the importance of developing organizational health and performance frameworks that incorporate work environment planning. Metrics around mission delivery; employee engagement and satisfaction; diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility considerations; talent acquisition and workforce management; and retention are good starting points. In our experience, many agencies make this type of analysis too complex. Long-term evaluations and causal studies are important, but a scaled down assessment effort can be just as impactful. By merging a few existing HR data sets, a good analyst can cross-reference the above indicators by employee telework frequency and provide executives with useful insights on trends in productivity, satisfaction, and mission delivery.

Embrace agility and phased implementation. If the pandemic has taught federal leaders anything, it is to expect the unexpected. No agency will create a perfect work environment plan in the coming months, so governance and review mechanisms should be put in place to adjust the agency’s posture once additional insights are available.

Manage risk through pilot deployments and strengthened HR capabilities. For agencies to effectively optimize their work environments and reduce risk of employee attrition, they should start with pilot deployments to test hypotheses about employee responses to change and improvement in mission delivery. If the pilot pans out, decision makers can then leverage data collected to expand the initiative more broadly. At the same time, HR capabilities should be strengthened to offset any attrition, including leaning in on hiring flexibilities and hiring reform, adopting leading recruiting practices, and reengineering burdensome HR processes.

The pressure to improve the federal workplace environment stems from a noble goal – to improve mission and service delivery to the American public. No taxpayer could be against that. However, immediate, wholesale change and a hastened, mandatory return to the office are almost certain to make things worse. Expecting employees to come back to the office simply because downtowns are suffering is not fair. OMB and agency leadership should slow down; test hypotheses to collect evidence about what works; and make informed, data-driven decisions about the path forward.

Robert Shea is CEO of GovNavigators, LLC. Andrew Stegmeier is COO of Management Science & Innovation.

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Biden's Management Agenda is the Answer to One CEO’s Plea for Better Government

Robert Shea — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 06:00:00 -0400

A CEO’s letter to shareholders isn’t often a ripe source for insights into government’s management or performance. But JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s latest is full of exhortations about how government can serve Americans better. I hope he’s watching the President’s Management Agenda and the developments on Performance.gov and Evaluation.gov. Ambitious initiatives are afoot.

Dimon notes the unprecedented confluence of risks facing the country – emerging from the pandemic, rising inflation, and the war in Ukraine – and the “extraordinary need for strong American leadership.” It’s worth noting that in addition to the nation’s strong role in marshalling international support for Ukraine, pandemic response and economic recovery are two of the Biden administration’s and Congress’ top priorities. But what about the government’s capacity to provide this leadership in a competent way?

"In prior letters,” Dimon writes, “I have detailed our poor management of basic policy in America and what the consequences have been from that dysfunction. I find it disheartening how readily we accept the failure, often with a chuckle, of our bureaucracy and policies.” Like the ones that preceded it, this PMA is designed to remedy this dysfunction.

Priority one of the PMA is to “Strengthen and Empower the Federal Workforce.” Recruitment and retention of a high performing workforce has always been a challenge for the federal government. The PMA seeks to speed hiring and improve employee engagement across all agencies.

Priority two of the PMA is “Delivering Excellent, Equitable, and Secure Federal Service and Experience.” Transforming Americans’ experience with their government would restore trust and address the chuckling about the “bureaucracy” and “dysfunction” about which Dimon complains.

Priority three of the PMA is a broad category: “Managing the Business of Government to Build Back Better.” Improving the process by which the government gets much of its work done – grants and contracts – would pay enormous dividends to every facet of American society.

One of Dimon’s criticisms stood out: “Our [government’s] policies are often incomprehensible and uncoordinated, and our policy decisions frequently have no forethought and no identification of desired outcomes.” It’s true that the federal government has been on a long journey to articulate its desired outcomes and how it plans to achieve them.

However, the latest step in that journey can be found at Performance.gov, with links to agency strategic plans that “lay out the strategic priorities and objectives each agency aims to achieve, the actions the agency will take, and how the agency will deal with challenges and risks.”

In describing JPMorgan Chase’s Policy Center and Institute, Dimon wrote, “We continue to need better data to understand what is happening in the real economy so we can help shape policies that make a significant and positive impact on those who need help the most. Good data that is granular and timely and, when possible, leverages big data sources must be at the heart of all policy processes to ensure measurable and equitable outcomes.”

In fact, the government’s Evidence Agenda is transforming government’s culture into one that is driven to a greater degree by evidence. Evaluation.gov offers links to every agency’s Learning Agenda, the “systematic plans for identifying and addressing priority questions relevant to the programs, policies, and regulations of an agency.” There are also Evaluation Plans, inventories of “the significant evaluations an agency plans to conduct.” These are the roadmaps to evidence-based policymaking or data-driven decision-making every agency will take over the next several years. And the Administration has declared this the Year of Evidence for Action!

While Dimon decries a lack of forethought in government policies, I would argue that he could see some solid examples of data-based decision making buried deep within the President’s recent FY 2023 budget proposal, which notes, “The Budget emphasizes not just building evidence, but using it.” Some of what the President proposes is backed by evidence of effectiveness, so there is greater confidence that investing in these programs would most likely produce measurable results. For example, the budget includes:

· $330 million for Department of Housing and Urban Development grants to mitigate lead-based paint hazards in HUD-assisted and other low-income homes, reflecting clear evidence that ensuring children grow up in healthy, lead-safe homes provides a lifetime of benefits for both the children and society; and

· $303 million to expand Department of Labor investments in Registered Apprenticeship programs that have been shown to improve employment outcomes and $6 million to provide greater opportunities for women to enter Registered Apprenticeship and nontraditional occupations.

It is good to see Jamie Dimon use his considerable platform to highlight the importance of competent government, but the reality is significant efforts are underway to transform the way government serves Americans and leverages data and evidence to improve policymaking. If Dimon believes “it’s imperative that policymaking include private and public sector partnership,” I hope he will join in driving the improvements promised in the President’s Management Agenda.

Robert Shea, former associate director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, is the National Managing Principal for Public Policy at Grant Thornton.

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How Biden Could Achieve His Management Priorities

Robert Shea — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 08:00:00 -0500

The White House last month released its long-awaited management agenda. “The Biden-Harris Management Agenda Vision” describes the administration’s plan “for ensuring an equitable, effective and accountable federal government that delivers results for all.” It prioritizes three things: strengthening and empowering the federal workforce; delivering excellent, equitable, and secure federal services and customer experience; and managing the business of government to support Biden’s “Build Back Better” initiative.

There’s a lot to unpack in the beautifully designed, densely worded document the White House posted on Performance.gov. But it also leaves us wanting more detail about the goals and framework that will be used to drive measurable progress on the PMA. When those details are released next year, I’m hoping for a little more granularity in what is expected of agencies and how they will measure success.

The three new PMA priorities build on previous management agendas and address longstanding challenges. Recruitment and retention of talent remains a significant challenge. Improving the customer experience so Americans can seamlessly and equitably access promised benefits and services could measurably strengthen trust in government. And managing the business of government—a priority which seems to encompass acquisition, financial management, and grants management reform initiatives—is certainly worthy of sustained focus. Relying on communities of practice (e.g., interagency management councils), enhancing information technology management and cyber response, and strengthening the government’s evidence-based policymaking and data management capacity are among the “essential government capabilities and systems” the administration will use to drive its management agenda.

There are a number of things I hope to see as the administration rolls out more detail on its approach to achieving its goals:

Clarify what initiatives continue. Agencies are taxed as never before in implementing previous and new initiatives. Meeting the demands of the pandemic was hard enough; legislation associated with economic recovery, infrastructure investment, and potentially the Build Back Better Act are pushing massive spending through new and existing programs. The administration’s vision is a bit opaque on what previous management agenda initiatives continue and which ones, if any, cease. To ensure agencies can prioritize their investment of time, energy, and money, the administration should be clear about what starts, what stops, and what continues.

Appoint accountable officials. The PMA notably is signed by members of the President’s Management Council, signaling broad commitment across agencies to the principles in the vision. I hope the next iteration of the agenda specifies who in the administration is accountable for achieving which goals. In my experience, assigning an accountable official is a critical ingredient in an initiative’s success. Aligning agency officials and OMB officials with key responsibilities makes a powerful combination.

