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GOVERNING’s Managing Performance 2007 links you directly to the latest developments and the leading innovators in government today. Connect with other top city, county and state officials from across the country and from every management discipline.
October 10 - 12, 2007, New York City
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In MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS, some of America's top experts share their perspectives on getting the most out of government. The online-only column, a collaboration between Governing.com and Harvard University's Government Innovators Network, is updated every Wednesday. This week's topic:
doing the community's will.


Links to past editions of the Government Performance Project, including the most recent Grading the States issue.
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Read profiles of all the previous winners of Governing's Public Official of the Year award.
Watch videos of last year's honorees at Governing's awards gala.

Excerpts from books published by Governing, including "We Don't Make Widgets" by management expert Ken Miller. Plus, order books from Governing online. Click here


PLUS: Full content from Governing
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- Exclusive -
THE B&G Interview: Tag-team conversations with Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez and County Manager George Burgess
READ THE INTERVIEW

What words set your nerves on edge? The Boston Business Journal recently did an informal survey asking private-sector readers what piece of business jargon irritated them the most.
   The two terms that came up most frequently were: "empower" and "win-win." We invite readers of the B&G Report to send us their candidates in the public sector. Just to get the ball rolling (and with no effort to influence your contributions), we'd nominate "best practices" as the jargon that makes us want to scream. Reach us by clicking here.

"Unacceptably low graduation rates, particularly among poor and minority children, have been obscured far too long by inaccurate data, misleading calculations and reporting, and flawed accountability systems at the state and federal levels," reports the Alliance for Excellent Education. With all the big talk about improving education in the United States, it seems like a crying shame to us that we can't seem to get the basic data in hand. KEEP READING

Not so long ago, it seemed to us that the Internet was going to make life infinitely more efficient by eliminating those tall stacks of paper that tended to be piled up in most managers' offices. Why get a hard copy of an auditor's report, a budget or any other important document when it was easily readable online?
   Turns out, though, that most people we speak to -- in and out of government -- print out all the most important stuff they find online, to be read in paper versions later on. KEEP READING

Curious about how the states are doing? Then be sure to check out the National Association of State Budget Officers' Fiscal Survey of States, which came out last week. It helps to put a lot of headlines about the states into perspective. This is particularly important right now, since articles that generalize about all the states are inevitably wrong about some of them. KEEP READING

Getting guns off the streets is a good thing for cities. Some, including Orlando and Charleston, S.C., have developed programs in which people who give tips that lead to the confiscation of illegal guns are rewarded. Seems like a good idea.
   But we were particularly impressed when Miami-Dade's County Mayor Carlos Alvarez told us about a management device his county had integrated into this idea. KEEP READING

Diversity in a government workforce is a desirable goal. Toward that end, a number of human-resources offices focus on hiring men and women who are reflective of the overall population of their city, county or state. But it seems to us like this is only half the equation.
KEEP READING

Who should serve on an audit committee for a city, county or state? That may sound like a kind of an arcane question. But hang with us for a moment, because this is important stuff. These committees oversee the audit process and are one of the best prophylactics available to protect government officials from debilitating and humiliating scandal.
KEEP READING

Before you can ask an agency or department to deliver results, it's a good idea to make sure everybody agrees about what the agency or department is actually supposed to do. A recent auditor's report from North Carolina makes just that point with regard to the state's Department of Commerce and its efforts in economic development. KEEP READING

How do you know if a good idea in one city or state will work well elsewhere? The clear-minded folks in the Washington State Institute for Public Policy spend a lot of time thinking about that question in their work on evidence-based practices. One factor they believe is important to consider has been dubbed the "charismatic leader" effect.
KEEP READING

While we're talking about evidence-based practices, we wanted to bring your attention to a very important op-ed piece that ran in the New York Times a little while ago. The author was Maia Szalavitz, a senior fellow at Stats, a media watchdog group. Her complaint is that "many mental health professionals stick with what they know, or pick up on the latest fad, or even introduce their own untested innovations -- which in turn are spread by testimonials and credulous news media coverage." KEEP READING

The full B&G Report | Who are Barrett and Greene?

Questions? Comments? Got a lead for B&G?
E-mail Barrett and Greene