Editor's Notebook

Rankings are often compiled and published by magazines, so it seemed not such a large stretch to grade federal agencies on their management capabilities, an endeavor proposed to us nearly three years ago by Paul Light, then an officer at The Pew Charitable Trusts. With a grant from Pew, we could do a rigorous job of research, and the exercise could serve to encourage better performance by agencies over time. Better performance, after all, is the goal of management reform laws enacted in the 1990s, most notably the Government Performance and Results Act. But aside from sporadic and lightly researched work in Congress, no serious effort had been mounted to measure agencies' performance.

Soon a partnership was formed with the Alan K. Campbell Public Affairs Institute of Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and with Governing magazine, which this month publishes ratings of 50 state governments. Together with Maxwell, we developed criteria for excellence in five categories of management, and a questionnaire to probe how agencies were measuring up. We then chose 15 agencies that have extensive interaction with American citizens. In addition to the questionnaires, we planned follow-up interviews with agency managers, stakeholder groups and expert observers. The exercise was seen as useful by top officials at the Office of Management and Budget and members of the President's Management Council. They encouraged agencies to participate, and 13 of the 15 we chose agreed to complete the questionnaire.

The project was as arduous and detail-oriented as any I've witnessed during my 35 years in the reporting and editing trade. Government Executive staff and contributors delved much deeper into agencies' operating practices than reporters ordinarily do. Our lead editor on the project, Anne Laurent, has seen her life consumed by it for many months. Her insistence on thoroughness has been essential to the project's integrity and quality.

The stories in this issue identify management practices that have been successful at various agencies, perhaps offering guidance to others that have had less success. They also point to failures and attempt to explain why problems have occurred. Agencies with low ratings in some categories may find an incentive to do better.

Paul Light, now with the Brookings Institution, asks in his column this month whether the quality of agencies' management systems really matters in determining the actual outcomes of programs. There's no clear answer. But good management is a valid goal in and of itself. No one likes to work in a poorly managed enterprise. And it stands to reason that the chances of achieving good outcomes are better under good management than under bad.