Define how you’ll measure and report success. I pine for the days of the Executive Branch Management Scorecard that was used to measure and report agency progress toward PMA goals. I may be among a minority in that regard, but the new PMA could use a simple framework for demonstrating how success will be measured and reported. Goals should be clear and transparent, as should progress or the lack thereof. The administration promises to “leverage the federal performance management framework to plan and measure progress,” and that’s a good thing. Setting a baseline so we know where we are and where we are going is also critical.

Identify resources needed for implementation. Accountable officials are just one piece of the puzzle required for success. No one official can achieve success alone, especially when success depends on a “whole of government” approach. What talent, tools and money will be invested in achieving the administration’s ambitious goals? Agencies want to know the administration will put its money (and people) where its mouth is and not just make this another unfunded mandate.

Ensure an integrated approach. A major risk to achieving success is lack of coordination across government and its diverse ecosystem of stakeholders. Many of the requirements that flow from the PMA initiatives will fall on state and local government and not-for-profit partners. Coordinating customer experience initiatives with diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives, for instance, is essential to the success of both priorities. Coordinating this complex web of projects and activities is an enormous challenge, but it is essential to moving the administration’s agenda forward.

The administration has set the stage for significant improvement across a discrete, but important set of priorities. Adding meat to the bones—a framework for measuring and driving success—would ensure we can chart improvement over time. Without such a framework, officials may be spinning their wheels. And with the level of trust in government where it is, the Biden administration can’t afford that.

Robert Shea, former Associate Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, is the National Managing Principal for Public Policy at Grant Thornton.

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COVID-19 Stimulus Must Include Oversight to Block Fraud

Robert Shea and Linda Miller — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 13:47:14 -0400

As Congress readies the largest economic stimulus bill in American history to help stem the fallout from the COVID-19 crisis, fraudsters are waiting in the wings. Fraud flourishes when oversight is lacking or nonexistent. And when the federal government’s goal is to get as much money as possible into the hands of people who need it, as quickly as possible, oversight is usually an afterthought. The final bill is still being worked out, but the size of the stimulus—close to or exceeding $2 trillion—and the speed with which the money will be made available, should make oversight paramount.

The risk here is real. With fast-moving economic stimulus, there are requests for accelerated payments, obligations and contract awards, which is a recipe for decreased oversight. Scammers preying on individuals with fake offers of stimulus grants will be prolific, which will require public service campaigns and other strategic communications efforts. Nearly every dollar spent will come with the potential for fraud or abuse.

Lessons abound from the past about the need for oversight in large federal aid programs. After Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration hastily put together an aid package that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was poorly equipped to properly oversee. According to the Government Accountability Office, during the first six months following Hurricane Katrina, FEMA provided between $600 million and $1.4 billion in improper and potentially fraudulent financial assistance. Fraudsters had a veritable field day with the abundance of available money and lack of oversight.

The scrutiny FEMA faced following Katrina brought about some welcome changes to the agency’s approach to fraud mitigation after Hurricane Sandy. While up to 22% of Katrina assistance was found to be at risk of being improper or fraudulent, only about 3% of financial awards for Hurricane Sandy victims presented that risk, a result of additional oversight.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known as the Recovery Act, which injected nearly $800 billion in stimulus to help rebuild the economy following the 2008 mortgage crisis and ensuing recession, provides additional lessons. The Recovery Act created an accountability and transparency entity, the Recovery Board, that required any company or organization receiving contracts, grants or loans to file quarterly reports that were posted publicly on a government website, Recovery.gov. As GAO has reported, “The Recovery Act . . . paved the way for legislation that changed the standards for the transparency of government spending.”

The Recovery Board, disbanded in 2015, was hailed as a genuine success in managing the risk of fraud in Recovery Act funds. The Recovery Board oversaw nearly 3,200 audits, inspections, and other reviews by Inspectors General whose agencies received Recovery Act funding. Recovery Board-related probes by IGs resulted in 1,665 convictions, pleas and judgments, and more than $157 million in recoveries, forfeitures, seizures and estimated savings.

Recovery.gov became a model for accountability in government spending. It was the first governmentwide financial system to move to a cloud infrastructure. President Obama issued a 2011 executive order creating the Government Accountability and Transparency Board, now defunct, which was modeled on the Recovery Board, to manage oversight of all spending. Indeed, many have argued in the years since the Recovery Board was disbanded that the real benefit of the oversight mechanisms was the fraud that never happened because of enhanced scrutiny.

The complexity and size of the COVID-19 stimulus now being finalized requires a serious focus on government oversight. An oversight body like the Recovery Board is absolutely vital, as is a transparency mechanism similar to Recovery.gov. As with the Recovery Board, data analytics will be key.

Through innovative analytics software that structures data in search of patterns, the data analytics techniques used in Recovery.gov were refined to yield real results. For example, patterns in the data identified fraudulent Medicare providers operating out of empty buildings in Miami, business owners falsely claiming to be service-disabled veterans, and grant money recorded as being sent to an address that local citizens said was an empty shed. These are just a few among myriad examples.

The lessons of the past, if properly implemented, can result in providing needed economic relief to millions of Americans while safeguarding those funds from fraud. But the emphasis on oversight must be built in and implemented from day one. If Congress misses the opportunity to institutionalize oversight into COVID-19 stimulus, money will not only be wasted, but it may well miss its target.

Linda Miller is a Principal with Grant Thornton Public Sector, where she leads the fraud risk mitigation practice. She is a former senior official at GAO, where she led the development of GAO’s Fraud Risk Management Framework. Robert Shea, a Principal with Grant Thornton Public Sector, served as an Associate Director for Administration and Government Performance at the Office of Management and Budget.

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A Quiet Legacy: The Bush Management Agenda Continues to Impact Government

Robert Shea and Danny Werfel — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 14:17:54 -0400

Alumni from the George W. Bush administration recently gathered in Washington to mark the 10-year anniversary of President’s Bush’s departure from office and reminisce about his administration’s accomplishments. For those of us who served the president in that era, particularly in government management, we reflected on how much of what we were working on then laid the foundation for the efforts of today.

When a new administration is sworn in, it’s often a chance to reset a policy agenda to reflect the vision the new president laid out during the campaign. However, because government management reform is inherently non-partisan and advancements are achieved over a longer time frame, the initiatives from a previous administration are worth keeping in place. Thus, it’s important to preserve and celebrate continuity across multiple administrations’ management agendas. But it is also important for an administration to leave its mark and raise the government’s game so that future administrations are playing to a new goal post.

The Bush management agenda did just that, creating a framework with such clear performance measures, transparency and individual accountability that it stunned some government leaders at the time who were used to a much murkier environment by which their success or failure would be evaluated. The Bush management agenda was marked by quarterly, publicly released scores (red, yellow, or green) to denote agency progress toward addressing important management challenges. In one dramatic incident, which demonstrates just how seriously these scores were taken, a policy official threatened to do bodily harm to a surprised Office of Management and Budget examiner if a red grade on human capital management was not immediately changed to green.

Getting consensus on an approach to management improvement is essential. Collaboration is key. The red, yellow, green scorecard was developed early in the Bush administration in close collaboration with OMB and the President’s Management Council, a group designated during the Clinton administration to drive management improvement across agencies. The Bush administration sustained the council because it was a good idea and deserved to continue. And it proved critical in the development and oversight of the management agenda.

The scorecard attempted to drive improvements in performance, financial management, information technology, acquisition, and human capital. Because it was designed around the government’s greatest management challenges as defined by the Government Accountability Office , most agencies rated reds for most areas. Many weren’t happy, but each quarter, grades continued to be released publicly and progress was scrutinized by many inside and outside government, including President Bush. Public attention to those grades drove agency leaders to work on improvements. By the end of the Bush administration, most had made systematic improvements to their operations.

That progress has been sustained as successive administrations remained focused on solving the same challenges—reducing improper payments, migrating to shared services, improving management of real property and strengthening human capital.

Agencies have greater insight into the root causes of improper payments than ever before. The drive to migrate back-office functions to shared services centers is embodied in the cross agency performance goal, Sharing Quality Services, and the OMB memorandum, Centralized Mission Support Capabilities for the Federal Government. Because the government is the largest landowner in the world, real property management improvement efforts have continued unabated. Last year, agencies reduced their office and warehouse space by 3.87 million square feet and avoided costs of $66 million. And because the Bush administration first launched governmentwide employee engagement surveys, agencies are making targeted efforts to improve employee satisfaction and retention.

