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A few months ago, at the American Society for Public Administration conference in Washington D.C., the Center for Accountability and Performance had a panel discussion for the recipients of its Emerging Leaders Award. We’ve been to lots of sessions similar to this one, but the moderator here, Cheriene Floyd, the chief data officer of Miami, asked the panelists a question that was particularly intriguing and that has set us to thinking ever since. She asked (and we’re paraphrasing slightly here): “What did you believe when you started your career, but you don’t believe now?” We thought about how we would answer the question ourselves. One of the first things that came to our mind was the evolution of our thinking about performance management. Decades ago, based on a zealotry born out of naivete we believed that when states, counties, and cities began to measure results and not just outputs, a new age of well-informed, effective and efficient government was about to dawn. We have fond memories of a series of “Managing for Results” conferences in Austin, led by one of the pioneers in this field, Terrell Blodgett, in which there seemed to be a general consensus that this great new advance in public administration was going to change the world. But, while we’re still enthusiastic advocates of performance management, it’s become increasingly clear that political expediencies tend to overrule even the best thought out systems of performance management and measurement. We’ve seen a regular procession of instances in which the evidence based on results points to one conclusion, but if that’s not the answer that will garner votes at election time, it’s not the conclusion that ultimately is utilized. Similarly, it appeared to us in the 1990s that human resource departments were really beginning to buy into the idea of workforce planning. And certainly, some have. But once again, it turns out that planning for the future falls off rapidly when time is extinguished by understaffing, and the crises that are brought about by daily pressures, budget angst, political shifts and the external events that make workforce planning all the more necessary. Here's another one. Back in 2001 we wrote a book called "Powering Up" with the exuberant subtitle, “How Public Managers Can Take Control of Information Technology.” At the time, we wrote, that “There’s still a hefty cadre of government employees (including even some governors and mayors) who may give lip service to the benefits of IT, but on the whole, would just as soon steer clear of any machine that beeps back at you anytime you make a mistake.” That was true then, but now the world has moved in the opposite direction. Today, we believe that there’s a widespread notion – shared by elected and appointed officials – that technology is the answer to whatever problem comes up. This kind of thinking has accelerated, just in the last couple of years as artificial intelligence yields the promise of a brave new world, in which people fear lest their jobs be replaced by AI. Early on in our careers, we proudly told our friends that one of the glories of state and local government was that it was distinctly non-partisan. In fact, when we were evaluating the management capacity of the states, and would be asked in newspaper or radio interview what the party of the governor was, we often had no idea. Today, of course, with the parties battling for the hearts and minds of Americans, many people first identification for a state and its leadership is in terms of red or blue (or sometimes purple). This is a sad turn of events. Obviously, many if not all of the above answers to Cheriene Floyd’s question have had more to do with the changes in the world than a misunderstanding about the way it ever worked. The lesson here is that it’s important to keep track of the way things are advancing – or receding – in any of the functions performed by state or local government so that reality continues to coincide with beliefs. In short, the danger of sticking to your guns is that you can wind up shooting yourself in the foot.  #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceMeasurement #CityPerformanceMeasurement #CityPerformanceManagement #AmericanSocietyForPublicAdministration #ASPA #CenterForAccountabilityAndPerformance #EvidenceBasedResults #AustinManagingForResultsConferences #TerrellBlodget #StateandLocalGovernmentHumanResources #CityGovernmentManagement #CityGovernmentHumanResources #StateandLocalGovernmentWorkforcePlanning #CityGovernmentWorkforcePlanning #CountyGovernmentPerformanceManagement #CountyGovernmentHumanResources #StateandLocalTechnologyManagement #ChangingBeliefs #StateandLocalGovernmentArtificialIntelligence #CherieneFloyd #PartisanshipAndStateLocalGovernmentManagement #CAPEmergingLeaders #StateandLocalGovernmentManagementAndPolitics #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Today is “World Social Media Day,” a celebration of that form of communications that was first proclaimed in 2010 by Mashable, a media and entertainment company that delivers its content on a variety of platforms. Though we bet you weren’t sending greeting cards to celebrate the occasion, when we became aware of this event, we decided to think a bit about some of the pitfalls for cities, counties and states that increasingly rely on social media networks – like Facebook, LinkedIn, X or Instagram – to convey their messages to residents and even a national audience.   