B&G Report

The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good: Mini-RCTs

Dec 13, 2022
2 min

The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good: Mini-RCTs

“Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been called the gold standard for identifying the impacts of public service-delivery procedures,” write Harry Hatry and Batia Katz in a new report from the Urban Institute. But they can be very expensive and time consuming. This makes them “impractical for many public service agencies, especially small government agencies and most NPOS,” write Hatry and Katz, “These problems have deterred agencies in local, state, or federal governmen

greenebarrett

Dec 6, 2022
2 min

Let’s Talk Performance!

A couple of weeks ago, we were invited by the National Center for Public Performance to be the inaugural panelists in its series of webinars about performance management. We were fortunate enough to have Monica Croskey Chaparro, assistant city manager in Virginia Beach, Virginia with us to ask us questions, lead the conversation and add many pertinent points from her own experience. You can find the complete video under Special Videos on the home page of our website, but here

Keeping Focus on the Humans at the Heart of Human Services

greenebarrett

Nov 16, 2022
3 min

Keeping Focus on the Humans at the Heart of Human Services

After 23 years in government John Eller, the director of Social Services in Mecklenburg County, will leave his government job in mid-December. A lot of changes have occurred in his years in county government, and he has a wide variety of predictions, concerns and counsel for the changes that public health and human service agencies like his will face in future years. We talked with him this fall while we were researching our future of government jobs series for Route Fifty.

greenebarrett

Nov 7, 2022
2 min

THE B&G Reading List

A couple of weeks ago, we made a request in the B&G Report for recommendations of books that would provide worthy reading for people who are interested in state and local government. We were gratified to get a number of responses (many of them having to do with cities, specifically). So, now it’s time for us to return the favor and publish nine of the titles that came in. We’ll be doing this again in the next couple of months, including many of the recommendations that came

greenebarrett

Sep 22, 2022
3 min

Why hide from data?

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been doing research into the challenges municipalities face when they want to hire a diverse workforce. One important step, it's clear, is to gather the data necessary to see how closely the demographics of the personnel in a city’s agencies – and the entity as a whole – mirror those for the city itself, and to use that information as a performance measure to guide the improvements the city is making in creating workforce diversity. Some places

greenebarrett

Aug 30, 2022
2 min

Measuring Principals (not Principles)

Over the years in which we’ve been covering the evolution of performance management, it’s always been abundantly clear to us that great care needs to be taken in determining the right things to measure. We’ve long suggested that states and local governments need to consider the set of performance measures they use as a work in progress—and be prepared to refine and alter them on a regular basis. With that in mind, we were struck by a working paper, published by the Anneberg I

greenebarrett

May 4, 2022
2 min

City Parks Tackling Climate Change

Typically, when people think about efforts to help deal with the byproducts of global warming, they focus on the power of federal governments. But there’s an important contribution to be made by cities. It’s highlighted in a special report, released on May 4th, from the Trust for Public Land, titled “The Power of Parks to Address Climate Change.” As the report states, “Park acres, it turns out, are very good at buffering the effects of climate change. Green space has the powe

greenebarrett

May 4, 2022
2 min

What Are The Best City Park Systems?

On May 3rd, The Trust for Public Land (TPS) released its annual ParkScore rankings of parks in the 100 most populous cities, based on five factors: Equity, Access, Acreage, Investment and Amenities. The five cities that scored highest in this ranking were Washington D.C.; St. Paul, Minnesota; Arlington, Virginia; Cincinnati, Ohio and Minneapolis, Minnesota. "Washington, DC, was rated the best big city park system in the country for the second consecutive year," according to T

“I Wonder… What if…? Let’s Try!” From Sesame Street to Your Governments and Communities- The Power

greenebarrett

Apr 19, 2022
4 min

“I Wonder… What if…? Let’s Try!” From Sesame Street to Your Governments and Communities- The Power

By Bruce Waltuck, Professor, Kean University, College of Business and Public Management and an award-winning creator and facilitator of better outcomes for organizations It is ok. You can admit it. You have watched Sesame Street. If you are my age, you have probably watched from the first day it was on the air. Right now, Sesame Street is in the midst of a two-year initiative to teach people (yes…all people, not only children) a simple, yet powerful framework for creati

Spending State Dollars Effectively By Prioritizing Partnerships

greenebarrett

Apr 13, 2022
4 min

Spending State Dollars Effectively By Prioritizing Partnerships

About a month ago, we wrote a column for Route Fifty about a dramatic transformation in the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS). The change, which has taken place under the leadership of Human Services Cabinet Secretary Justin Brown, was simple and surprisingly powerful and it’s helping Oklahoma to more effectively use state dollars to serve people in need. It can be replicated in other states, as long as non-profits, foundations and government agencies are open to pr

State Investments: Higher Returns vs. Other Benefits

greenebarrett

Mar 28, 2022
2 min

State Investments: Higher Returns vs. Other Benefits

When states invest money, whether for their pension plans or other purposes, to what extent is it sensible for them to trade potentially better returns on their money in exchange for other benefits, including social good or economic development? We’ve heard arguments on both sides of this discussion and have come to the conclusion that there may be no simple answers, and that this question may likely best be considered on a case-by-case basis. We first began to think about th

B&G Report

Public Sector Human Resources, State and Local Government, Performance Management, Public Sector Workforce, Performance Audit