One of the major lasting improvements that emerged during the Bush presidency was in the area of government transparency. Not only were quarterly scorecards published electronically, but the 2006 Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act required agencies for the first time to post financial transactions monthly on USASpending.gov. The depth, accuracy, and analysis of this massive data source has improved steadily since it was first made available.

The U.S. government is the largest, most complex organization in the world, and it faces enormous challenges. Whether it’s reducing improper payments, consolidating shared services, recruiting and retaining talent, or doubling down on transparency, progress takes time. It’s refreshing to note, especially in such divisive times, that important management improvement initiatives have been sustained across successive administrations. Here’s hoping that continues.

Robert Shea, a former senior official at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, is a Principal with Grant Thornton Public Sector. Danny Werfel, former Federal Controller and Acting Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, is a Managing Director and Partner at The Boston Consulting Group.

Image via Christopher Halloran/Shutterstock.com.

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What the Shutdown Taught Us About Federal Payroll

Robert Shea — Tue, 29 Jan 2019 11:12:39 -0500

If the American people never considered the impact of not paying the government’s millions of employees, they have now. The longest government shutdown in history shined a light on the importance of paying hardworking public servants on time and in the right amount. Without that, many of the services Americans count on could come to a screeching halt. Again. That’s why today’s bipartisan, governmentwide initiative to further consolidate and modernize agency payroll systems—called NewPay—is so important. Full disclosure: Grant Thornton led one of the two teams to which the General Services Administration awarded blanket purchase agreements under NewPay last September.

It’s not the first time we’ve worked to improve payroll systems. I was at the table more than a decade ago when the government attempted to consolidate its 26 payroll systems into four. The effort to get there was grueling. Some said it couldn’t be done; some agencies said they simply wouldn’t do it. But they did. Payroll consolidation accomplished in the early 2000’s remains one of the few successful examples of moving federal agencies to greater reliance on shared services. There is so much more to be done and the government is working hard to get there.

For decades, one of government’s top priorities has been to increase federal agencies’ reliance on “shared services” to get their work done more efficiently. Financial systems, asset management, and customer experience are just a few of the areas across government designated for migration to shared services. These efforts promise substantial savings and measurable improvements in service.

Another key priority is payroll modernization. The effort to consolidate payroll providers from 26 to four was a success, saving the government approximately $1 billion. Today, when it’s open, the federal government successfully pays more than 2.2 million civilian employees every two weeks. Unfortunately, according to Beth Angerman, deputy associate administrator for governmentwide policy at GSA, today’s payroll systems are “almost as old as the employees themselves” and “predate the internet, the personal computer and mobile phones.” Angerman says “we can do better,” and she’s absolutely right.

Private sector trends strongly suggest that large companies are increasingly moving to Software as a Service (SaaS) for their Human Resources Management Systems needs because it can more easily provide a cost-effective, holistic way to improve employee satisfaction and engagement. Forrester, a leading market research company that provides advice on existing and potential impact of technology, recommends that companies focus on employees’ digital experience: “Look for a modern SaaS [HR System] designed to create a digital employee experience that engages every person in the organization for talent and employee engagement programs, benefits, productivity, and personal needs.” The government’s payroll systems don’t meet this standard.

When NewPay was launched, GSA Administrator Emily Murphy wrote, “NewPay strongly aligns with . . . efforts to be more efficient, make wise investments of taxpayer funds and shift the focus from low- to high-value work by modernizing government processes and systems. Additionally, by utilizing SaaS solutions, NewPay will continue to create ongoing value by empowering agencies to continue modernizing their systems.”

Administrator Murphy is correct, of course. Moving to SaaS will make keeping up with evolving technology far more efficient for all agencies than in the past. It will also make the experiences of both providing and receiving pay much more enjoyable, productive ones for both payroll administrators and employees. Errors and delays will be minimized or corrected much more quickly. But perhaps more importantly, helping agencies shift their focus from “low-value” to “high-value” activities will make it worth the effort because they won’t be engaging in heroic efforts to administer payroll using antiquated, increasingly obsolete systems.

The faster agencies migrate to more modern payroll systems, the more quickly they and their employees will reap the benefits. Congress should likewise strongly support the effort, as lawmakers have consistently bemoaned the lack of innovation in IT across government. As with payroll system consolidation efforts of the past, a commitment to getting it done will reap savings measured in the millions of dollars.

Payroll systems are the unheralded mechanism by which public servants get paid for their work. Pay is one of the federal government’s biggest expenses. It’s imperative that we get it right every time. NewPay promises to deliver better, faster, and more accurate payroll administration to federal agencies and their employees. We may not be able to guarantee there will be no future shutdowns, but if we modernize payroll, getting government workers the pay they deserve will be a much improved process at a much lower cost to the taxpayer.

Robert Shea, a former senior official with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, is a principal with Grant Thornton Public Sector.

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Who In Government Is Asking ‘What Works?’

Robert Shea — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 08:00:00 -0400

One year ago this week, the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking issued its final report, The Promise of Evidence-Based Policymaking, which made a number of substantive recommendations about how to strengthen the governance, collection and use of evidence in the way the government develops, implements and evaluates its programs. A year later, where do things stand?

While there is still precious little use of rigorous evidence in decision-making across government, the good news is that substantive progress has been made on some of the commission’s recommendations. For example, the Trump administration is driving the development of “learning agendas” through the President’s Management Agenda. Learning agendas offer agencies an approach to answering the big questions they have about what’s working and what’s not. The government also has set a cross-agency performance goal to better “leverage data as a strategic asset to grow the economy and increase the effectiveness of the federal government.”

These are good first steps, but there’s still a lot more we can do, starting with the appointment of chief evaluation officers in federal agencies. The commission recommended the federal government “identify or establish a chief evaluation officer in each department to coordinate evaluation and policy research and to collaborate with other evidence-building functions within federal departments.”

This recommendation is included in legislation working its way through Congress. The 2018 Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act passed the House easily, but then unfortunately stalled in the Senate. There are a number of reasons the bill has been held up, but one of them is resistance to appointment of yet more chiefs to drive improvements in an area thought not to have enough focus. If there are too many chiefs, the thinking goes, then nothing’s a priority. Wrong. We do need them, and here’s why.

Today, many agencies are conducting evaluations of varying rigor on an ad hoc basis. Without a focal point for evidence-building, there’s little way of ensuring that evaluations are well-designed to answer the key questions most important to programs or policymakers. A chief evaluation officer should have responsibility for collaborating with mission-focused partners across the agency to identify the major questions that need answering, as well as driving a learning agenda and evaluations that answer those questions.

Today, there is no single individual at government agencies who is tasked with speaking up when what we’re doing isn’t working. Sure, the performance improvement officer is supposed to drive performance improvement, but the diversity of performance management, reporting and other compliance that fall to that position makes it difficult to ensure independent, rigorous evaluation is a priority. A chief evaluation officer should be charged with knowing how and when to evaluate an agency’s programs.

The concern that we’ve already got too many chiefs is not entirely without merit. The chief financial officer was created to bring focus to and improve financial management government-wide. God knows we need that. But other positions, like chief information officers and chief human capital officers, soon followed as a way to heighten attention to governmentwide challenges. But even if all those positions were wildly successful, if the programs their agencies were administering weren’t designed for success, it would all be for naught.

The commission didn’t make this recommendation lightly or in a vacuum. We considered the proliferation of chiefs across government. But we had great examples where the appointment of a chief evaluation officer made a difference. The Labor Department appointed one who collaborated with program partners to develop a learning agenda that eventually offered genuine insights into what programs were having the greatest impact and which ones weren’t having any impact at all. It’s the model for the commission recommendations and it can work. Without these insights, agencies are blindly aiming at goals they have no chance of achieving.

The appointment of chief evaluation officers is no guarantee that we’ll open the floodgates on the availability and use of evidence in decision-making. It will take leadership commitment at the highest levels across government to do that. But strengthening the governance over evidence gathering and us gives it at least a fighting chance. Without it, whose job is it to ask, “is what we’re doing working?”

Mr. Shea, a former senior official at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, leads the Strategy Service Line at Grant Thornton Public Sector. He is a member of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking.

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5 Ways Agencies Can Link Program Cost, Performance and Impact

Robert Shea and Tim Gribben — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 11:47:09 -0400

What are the costs of federal programs and policies? What results do we get for that spending? These two questions are fundamental to understanding public value and cost effectiveness, yet issues of cost, performance and impact often exist in silos. That’s a problem, since when financial management, performance, and evidence communities work together to tackle important agency or cross-agency challenges and opportunities, government produces better results, often at lower cost.

