B&G REPORT.

It’s a bitter irony. Just at a time when the threat of cyberattacks appears to be growing, the funding available to keep cybercriminals at bay is far from keeping up with the risk . Even though artificial intelligence systems have the capacity to help states and local governments protect themselves from cyberattacks, they’re also potentially powerful weapons in the hands of the bad guys. For example, AI allows cybercriminals the capacity to stage attacks on multiple computer

We’ve been obsessed with the World Cup this year. Our love for soccer emanated from the days when our daughter, who earned her doctorate two years ago, was playing the game on multiple teams. That inspired the following column, which originally ran in Governing back in 2004. We think that it still stands up. We’ve spent years giving speeches and writing articles about managing for results, explaining the fine points of establishing mission statements, goals and targets. We’

There was a long sad stretch during which nearly everything we wrote had some kind of COVID angle in it. The pandemic had so thoroughly thrown all state and local government functions into the unknown that whether we were writing about budgeting, human resources or performance management, COVID was part of the story. Now, in recent months, it’s dawned on us that even though COVID is no longer front-page news, it has altered state and local government management in dramatic wa

A few weeks ago, we wrote a special feature titled “Using Data to Lead More Effectively.” The focus moved swiftly from data experts to the employees who work with data across government and increasingly use it to make real-time decisions. That point was clearly made by Elena Boyd, Managing Director in Accenture’s Public Service Practice, who said. “Historically government data use was retrospective and siloed. There was a lag between when things were happening and when they

We’ve heard repeatedly about the frustrations felt by leaders in towns, cities, and counties that regularly hold public meetings to get resident input only to find that the opinions voiced frequently come from the same small portion of the population that has time and interest to show up at meetings – often called by civic leaders, the “usual gang of suspects”. This can often leave out people who are working multiple jobs; parents who can’t afford the expense of childcare; po

“Open your eyes. This horrible mess is your life. There is no sense in waiting for it to get better. Stop putting it off and live it,” wrote Robin Hopp in “The Mad Ship”, a book that was published in late 2003. Though the wording is kind of extreme, we think that a somewhat similar sentiment applies to city, county and state government. As good ideas wend their way to fruition, they’re going to encounter the unexpected, like it or not. If leaders expect a neat predictable una

Though residents may assume that state and local government work is generally performed by public sector workers, in fact, a huge number of jobs are in the hands of third-party contractors and consultants. This can include garbage collection, road and bridge construction, and a wide variety of health and social services. Additionally, as cities, counties and states increasingly depend on technology, many – particularly smaller entities – don’t have the internal capacity or ex

“For years, opinion surveys have identified property taxes as the ones Americans hate the most,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). There are lots of reasons this has been the case. For one thing, property taxes are clearly the most visible of the major tax streams that go to municipalities. As Jon Cannon, executive director of the Nebraska Association of County Officials, told us in a recent conversation, “It’s a tax you can’t avoid. You can m

In a “VOICES FROM ASPA" video that ran on this website a couple of weeks ago, Valerie Lemmie, senior advisor of state and local government at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, told us that “I am at times surprised how little our graduate students know about civics and then I am reminded that we don’t teach it in school anymore, you don’t learn it in high school. You don’t learn it in college. And so, it’s incumbent upon you, who are preparing for the profession (in public

There are certainly justifiable reasons to be concerned about the far-reaching ramifications of artificial intelligence. Nobody really knows for sure its impact on the workplace. And in the absence of guarantees that the benefits will outweigh the flaws, fear runs rampant. But when we talk with friends about AI, they forget that this isn’t the first technology to conjure up fear and loathing. In fact, historically almost every new scientific advance has led to public concern,

Not long ago we were at a presentation by an academic about a topic that was of genuine interest to us. As is often the case, she had many interesting slides, showing all of the data she had gathered over months of research. But when one of the members of the audience inquired about the meaning behind the data, her answer was simple. “I don’t know. I only know the numbers.” This was frustrating to us, and we suspect other folks in the audience. But it’s been our experienc

There are many important routes to heighten the likelihood of developing successful programs and policies in the public sector. But over the years, in dozens of conversations, we’ve had one factor that comes up repeatedly: It’s critical to be willing to take risks. Naturally we’re not talking about gambling with the public dollars without ample consideration, study and the search for evidence. Instead, we’re thinking about a truly calculated approach to entering new territory

We know that most people who run for office in states and localities do so because they have a passion for doing good for the people they will represent. After all, there’s not a lot of money to be made, the hours are long and they’ve got the pressure of quickly handling unpredictable natural disasters. But we’re concerned to hear that perhaps the gratification of doing good for people may not be enough anymore. In fact, according to an article in The Conversation by Charles

For some years now, when driving on busy highways there are inevitable moments when we need to merge to a right-hand lane to easily get off at our exit. Maybe there’s a touch of paranoia here, but it feels to us that as soon as we signal to move from our lane to the right, the car on the other lane seems to speed up and not slow down. Our trick – and this works much of the time – is to have the one of us in the passenger seat open the window and put out a hand to signal our i

It’s long been known that exposure to bad news can be genuinely unsettling. As long ago as 1997, a study originally published in the British Journal of Psychology found that just 14 minutes of exposure to negative news can significantly increase anxiety and sad moods. Nearly three decades after that study, its conclusion leads to greater concern than ever. The future is wildly uncertain. The media is full of alarming stories, from the growing number of natural disasters to a

For a while our Facebook account was out of order. It required the intervention of our son (a native in the world of social media) to figure out how to get it running again. And now we’re not so certain that we’re better off than we were before. In truth, we’re not huge social media users. We have an Instagram account but rarely use it. Every couple of months we fool around with Tik-Tok. We don’t quite count LinkedIn in this group, as it’s far more professionally oriented in

Late last year, Bill Eggers, executive director of Deloitte's Center for Government Insights, wrote on LinkedIn that "Over my decades working on government reform, my one major complaint has always been that think tanks have focused so much time and resources on policy and too little on policy execution and the nitty-gritty of government operations He was playing our song, and we’d like to add that we find the same unfortunate phenomenon doesn’t just exist in think tanks but

When the federal government announced that it intended to create a new Department of Government Efficiency, we had our doubts – which were fulfilled when the news emerged that the vast majority of DOGE’s efforts were to cut back on government employees to the extent that some agencies have been hobbled by the lack of trained workers. Soon enough we began to hear that a number of states, which were led by Republicans, were also starting programs with the phrase DOGE, or a vari

We really want to have our voices heard when it comes to matters of concern to us, and we suspect that most people feel much the same way. But over the last few years, as the flow of surveys that come our way has turned into a deluge, our inclination to reply to many of them has decreased. And we’re far from alone. So-called “survey fatigue”, like the kind we’re experiencing, isn’t a new phenomenon, and there were articles being written about it several years ago. But we’d

For well over 30 years, we’ve been researching, analyzing and writing about state and local government for a whole variety of publications and organizations. Our most significant foray into this field began when we were covering management issues for Governing Magazine from 1997 to 2019. We left Governing at a time when it briefly appeared that it was going to cease publication, to do similar coverage for Route Fifty. We held onto that gig until 2024, at which point it cut ba