B&G REPORT.

Some time ago, in a conversation with a high-ranking county official, he told us about the three attributes that he sought when hiring a new employee: “attitude, aptitude and adaptability.” Subsequently in looking up those words online, we’ve realized that he didn’t make the “three A’s” up himself, but the idea remained with us as a sensible one. Clearly, the fundamental hurdles before someone should be hired for a job in state or local government are attitude and aptitude. I

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

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

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...

Many years ago, when we were first introduced to the world of performance management, we became zealots, believing that cities and states...

Every government makes mistakes from time to time. Sometimes, leaders acknowledge that a decision made in the past has gone awry and...

When was the last time you heard anyone say, “Gee what an excellent bureaucracy we have in the Department of Motor Vehicles. It only took...

For some time, we’ve been fascinated by the relationship between executive branch managers and their legislatures or city councils. Not...

A few months ago, at the American Society for Public Administration conference in Washington D.C., the Center for Accountability and...

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...

Last week, in a B&G Report titled, “Information Can Be a Buried Treasure,” we wrote about our concerns about the use of artificial...

More than ten years ago, leaders in West Haven, Connecticut (where the Greene of Barrett and Greene grew up), began planning a fabulous...

We’re looking forward to participating in a panel at the upcoming annual conference of the American Society for Public Administration...

As anyone who has been reading our work in the past knows, we’re strong believers in making sure that there’s ample use of evidence when...

In the wake of the pandemic, we co-wrote a paper for the IBM Center for the Business of Government in collaboration with renowned...

We were involved in a meeting the other day, in which a couple of participants were talking about agile government. We hear that term...

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

Several decades ago, when we first developed a passion for performance management, we leaned upon a cadre of people who were pioneering...