Why do those silos exist? A key reason is that these communities use different tools or lenses to carry out their work. They often operate in different offices within agencies and have different goals. Consider the question: Is this program (or policy) working or not? The three communities ask different questions about performance. For the financial management community, including chief financial officers, the key question is, of course, about money: Is this program spending appropriately and according to program and accounting rules? For the performance community, including performance improvement officers, the key question tends to focus on outputs and outcomes: What did this program achieve? And for the evidence community, such as chief evaluation officers, key questions focus on implementation and impact: Is this program being implemented as intended in an efficient way and what causal effect does it have?

Despite these differences, the three communities have important overlapping interests and approaches that can benefit each other. Integrating cost information into performance management discussions, for example, helps decision-makers track trends in costs and cost-effectiveness. Leveraging financial data and cost-benefit analyses in rigorous program evaluations helps decision-makers understand return on investment. And cooperation between evidence and performance staff can ensure that performance management efforts are informed by implementation insights and estimates of impact, not just outputs and outcomes.

In short, there are important reasons to bridge these silos. In May, about 200 officials from more than 30 federal agencies took a first step. The event, called the PIO/CFO Summit, was co-hosted by the Association of Government Accountants and the American Evaluation Association. Participants discussed how to better integrate cost, performance, and evidence efforts and, in doing so, better achieve their agencies’ missions. From those discussions, we identified five suggestions for agencies.

Learn from other agencies. Some have made important strides in recent years to not only prioritize the use of information related to evidence, performance, and cost, but also to help integrate those different lenses. One agency highlighted at the summit was the Small Business Administration. One of us (Mr. Gribben) described how the agency launched a central evaluation office and a chief data officer role within the CFO’s office. The agency also created an acquisition vehicle for program evaluation that incentivizes the use of cost-effective data-collection methods. And it publishes a learning agenda—a document that identifies high-priority research questions—and makes it a priority to act on the results of evaluations.
Identify your agency’s most important problems or opportunities. When agency leaders are clear with their staffs about what the most important organizational challenges, risks, and opportunities are, it provides a focal point and motivation for different parts of the organization to work together. Moreover, organizational leaders should set expectations that these offices should be working together.
Use new evidence-based policy tools as an opportunity to bridge silos. Legislation currently being discussed in Congress puts some of the recommendations of the recent Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking into law. That includes requiring every federal agency to create a learning agenda. The creation of learning agendas provides a valuable opportunity to bring together the PIO, CFO, and evaluation experts.
Include the chief evaluation officer (or other senior evidence person) and CFO in agency quarterly performance reviews. Doing so creates a bridge between performance, evidence and financial efforts within the department and brings different lenses to tackle priority agency challenges.
Have deputy secretaries embrace their chief operating officer role. One of the best ways for agencies to overcome silos is for a deputy secretary to be a strong COO. That means taking responsibility for agencies’ outcomes and operational excellence, as well as playing quarterback by corralling the various chiefs within the department—for finance, performance, and evidence, but also for data, acquisition, human capital, and information technology—into a coordinated approach.

The PIO/CFO Summit demonstrated the value of dialogue between the financial management, performance, and evidence communities. It sparked the conversation and created momentum. It is now up to the public-management community, inside government and out, to work toward a vision in which separate silos are replaced with interconnected strategies to help agencies succeed.

Robert Shea is a principal at Grant Thornton. He served on the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking and as the associate director for administration and government performance at the White House Office of Management and Budget in the George W. Bush administration. He is the author, with Andrew Feldman, of the related report “Bridging Cost, Performance, and Evidence.”

Tim Gribben is the Chief Financial Officer and Associate Administrator of Performance Management at the Small Business Administration where he has responsibility for all aspects of SBA’s financial management (including preparation and submission of the agency’s budget and financial statements), performance management (including program evaluation), internal controls, and acquisition.

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Carrying On Amid Chaos: Public Servants Deserve Our Thanks

Robert Shea — Wed, 09 May 2018 08:00:00 -0400

If all you read was the front page of one of the major daily newspapers—or the Drudge Report or The Huffington Post—you’d think government was paralyzed as a result of crisis and scandal. Sluggish appointments and roiling controversies don’t help government operate smoothly, that’s for sure. But what agencies do on a day-to-day basis to serve American citizens is largely unaffected by these distractions. Moreover, major reform and improvement efforts have been launched that promise to have a lasting, positive effect on how government works. We have America’s public servants to thank for that, and this is the week to do it.

The President’s Management Agenda was released a few weeks ago. It laid out an ambitious set of initiatives to address many of the government’s longstanding management weaknesses. There’s an information technology modernization initiative intended to finally replace older technology with modern, cutting-edge systems. The data, accountability, and transparency effort will transform government’s information into an asset for use by policymakers in decision-making and by the private sector for public use. Finally, the people initiative seeks to recruit and retain a 21st century workforce through badly needed reforms. Taken together, the Trump administration calls these “key drivers of transformation.” Without dedicated public servants, these initiatives will go nowhere. Luckily, leaders are at the ready.

One of the key features of the President’s Management Agenda is the public announcement of goal leaders for all key initiatives. For instance, the effort to transform government’s data into an asset will be led by a mix of political and career senior executives, including Pradeep Belur, chief of staff of the Small Business Administration; Karen Dunn Kelley, undersecretary of economic affairs and acting deputy secretary at the Commerce Department; Jack Wilmer, senior adviser for cybersecurity and IT modernization in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Suzette Kent, federal chief information officer at the Office of Management and Budget; and Nancy Potok, chief statistician of the United States. The decades of experience with data and government administration these professionals represent vastly improve the chances this effort will be successful.

Among the President’s Management Agenda initiatives with the greatest potential for a positive impact is the one focused on improving customer experiences with federal services. If federal agencies view and improve services from the perspective of the American citizen or customer they’re trying to serve, it will strengthen Americans’ trust in government. But it will take committed leadership to get there. That’s why we should be proud the initiative is in the capable hands of Thomas Bowman, deputy secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department; Matt Cutts, acting administrator at the U.S. Digital Service; and Dustin Brown, deputy assistant director for management at OMB.

Barry Berkowitz, senior procurement executive at the Commerce Department and Mathew Blum, associate administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, are working to improve the government’s management of its major acquisitions. And with almost $500 billion in contract spending annually, it’s worth getting right.

These are just a few examples of reform initiatives and the public servants who are leading them. There are similar combinations of political and career executives working tirelessly to address issues like payment integrity, category management, grants management and security clearances. You can find their names and their plans on Performance.gov. And you can view quarterly updates on their progress. But you should also give them your thanks. They’re working hard on your behalf to make government work better.

The initiatives of the President’s Management Agenda, if successful, will make life easier for our nation’s public servants. Don’t forget, the work environment for a federal government worker is often far from ideal. The bureaucratic systems under which they operate make it unnecessarily difficult to recruit and retain the talent they need to get the job done, purchase the goods and services necessary to accomplish the mission, or leverage the information technology most organizations use to serve their customers. And for most of the year, they typically operate without the benefit of a budget. But those leading reforms are doing their best to fix what’s broken.

For example, there are hundreds of thousands of federal workers cutting checks, taking calls from the public, helping farmers, guarding our borders, delivering the mail, treating the sick, keeping us safe. Many of those are also taking time on top of their regular jobs to consider and implement the reforms, reorganizations and other changes necessary to make things work better. When they see an opportunity to improve service to American citizens they consider it their duty to do it.

Public Service Recognition Week comes but once a year. We should recognize the contributions of government workers every day, but especially on these few days in May. Despite what dominates the headlines, public servants are making a difference in the lives of Americans every day. Take a moment to thank them for it.

Robert Shea is a former senior official at the Office of Management and Budget and is currently a principal with Grant Thornton Public Sector.

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Is Your Agency Ready for New Evidence-Based Policy Tools?

Robert Shea and Andrew Feldman — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 09:00:00 -0400

The Commission on Evidence Based Policymaking, launched last year by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., recently released its recommendations. They include a call for federal departments to 1) establish chief evaluation officers to help coordinate and prioritize program evaluation activities; and 2) develop learning agendas that identify high-priority research studies that agencies would like to have done.

Both recommendations are designed to ensure departments’ evidence-building resources (whether program evaluations, basic analysis or research, or performance analyses) are used as productively as possible. The broader goal is to strengthen a culture of learning and improvement.

