B&G REPORT.

Any day of the week, in hundreds of states, cities and counties. there are staffers engaged in brainstorming efforts. Often, they’ve been brought together from different programs or divisions to provide a cross-section of opinions. The idea is that brainstorming will be satisfying – a positive experience that will lead to innovation and solutions to outstanding problems. But brainstorming isn’t just a matter of bringing a bunch of people together in a room and hoping that ma

Over the course of the last few years, we’ve found ourselves writing increasingly about the challenges and accomplishments of towns, small cities and counties. In the past, it’s been a real temptation to focus on the work of large cities, as they tend to wind up in the news – and are more inclined than smaller places to publicize their accomplishments. But about one out of three incorporated communities in the United States has a population of under 50,000. We were inspired t

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

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

Though residents may assume that state and local government work is generally performed by public sector workers, in fact, a huge number of jobs are in the hands of third-party contractors and consultants. This can include garbage collection, road and bridge construction, and a wide variety of health and social services. Additionally, as cities, counties and states increasingly depend on technology, many – particularly smaller entities – don’t have the internal capacity or ex

In a “VOICES FROM ASPA" video that ran on this website a couple of weeks ago, Valerie Lemmie, senior advisor of state and local government at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, told us that “I am at times surprised how little our graduate students know about civics and then I am reminded that we don’t teach it in school anymore, you don’t learn it in high school. You don’t learn it in college. And so, it’s incumbent upon you, who are preparing for the profession (in public

There are certainly justifiable reasons to be concerned about the far-reaching ramifications of artificial intelligence. Nobody really knows for sure its impact on the workplace. And in the absence of guarantees that the benefits will outweigh the flaws, fear runs rampant. But when we talk with friends about AI, they forget that this isn’t the first technology to conjure up fear and loathing. In fact, historically almost every new scientific advance has led to public concern,

There are many important routes to heighten the likelihood of developing successful programs and policies in the public sector. But over the years, in dozens of conversations, we’ve had one factor that comes up repeatedly: It’s critical to be willing to take risks. Naturally we’re not talking about gambling with the public dollars without ample consideration, study and the search for evidence. Instead, we’re thinking about a truly calculated approach to entering new territory

Back on March 6, 2020, the IBM Center for the Business of Government hosted a glorious party in honor of our then-new book “The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance-Informed Management.” (Rowman & Littlefield) There was a lot of talk in the room about some mysterious new disease that seemed to be spreading. People were bumping elbows. On March 11 th , the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. That night the NBA suspended its season, and a national

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

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

It’s long been known that exposure to bad news can be genuinely unsettling. As long ago as 1997, a study originally published in the British Journal of Psychology found that just 14 minutes of exposure to negative news can significantly increase anxiety and sad moods. Nearly three decades after that study, its conclusion leads to greater concern than ever. The future is wildly uncertain. The media is full of alarming stories, from the growing number of natural disasters to a

Back in 1871, Lewis Carroll began to use the term “portmanteau” as a description of words (which he made up) that blended two meanings into one. One of those that has lasted over the years includes “chortle,’ which was originally coined, in the poem Jabberwocky by Carroll, as a combination of “chuckle” and “snort.” Others that followed included “brunch” for breakfast and lunch; “motel” for a motor hotel; “smog for smoke and fog,” and “infomercial” for the combo of “informat

For a while our Facebook account was out of order. It required the intervention of our son (a native in the world of social media) to figure out how to get it running again. And now we’re not so certain that we’re better off than we were before. In truth, we’re not huge social media users. We have an Instagram account but rarely use it. Every couple of months we fool around with Tik-Tok. We don’t quite count LinkedIn in this group, as it’s far more professionally oriented in

When people talk about the high cost of state and local government, they often miss an important distinction: between costs and investments. People understand in their own lives that when they put money into bonds or the stock market, these aren’t really costs but money put aside in hopes that they will get a return on this cash in years to come. Yet they miss that same phenomenon when it’s in place for their tax dollars. There are lots of examples of this phenomenon, Trainin

“This is the last B&G Report we’ll be publishing in 2025 (the next new column will appear in this space on January 12, 2026 ) And so, we thought it only appropriate for us to look back at the columns we’ve done over the last year to pick out ten of our favorites – and provide them to our readers who may have missed them the first time around. Take a look, and as NBC used to say in a campaign to get people to watch its reruns, “If you haven’t seen it, it's new to you.” Unc

Several years ago, when the nation was in the depths of the pandemic, there was hardly an article we could write that didn’t bring the impact of Covid-19 into play. Even though the public sector was still delivering tons of services, collecting taxes and trying to create affordable housing, everybody we talked to about these topics would bring in questions of how they were being impacted by the pandemic. We were disheartened by the terrible toll the pandemic was taking, but,

We really want to have our voices heard when it comes to matters of concern to us, and we suspect that most people feel much the same way. But over the last few years, as the flow of surveys that come our way has turned into a deluge, our inclination to reply to many of them has decreased. And we’re far from alone. So-called “survey fatigue”, like the kind we’re experiencing, isn’t a new phenomenon, and there were articles being written about it several years ago. But we’d