B&G REPORT.

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

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

Much of the coverage about the concerns that beset states and localities tends to focus on specific areas like budgetary shortfalls, the need for better technology and a shortage of people to fill many vital positions (where have all the accountants gone?) But, increasingly, in conversations we’re having about all these topics and more, the problem that seem to keep our sources awake at night can be expressed in a single word: “Uncertainty.” “ Uncertainty is not generally wel

Over the course of years, we’ve come to rely on a number of organizations that specialize in various aspects of state and local...

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...

Today is the first day of Public Service Recognition Week and since much of our readership is made up by people who have devoted their...

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...

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

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

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

As regular readers of this website know, we generally avoid covering politics or the federal government. That said, we’re beginning this...

In 2024, our professional life was very busy (as our colleagues, family and friends know), and so we hardly had the energy in our...

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

Thanksgiving is just a few days away and we thought this was an appropriate time to dig into some of the state and local government news...

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...

Last week’s B&G Report included the second in a series of lists, compiled by experts, about managing performance. The first such list,...

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