Will the commission’s recommendations be put into practice, either through statute or administrative action? Given the bipartisan nature of the recommendations and the high-profile backing of Ryan and Murray, it seems likely they will.

That, then, raises another question: How can federal agencies prepare to increase their use of evidence, moving in the direction of chief evaluation officers and learning agendas? We have four suggestions for senior leaders.

1. See the commission’s recommendations as an opportunity to strengthen your organization’s focus on results

We know new congressional or White House mandates often seem onerous. However, the federal departments and agencies that have embraced chief evaluation officers and learning agendas have found them useful. For example, when the Labor Department added a chief evaluation officer and required learning agendas of each of its operating agencies, those steps helped strengthen a culture of evidence and learning. In fact, Labor was the only cabinet-level agency that saw a statistically significant increase in GAO’s index of data-driven decision-making from 2007 to 2013, the most recent data available.

2. Get to know the leading examples of chief evaluation offices within government

Learning about agencies with well-respected, robust chief evaluation offices can help your organization design its own approach. For example, Labor’s Chief Evaluation Office is a departmentwide resource focused on serving—and encouraging greater evidence use among—Labor’s bureaus. In contrast, the Education Department’s version of a chief evaluation office is an independent arm called the Institute of Education Sciences. IES advises department leadership and program staff about evidence-based policy topics, but also serves as a resource for practitioners, including state and local education officials. A third example is the Administration for Children and Families at the Health and Human Services Department. It’s Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation shows the value of having a chief evaluation office for a key agency such as ACF, rather than relying on a departmentwide office. There are various models to choose.

3. Consider the level of resources available to fund a chief evaluation office and adapt accordingly

The examples above—Labor, Education and ACF—are lucky: They are all adequately funded offices and have staff with deep expertise. At Labor, the secretary can set aside up to 0.75 percent of appropriated funds from across the department for evaluation. Once set aside, these funds get transferred to the chief evaluation officer’s budget. Other departments and agencies that may soon be adding chief evaluation offices (and implementing learning agendas) may not be so lucky. In particular, they may have little or no funding for those activities and few staff with strong backgrounds in research and evidence. How should they proceed?

Our advice is to start simple, by taking low-cost steps that begin to raise awareness with staff and outside stakeholders about the importance of using and building evidence, such as:

Add an evidence page to your website that lists findings from recent, rigorous studies and highlights what works.
Start a newsletter that highlights ways in which the organization is working to use and build credible evidence.
Launch an Evaluation Strategy Day to bring together staff and stakeholders to identify key research questions for your policy area.
Signal to the field that evaluation is a growing priority by notifying grant applicants that a condition of funding is participation in evaluations, if selected to participate.
Develop and publish an evaluation policy that demonstrates the organization’s commitment to building evidence and using it to inform policy and practice.

4. Ensure leadership commitment from the top

While there is no cookie-cutter approach to these strategies, there is one essential factor: leadership commitment. That includes leadership support for the role of the chief evaluation officer as an honest broker about evidence issues; making it a clear requirement that the organization create learning agendas; and inclusion of the chief evaluation officer in important policy and management discussions, such as agency performance reviews, so he or she is knowledgeable about leadership priorities.

Whether the commission’s recommendations become requirements or not, federal leaders have the opportunity to learn from leading agencies and strengthen their organizations’ capacity to use and build evidence about what works. It is about doing the doable with the resources you have, but being clear in your commitment to having evidence inform decision-making. As long as you are helping your agency build capacity to do that, you are moving in the right direction.

Andrew Feldman is the host of the Gov Innovator podcast. He served on the Evidence Team of the White House Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration.

Robert Shea leads Grant Thornton’s Public Sector Strategy Practice and served on the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. He served as the associate director for administration and government performance at the White House Office of Management and Budget in the George W. Bush administration.

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Memo to the President: Performance Accountability, Evidence and Improvement

Robert Shea and Shelley H. Metzenbaum — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 17:00:37 -0500

How will Donald Trump lead the federal government and drive progress on the priorities he set during his campaign, such as good jobs, clean drinking water and well-served veterans?

Here’s an idea. As he would with the businesses he oversees, Trump should direct every major department, agency and bureau head to set clear goals indicating what they want to accomplish by when, including a few stretch targets in priority areas. Beyond that, he should expect leaders to choose strategies that will speed progress, generate higher returns on taxpayer dollars, and assure government interacts with the public in clear, predictable, timely and courteous ways.

In addition, he should insist that progress on goals is measured and reported in a timely manner, that these measurements and other information are reviewed every quarter to determine whether agency actions are working, and that government move quickly when its actions need adjusting. The president should instruct each government unit to report every quarter on progress, problems and their likely causes, and planned next steps for every priority goal—in ways that make the information easy to find, understand and use.

Sound like a novel notion? In fact, the federal government has been moving in this direction for some time, both in practice and in law. You can see much of this progress on Performance.gov, which depicts performance information for the largest federal departments and agencies. Another helpful website is HealthyPeople.gov, focused on the specific cross-government objective involving human health. For more specific problems, check out the weekly report on veterans benefits and the monthly report about federal retirement claims.

These public reporting and management developments during the Obama administration build on lessons learned and progress made during the Bush administration, when agency strategic and annual plans and reports, along with individual program assessments, were first made available publicly. And before that, during the Clinton administration, performance and management improvements also were reported and celebrated.

As former associate directors for performance and personnel management in the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama and Bush administrations, we looked back at federal government efforts to improve government performance and accountability to identify lessons learned and offer bipartisan recommendations to the next administration. Fuller reflections and recommendations can be found here, but our bottom line lies in six practices—well-known in the private sector and wisely used in some state and local governments—that work remarkably well in the federal government:

Set outcome-focused goals, with stretch targets in priority areas.
Collect and analyze performance information, both quantitative and qualitative, frequently.
Use data-rich reviews to identify what is working well and what needs attention, and decide strategy, action and knowledge gaps to fill.
Complement routinely collected data with independent, rigorous evaluations and other studies.
Use effective communication strategies for a wide variety of purposes aimed at a diversity of stakeholders.
Adopt carefully structured, evidence-based motivational mechanisms that encourage a culture of learning, experimentation and improvement.

If the last practice seems less intuitive than the first five, think about the recent experience with veterans’ health appointment scheduling. Pairing goals and measurement with accountability and motivational mechanisms can lead to a culture of compliance, fear, and even worse, falsification. Unless accountability and motivational mechanisms are well-designed, communicated and embraced, well-intended performance measurement and management initiatives can backfire.

When used wisely, the six performance management practices we have identified here work remarkably well, as the following examples suggest:

The Health and Human Services Department launched the Partnership for Patients to reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Fourteen months after 700 participating organizations initiated recommended safety practices, infection rates fell by 13.5 percent. HHS estimates that, overall, infection rates dropped 21 percent over a five-year period, cutting health care costs by $28 billion since 2010.
Even with a rise in applications, the Patent and Trademark Office reduced the patent application backlog from a high of over 764,000 in January 2009 to just over 558,000 in October 2015, a 27 percent reduction. Over the same period, the wait time for action on patents was cut by more than eight months.
The claims backlog at the Veterans Benefits Administration dropped from a high of over 610,000 in March 2013 to under 72,000—an 88 percent drop—without compromising accuracy.
Agricultural exports have climbed, as has federal technology transfer and federal facility energy efficiency; over 100,000 miles of broadband serving more than 700,000 new households and businesses were installed in previously low-served areas; 4.4 million borrowers and subscribers in rural areas received new or improved electric services, while 2.2 million more rural residents have access to clean drinking water and better waste water disposal—some for the first time. Homelessness is down from its 2010 level—36 percent for veterans, 22 percent for individuals and 19 percent for families.

Performance management practices don’t always work well, though—especially when the means to accomplish goals are not fully figured out or the resources to accomplish them are inadequate, as with the goal to reduce foodborne Salmonella illnesses.

While some parts of the federal government have embraced performance management, too many have not. Even fewer are integrating these practices and the digital, communication and connectivity developments of the last decade to enable potential increases in the beneficial impact, productivity and accountability of government.

