B&G REPORT.

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

We’re happy in our work life (and our home life as well). In fact, two of our favorite things we do professionally are writing the column you’re reading now and building this website. Yet barely a day goes by when something doesn’t frustrate or annoy us – often during our research – and we thought we’d share a few of these impediments to workplace bliss with you. We wonder how many of you are confronting the same challenges – and we invite you to send us any frustrations of

We’ve just come across a study titled “Best and Worst States to Be a Police Officer by WalletHub. This is just the kind of study that we like to follow for use on this website. In the study, California was ranked as the best. Then we took a moment to reflect on the findings of this research, and it struck us that it may not make sense to look at the best place to be a police officer by state when this is really a local issue. It could well be that it’s terrific to be an offic

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

We’ve been watching the Ken Burns documentary series about the history of the Vietnam War. It’s a difficult series to watch, but fascinating, nonetheless. One point that the documentary makes is that, unlike other wars in which success was measured by the land overtaken, in Vietnam that didn’t apply as neither side ever really made any physical progress until after the end of the war, when North Vietnam prevailed and one nation emerged. As a result, during the war, the me

When we think about timeliness in police, fire and EMS, we often think of response times. And even though it’s recently been pointed out to us that there are other important measures, like timely evidence processing and timely release of information on high-profile events, ultimately response times are the metric you’re most likely to hear about – and the ones that are primarily the difference between safety and tragedy. For emergency services, particularly, every moment can

In January 2022, a little more than a year before his death at the age of 92, we had the honor of working with Harry Hatry on an Urban Institute report titled “ Dos and Don’ts Tips for Strengthening Your Performance Management Systems. ” While we’d been writing about this broad topic for years, what made this special was that we were working once again with one of the giants in the realm of performance management. Contributions to this report were also made by well-known figu

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

Last Tuesday in our Management Update Section, we announced the publication of a study titled “2025 State and Local Workforce Survey...

A couple of months ago at a large social gathering we had the opportunity to spend some time with a person who has dedicated his life to...

Way back in 2015, we wrote a cover story for Governing about bad data. (And by the way, we’re delighted to report that after a few...

We don’t have a degree in statistics. Nor are we data specialists. But after 30-plus years of using data as a basic tool in our quest to...

For years, we’ve been writing about the importance of good data, based upon which states, counties and cities can make good decisions....

As we approach the last several weeks of December, our plan is to take a full vacation starting on December 14, continuing through New...

A couple of weeks ago, our B&G Report published a series of answers to the question: “What should members of the press know in order to...

We received a tremendous response a few weeks ago when we published “A Reader’s Guide to Government Performance” by John Kamensky, a...