B&G REPORT.

We’re big fans of progress. In fact, many years ago, we were the first people in our circle to have home computers. (They were IBMs with big floppy disks and no hard drives and we absolutely loved them). That said, we’ve become increasingly aware of instances in which current technologies, designed to create efficiency, can have deficits over the previous ways of doing things in state and local government. Take, for example, the telephone. A number of surveys have shown that

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

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone who works in state or local government to hear that many of our interviewees suggest – notwithstanding what ails their employer – that they’re going to solve many issues with new and improved technology. And to be sure, technology is increasingly an important part of any formula for success, and cities, counties and states that aren’t involved in improving their high-tech profile will be left behind. Still, as a state CIO characterized

Many years ago, when we were involved in evaluating the management capacity of the nation’s largest cities, one of the areas of inquiry was performance management (which we then were calling “management for results”). This early exercise – one of the first in a line of work that ultimately led to the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Government Performance Project– was largely reliant on journalistic-style interviews, supplemented with a survey instrument. When we interviewed the people

A few weeks after we left our then-18-year-old son off at the University of North Carolina in 2005, we got a note from him, thoroughly...