It is time to ramp up these practices to serve the public better, support employee and delivery partner decision-making, strengthen the supply chain and slash costs. To do that, we recommend:

Expand Adoption: Push aggressively for adoption of an outcomes-focused performance improvement framework across all of government, expanding quarterly reviews and goal leader designation—now done only at the Cabinet level and for cross-agency priority goals—to component, cross-component and a larger group of cross-agency goals.
Visualize and Mobilize: Expand and enhance the collection, analysis, visualization and dissemination of performance information to make it more useful to more people, making greater use of mobile and cloud software and hardware developments and multiple communication channels.
Build Capacity: Strengthen the capacity, understanding and skills of chief operating officers, program managers, performance improvement offices, evaluators, planners, budget shops, grant and contract managers, IT offices, data scientists, regional offices and outreach staff to use these practices. Build appreciation, know-how and use among delivery partners and other key groups outside government, including grantees, vendors, those using government services and regulated parties.
Broadcast Accountability Expectations: Develop, test, and adopt effective accountability mechanisms that encourage the generation and use of data, analytics and evidence to find smarter ways to do business and improve performance on multiple dimensions, while avoiding an unconstructive shift in attention to target attainment, higher ratings or unfair comparisons.
Simplify: Keep it simple to support the use, communication and improvement of performance to accelerate adoption of these practices, using easily understood tools such as the self-help check list we suggest at the end of our fuller set of recommendations.

Common sense, backed by a robust body of knowledge, calls for widespread adoption of these performance improvement and evidence-based management practices. Failure to use them leads to aimlessness, with government and its partners carrying out activities they hope will work without knowing whether they do. It leaves government without the means to inform and encourage continual improvement after effective practices are identified.

The Trump administration has an opportunity to communicate clearly the priorities it will adopt and demonstrate quantifiably the impact its policies have on the American people. It can best do that if it builds on improvements in performance management that have taken hold over the last decade. President Trump will undoubtedly opt for some different goals than President Obama, and choose different levels of ambitiousness in others. Still, if he and his administration leverage the practices we recommend, trust in the federal government and its ability to address some of our greatest challenges will begin to rebuild. That is our bipartisan hope and recommendation for the new year and beyond.

This article is part of a series of Memos to the President, highlighting advice from leading academics and practitioners in public administration for the incoming president and his team. The series was developed by the National Academy of Public Administration, the American Society of Public Administration and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. Click here for more information and links to the full set of memos.

Photo: Flickr user Sonny Abesamis

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An Entrepreneur’s Guide to the Future

Robert Shea — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 16:30:38 -0400

Instead of reading this column, you really should be reading Steve Case's new book, The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future (Simon and Schuster, 2016). Seriously. It's not only a fascinating view of his experience at the dawn of the Internet age, it's also a blueprint for how organizations must form partnerships with governments and others if they're going to succeed in this age of technological innovation.

But since you’re here, I'll try to make this synopsis worth your while. The wave of which Case writes is one in which the "Internet of Everything" is giving rise to ideas and companies that have the potential to totally disrupt the way we do things. He describes it as "a phase where the Internet will be fully integrated into every part of our lives—how we learn, how we heal, how we manage our finances, how we get around, how we work, even what we eat.”

Case calls it the Internet of Everything instead of the Internet of Things, because the Internet is impacting nearly every aspect of our lives. And it can do so much more. Real time tracking of vital signs, fitness and nutrition has the potential to transform health care and our relationships with our medical care providers. Monitoring student achievement more closely can help us tailor teaching to each student’s needs. And the agriculture industry, already a voracious consumer of data, is on the precipice producing food and ensuring safety in new ways.

Case prescribes three principles that navigators of the third wave must master if they're going to be successful:

Regarding partnerships, Case writes that “success will hinge on [the] ability to form constructive, supportive partnerships with the organizations and individuals that can influence…decision makers and, eventually, with the decision makers themselves.”

With respect to perseverance, he warns that success won't be easy. “Perseverance is part of the story of every successful company,” he writes, “but Third Wave entrepreneurship will require a special kind.”

About policy, Case writes that companies must be prepared to engage with government because “no one else is going to ensure that legislators understand how your company and your industry operate, where you fit into the debate, and what effects proposed policies would have.” He also warns, “If you ignore government, a lot of governing will get done without you.”

What I find most heartening about Case's book is its optimism. He shares his experiences of successfully working with legislators and policy makers in order to achieve worthy goals: “In the middle of the least productive legislative period in our history, our team managed to bring the right people together to craft a bill and get it signed into law. And it validated my view that we could build trust among otherwise warring parties.” Because partnership with government will be critical to successful adoption of new technologies, Case says, “it’s a mistake to conclude that government is useless—or hopeless.”

Whether you like it or not, government will be central to the operation of organizations riding the third wave. Government oversight and regulation will set the rules under which American companies operate. If government gets in the way, America’s competitiveness will suffer and so will its citizens. If government’s role fosters growth and innovation, American citizens will benefit. Closer partnership between the public and private sectors can play a big role in producing a more constructive, productive environment for growth and innovation.

Partnerships between government and non-government organizations aren't always pretty. Government can take a paternalistic, haughty, and sometimes hostile view of its partners or those agencies oversee. Government partners or customers, on the other hand, often don't understand or empathize with the strictures under which government operates. Case argues that those who can bridge these misunderstandings and chart more productive engagement with government will be most successful.

If successful third wave organizations are going to work more closely in partnership with government, government needs to be better prepared to deal with them, too. Case asserts that “going to a hospital often feels like you're stepping back in time.” The same can be said of most federal agencies. If we can’t hire people quickly enough or retain the top talent we have, how will we keep up with this transformative time? If buying things takes months or years, how will we have what we need to innovate? Government is not equipped to accomplish the missions it’s charged with today, much less those of a rapidly evolving future.

Adapting government for the third wave means we'll need to reform the way it hires, fires, buys . . . the way it manages everything it does. That will be difficult. Government reformers will need more than a bit of the perseverance Case describes. Our nation's success depends on it.

Robert Shea is a Principal with Grant Thornton Public Sector and a former senior official with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

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Farewell to a Giant of Government Oversight

Robert Shea — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 13:51:49 -0500

When I hear folks pine for the days of constructive engagement by Congress in the affairs of the executive branch, my instinct is to assume they’re not paying attention. If you peruse the congressional committee calendar on any given week, you’ll see it chock full of substantive oversight hearings.

This month alone, the Senate will conduct hearings on mental health and substance use disorders, reform of the federal budget process, and how to ensure success for the Social Security Disability Insurance program, while House hearings include subjects such as bioterrorism, security gaps in air traffic safety, and preparing for the 2020 census. All raise important issues and seek to make important contributions to improving the performance of the federal government and its programs. Despite constant focus on dysfunction, these constructive oversight activities are the norm.

We lost a giant of congressional oversight this week. Former senator Fred Thompson died on Nov. 1. Though known mostly as a famous actor or perhaps a Watergate counsel, Thompson was also chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee (now Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs). The mission of that important committee was and is to improve the “efficiency, economy, and effectiveness of all agencies and departments of the government.” Sen. Thompson took this mission very seriously. And because I got to work closely with him as a member of the committee’s professional staff, I’ve been thinking a lot about his legacy.

When the Government Accountability Office released its biennial list of programs at high risk of waste, fraud, and abuse, he would hear first from the comptroller general and then haul the leaders of the relevant agencies and programs before the committee to find out what they were going to do about it. And when GAO first tallied program improper payments, he asked every program to do it, producing what’s now a governmentwide effort to measure and prevent this massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been saved as a result of his focus on the problem.

GAO wasn’t Thompson’s only ally in this regard. Ask agency inspectors general. This legion of taxpayer advocates brought issue after issue before the committee and Thompson was relentless in his advocacy of their independence. They had no better friend than Fred Thompson.

In a compelling piece for National Affairs, my friend and former colleague Tevi Troy suggests that some may be missing the value of the congressional hearing as a “powerful weapon for congressional majorities” to “shape a compelling governing agenda.” To make his point, he tells the story of Thompson’s starring role in the Watergate hearings. Not only did Thompson craft the famous question, "What did the president know, and when did he know it,” but he’s also the figure who queried Alexander Butterfield about the then-undisclosed White House taping system. Simple oversight made a major impact on the history of our nation.

Among the issues that concerned Thompson the most, at least when he chaired the Governmental Affairs Committee, was Americans’ trust in government. It seemed every time you turned around, polls showed declining trust in government. And though Thompson brought attention to government’s shortcomings, he was not insensitive to the impact he was having on the national psyche. His goal was not to diminish government, but to highlight areas that needed fixing so its performance could be improved. That’s a difficult message to get through to the subjects of oversight or the media that cover them. But it was his mission.

Members of Congress, especially those with executive branch oversight responsibilities, have a great example to follow in Fred Thompson. They can, for instance, fill the leadership void – too few pay enough attention to the management of government. They can do their homework – take advantage of the enormous body of work being done to uncover the root causes of government’s management failures. And they can be persistent – government’s challenges won’t be solved overnight and it will take long-term focus to address them.

During his tenure as senator, Thompson gave focus and badly needed attention to issues of government mismanagement that needed improvement. His oversight led to the enactment of government management laws designed to make lasting changes that addressed big challenges. He leaves a proud legacy of defending the precious tax dollars citizens invested in their government.

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Enterprise Government: Don’t Go It Alone!

Robert Shea — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 09:00:00 -0400

One of the things I was hoping to hear from the Republican presidential debate, but knew I wouldn’t, was how the candidates would actually get done what they were promising to get done. The subject sure won’t get anyone noticed, especially with Donald Trump on stage. It probably won’t get mentioned much during the campaign or even after the inauguration. But you can’t understate how critical management is to the success or failure of a president’s priorities.

Better management of the government enterprise – government agencies and entities working across silos – was the subject of a daylong workshop sponsored by the Partnership for Public Service and the IBM Center for the Business of Government. Current and former, Republican and Democratic, career and political employees spent the day crafting recommendations to improve the ability of agencies to work together to achieve common goals and solve common problems. There was a lot of consensus in the room on what needs to change in order to get agencies working together.

No major presidential goal can be achieved without the cooperation of multiple agencies. That’s why it’s important that an administration lay out clear goals for what it wants to accomplish and which agencies will be responsible for achieving them. A strategic plan that sets goals that cross multiple agencies and lists the agencies accountable can help highlight genuine priorities for the government enterprise. It’s also a good way to begin to set expectations for transparency early in an administration.

Laying out clear goals, of course, is not enough. We have to track how well we are doing and hold government officials accountable for making progress. Transparently report results. Celebrate success when it happens. But when adequate progress is not made, leaders must be held accountable. If they know they’ll be held accountable, they’ll do more of what it takes to ensure success.

If you want enterprisewide initiatives to be successful, they have to have adequate resources. Not unlimited resources, but enough to ensure they don’t compete with other initiatives for people and money. Either through participating agency contributions or direct appropriations, priority initiatives need funding to be successful. In a time of declining resources, at least on the discretionary side of the budget, administrations will have to fight to ensure their enterprisewide initiatives get adequate funding.

Speaking of resources, agencies are spending a lot of time and money on back office functions – finance, personnel, information technology – that could be refocused on more important program priorities. There has been some progress consolidating agency management functions in shared services, but we could do a lot more. Billions could be saved if we took inventory of common functions across the government and relieved agencies of the need to fund and manage activities that aren’t directly related to their missions.

Agencies not only have to work together to achieve common goals, but they also have to work every day with a dizzying number of congressional committees and oversight entities. One approach is to ignore those constituencies and hope for the best. But that strategy has never worked. Agencies and the administration should invest the time and effort to gain buy-in that can help its initiatives succeed. Congressional stakeholders won’t always agree with how agencies are going about their cross-cutting initiatives, which invariably fall under the jurisdiction of multiple committees, but the increased trust resulting from open communication and frequent consultation will pay huge dividends.

Leadership is perhaps the most important factor in the success or failure of an initiative that depends on the government enterprise. In government, like in most things, the more players involved the more difficult it is to get something done. A capable leader can get the team of agencies on the same page and help overcome bureaucratic barriers that would otherwise stall progress.

It’s heartening to see so many organizations developing recommendations and helping the next administration, of whichever party, hit the ground running. There is wide agreement among them – the National Academy of Public Administration, the Professional Services Council, not to mention the Partnership for Public Service and IBM’s Center for the Business of Government – that getting the execution right is almost as important as getting the policy right. Policies, no matter how good they are, won’t be successful without good execution. That’s especially true when you have to rely on the government enterprise to achieve them.

Robert Shea is a principal in Grant Thornton’s Public Sector Practice and chairman of the National Academy of Public Administration.

(Image via baranq/Shutterstock.com)

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Empowering a New Wave of Government Innovation

Robert Shea — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 16:00:00 -0500

Like millions of American families, ours went to the movies over the holidays. We saw The Imitation Game, a great picture that tells the story of computer scientist Alan Turing’s heroic battle to crack the Nazi’s secret coding machine, Enigma. It also reveals the British government’s deplorable handling of Turing and his homosexuality, highlighting a sad chapter in the treatment of human rights. I suspect few viewers will note the juxtaposition of the good government can do with the bad it often does.

I knew Turing’s story having just finished Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. Isaacson weaves together the tales of different innovations—the personal computer, the microchip, the Internet—and teases out lessons one might learn from the trial and error that produced these breakthroughs. It would be a fascinating tale without it, but Isaacson draws out and highlights these lessons in unambiguous relief. They’re lessons not just for the entrepreneur, inventor, or engineer. They’re also good ones for government.

The major conclusion Isaacson draws from his study of the digital age is that progress came not as the result of any one or even a number of geniuses. Rather, it came as the result of collaboration built on progress from previous advances. In any endeavor, especially those that require navigating the government’s vast bureaucracy, it’s always been important to clarify who has the lead. But Isaacson ascribes progress not to leadership, but to collaboration. In almost every innovation he describes, he tells how the result was accomplished by the feverish work of a number of innovators occasionally working together, but often working separately, sometimes very far apart in geography or even time.

“An invention especially one as complex as the computer, usually comes not from an individual brainstorm, but from a collaboratively woven tapestry of creativity,” writes Isaacson, who also says effective management “need not always come from having the right combination of different talents at the top. Like a metallic alloy, if you get the right mix of elements, the result can be strong.”

Proximity, a factor in many of today’s discussions about workplace design, seems also to play a role in innovation, at least according to Isaacson. The story of the transistor, for instance, evolved from embedding the developers “in an environment where they could walk down a long corridor and bump into experts who could manipulate the impurities in germanium, or be in a study group populated by people who understood the quantum-mechanical explanations of surface states, or sit in a cafeteria with engineers who knew all the tricks for transmitting phone signals over long distances.” Whether virtually or physically, fostering this proximity can quicken the pace of innovation.

Of course, simple collaboration without a point or goal is not likely to produce a productive result, much less the intended one. And Isaacson makes this point clear. “The most successful endeavors in the digital age were those run by leaders who fostered collaboration while also providing a clear vision,” Isaacson writes. And the quality of the teamwork may depend, Isaacson asserts, on the special qualities of the leader. “One problem with successful teams, particularly intense ones, is that sometimes they break up. It takes a special type of leader—inspiring yet also nurturing, competitive yet collaborative—to hold teams together.” In the history of digital progress, many efforts stalled because of a gap in some of these qualities.

An additional, apparently necessary ingredient is execution. Success requires not only “a great idea,” but also “the engineering talent to execute it.” Clearly, teams must have a combination of creativity and the experience and capacity to bring good ideas to reality.

Government’s role in innovation in the digital age is not hard to parse out, especially as Isaacson describes it. I’m confident government could not have produced the innovations of the digital age alone, but it did play an important role. Of the Internet, Isaacson writes, “Over the course of more than three decades, the federal government, working with private industry and research universities, had designed and built a massive infrastructure project, like the interstate highway system but vastly more complex, and then threw it open to ordinary citizens and commercial enterprises. It was funded primarily by public dollars, but it paid off thousands of times over by seeding a new economy and an era of economic growth.”

The digital age itself “included a research ecosystem that was nurtured by government spending and managed by a military-industrial-academic collaboration,” Isaacson writes. “Intersecting with that was a loose alliance of community organizers, communal-minded hippies, do-it-yourself hobbyists, and homebrew hackers, most of whom were suspicious of centralized authority.” Government did not produce, but certainly had a hand in, the advances of the digital age.

The lessons from Walter Isaacson’s book, The Innovators, are worth the time it takes to read the book and more. But the refrain in the movie The Imitation Game is also worth repeating. Early in his life, Turing is inspired by the aphorism “it's the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.” Many Americans, unfortunately, can’t imagine the government doing much of anything. If government took some of the lessons from Isaacson’s book, it could very well enable a new wave of innovation.

Robert Shea is a principal at Grant Thornton’s Global Public Sector and a fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration. He was formerly associate director for management at the Office of Management and Budget and counsel to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs.

(Image via ngera/Shutterstock.com)

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The CHCOs Game of ‘Survivor’ and How to Win

Robert Shea — Fri, 23 May 2014 16:00:00 -0400

If someone scripted the federal workforce’s version of reality TV based on the recent past, it would resemble Survivor, the show about teams working together to overcome obstacles flung their way.

The show would open with a workforce operating with outdated and ineffective workplace practices, and hiring laws that predate personal computers and the Internet. Throw in across-the-board budget cuts, widespread and unpaid employee furloughs, a three-year pay freeze and a 16-day government shutdown. Top it off with more experienced feds retiring and taking their institutional knowledge with them. Unfortunately, for the federal workforce it’s not a reality show but reality.

To gauge the full impact of these forces, the Partnership for Public Service and Grant Thornton interviewed chief human capital officers and human resources leaders on challenges facing the federal workforce. It is chronicled in the report “Embracing Change: CHCOs rising to the challenge of an altered landscape,” the fifth in a series. Here are some of the findings:

Diminished, unpredictable and inflexible budgets hinder agency performance. Agencies have fewer resources to do the same or more work. “We have more missions now than we were responsible for 30 years ago, but we have fewer employees,” said one CHCO. Another was more direct: “When you just get a broad cut across the board, it hurts everything. And it is stupid. It is just plain stupid.”

Employee engagement is declining. Job satisfaction, as measured by the “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” rankings, dropped for the third year in a row—falling to 57.8 on a scale of 100, the lowest since 2003. One CHCO said, “People are bitter, they really are. They’re wondering: ‘How can they tell us our jobs don’t matter?’”

Hiring difficulties persist. When asked what grade they’d give agencies on hiring reform, 11 percent of CHCOs responded with A, 66 percent said B and 23 percent chose C. Reducing the time it takes to hire and simplifying the process were cited as areas in which progress has been made. Enhancing the quality and diversity of new employees, however, remains elusive.

Agencies are not using all the workforce data and analytics tools necessary to manage effectively. Too few CHCOs said they were helped by tools intended to assist them, such as the recently launched governmentwide HRstat—a CHCO-led, data-driven review focused on performance improvement in the human capital area—or the data-driven efforts stemming from cross-agency priority goals. They say it’s still too early to assess the impact these initiatives may have, but interviewees hoped they would help down the road.

The HR infrastructure and workforce need to be strengthened. CHCOs told us that neither the HR infrastructure nor HR workforce are where they need to be. And the quality of services and support for hiring managers is threatened by an outdated HR infrastructure, weak customer service data, skills gaps and inconsistent relationships among human resources staffs across government and between HR staffs and the managers they support.

The Obama administration’s new management agenda takes on some of the issues CHCOs raised in the report. In its fiscal 2015 budget, the administration commits to taking actions to:

Enable agencies to hire the best talent from all segments of society
Build a world-class federal management team starting with the Senior Executive Service
Create a culture of excellence and engagement

Here are some practical recommendations to accelerate progress in addressing federal workforce challenges and help CHCOs endure this new Survivor reality.

Develop a strategy for workforce management in a diminished budget environment. The budget situation is not getting better any time soon, so CHCOs and HR professionals have to find ways to work together, share cost-effective practices and get the job done with less. It would help, of course, if Congress provided realistic budgets and mission expectations and then allowed agencies to manage to budget.

Sustain efforts to reverse the decline in employee engagement. If the tide is to be turned, employee engagement must be championed by the entire leadership.

Remake the federal hiring system. Agencies should maximize hiring flexibilities they have, but Congress and the president should enact reforms that simplify the complex hiring authorities.

Continue to develop and make good use of workforce data and analytics tools. Big data is not just for use in managing programs. CHCOs, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget should work together to harness data analytics to monitor and improve the workforce across government.

Strengthen the HR workforce, systems and structures. Civil service reform should be a priority, though the HR workforce should not wait to step up its game and improve service to agency customers.

There’s no tribal council at the end of this Survivor series, and there’s certainly no million-dollar prize for the winner. But with a little grit and determination, CHCOs who rise to the challenge will make a big difference in federal operations and Americans’ trust in government.

Robert Shea is a principal at Grant Thornton and chairman of the National Academy of Public Administration. He was formerly associate director for management at the Office of Management and Budget and counsel to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. Join the conversation on twitter at #CHCOreport.

(Image via Nonnakrit/Shutterstock.com)

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Moving from Process to Practice in Performance Management

Robert Shea, Partnership for Public Service — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 09:00:00 -0400

After more than 20 years trying to measure and improve performance, federal agencies are beginning to adopt cultures of continuous improvement and have shown progress in using data to help make decisions, according to a newly released report.

The report found that most of the progress is taking place at top agency levels, but has not filtered down to the program level, where greater support from leadership is needed. In addition, collaboration with Congress remains a sticking point.

These and other findings are based on interviews by the Partnership for Public Service and Grant Thornton with more than 50 Performance Improvement Officers (PIO), the agency officials charged with helping organizations measure and improve results, focus groups, and a survey to gauge the success of performance management efforts.

The report, Taking Measure: Moving from Process to Practice in Performance Management, showed PIOs think recent changes have produced meaningful advancement. They said that focusing on a few top goals, as required by the Government Performance and Results Act Modernization Act of 2010 has renewed enthusiasm for measuring performance, and that quarterly reviews required by the new law have been a huge step forward, bringing top leaders into the conversation about performance goals, progress and obstacles.

The 2010 law also required the establishment of agency chief operating officers and the PIOs, and gave them important performance responsibilities. This requirement has given greater visibility to senior agency leaders, who are actively contributing to the necessary cultural transformation at agencies, according to those interviewed. The leadership commitment is making a big difference, even though more needs to be done.

Of course, not all is going perfectly. We found that despite agencies collecting a great deal of data about performance, the data are not being used at all levels to help make decisions. This finding is consistent with a recent Government Accountability Office report, which said performance information being produced could be more accessible, available, understandable and relevant. The amount of data can sometimes be overwhelming. Agencies aren’t communicating as well as they could be about what the data shows.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle facing agencies is getting the skills needed to define measures and collect and analyze data in a meaningful way. The current climate of flat pay, no bonuses and budget cuts makes solving this problematic.

It would not be responsible just to identify problems and celebrate progress, without also making practical recommendations for solving them. The following are some of the recommendations from the report:

Agency leaders must make adoption of a performance culture a priority and redouble efforts to motivate agency units to use available data to improve performance and hold themselves accountable.
Chief operating officers should broaden the adoption of regular, data-driven meetings and encourage performance leaders in subcomponents to learn from performance measures and management practices used by others.
Agencies should establish priority goals that involve more than one agency unit as a way to increase collaboration, provide opportunities to learn and achieve better results.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should continue investing in program evaluation activities that enhance understanding of performance and program outcomes, and improve how those efforts are connected to performance management. Better coordination among those who set goals and measure performance, and those who lead evaluation initiatives, would accelerate the adoption of best practices.
OMB should, in collaboration with the Performance Improvement Council and the Office of Personnel Management, develop and advance a set of core competencies for staff that couples business knowledge with analytical ability and stresses the importance of performance measurement and data analytics to managing program performance and driving improvement.

Engagement with Congress is one of the most glaring gaps in current performance management efforts, and one that’s persisted for many years.

In the survey responses, PIOs acknowledged that federal agencies’ outreach to Congress on performance is virtually nonexistent. Both Congress and agencies are missing an opportunity to accelerate improvements in program performance. PIOs can play an important role in crafting reports that meet the needs of legislators and facilitate a discussion about what’s needed to drive greater results. Congress is showing an increasing appetite for this kind of conversation. The executive branch should feed it.

The 2010 law has given new life to performance management efforts at the federal level, according to PIOs. Some practical steps, including driving efforts to the bureau and program level, enhancing data analytics skill and renewing engagement with Congress, can hasten the adoption of best practices and enhance the results government achieves for its citizens.

Government management expert Robert Shea is a principal at Grant Thornton and former U.S. Office of Management and Budget leader. He also served as Counsel to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. For a copy of the Taking Measure: Moving from Process to Practice in Performance Management report, go to www.ourpublicservice.org. Join the conversation on twitter at #takingmeasure.

Image via Dr. Cloud/Shutterstock.com

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