We fully understand that states and local governments can’t avoid using social media to communicate with residents. According to a September 2024 survey from the Pew Research Center , “overall just over half of U.S. adults say they at least sometimes get news from social media.” But our fear is that many governments enter this new territory without deliberating on its pros and cons. Consider this praise for using social media as a primary means of communication from the Florida League of Cities : “Today, people get their information online by engaging with trusted and relatable sources that speak to their specific interests. By its very design, social media has a degree of openness and transparency that provides excellent opportunities for local governments to build trust and a positive public perception of its work and services.” But the pitfalls are abundant. For one thing, social media by its nature is interactive and permits individuals to respond to a post. While the fair-minded exchange of opinions is certainly healthy, it’s almost a guarantee that some of the comments will be negative or even vicious. This puts public leaders in a pickle. If they respond to comments then they’re in the perilous position of giving credibility to the sometimes inaccurate or misleading comments of a crank. On the other hand, ignoring such comments lets them stand unchallenged and can easily allow readers to believe that they are accurate. You can, of course, moderate comments – deleting the ones you don’t like – but that runs the risk of accusations of censorship, a dirty word in anyone’ circles. This is, as the old saying goes, a situation in which “you can’t win, you can’t lose, and you can’t get out of the game.” More alarming than the fishbowl nature of social media by official government organizations, it can create a breeding ground for misinformation. In fact, “The majority of social media influencers share information with their followers without verifying its accuracy,  according to a new U.N. report  . . . “ reported The Hill  late last year.  “The new study, done by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), found that nearly two-thirds of surveyed digital content creators, 62 percent, said they did not verify the accuracy of information before sharing it with their followers online.”   But without any fact checking by authors of posts, there can emerge multiple versions of the truth. This has been the case in Wyoming in which the governor and the secretary of state have been throwing virtual rocks at one another for a while. Just last week, according to the Cowboy State Daily ,  “ Wyoming’s governor launched an incisive counterattack Friday in an ongoing feud with the secretary of state, accusing the secretary of lobbing dishonest social media attacks at the governor. “Gov. Mark Gordon and Secretary of State Chuck Gray have sparred on numerous topics from whether there’s a need for additional voter-integrity laws in Wyoming to whether the state should grant leases on state lands for wind turbine projects.”   As the Governor wrote, “Although our forefathers had their differences, they did not have to contend with the hit-and-run tactics some politicos and malcontents’ resort to using on social media.”   Of course, old-fashioned means of communication for states and localities had their flaws, too. Some newspapers were known to have a liberal or conservative bias. But at least, for most of them, they were able to cordon off the politically motivated coverage to the opinion pages.   #StateandLocalSocialMediaCaution #StateandLocalGovernmentSocialMediaUse #StateSocialMediaPitfalls #CitySocialMediaPitfalls #CountySocialMediaPitfalls #WorldSocialMediaDay #StateandLocalGovernmentCommunication #SocialMediaProsAndCons #WyomingSocialMediaBattle #CounteringSocialMediaInaccuracy #SocialMediaMisinformation #PublicSectorAndSocialMediaMisinformation #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #CityModerationSocialMediaComment #CountyModerationSocialMediaComment #CityGovernmentSocialMediaCommunication #UNESCOSocialMediaStudy #PewResearchSocialMedia #CountyGovernmentSocialMediaCommunication #StateGovernmentSocialMediaCommunication #CitySocialMediaUse #StateSocialMediaUse #CountySocialMediaUse #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Many states, counties and city leaders are regularly raging against “fraud, waste and abuse.” This is hardly a new issue but inspired by the efforts in Washington D.C. – whatever you think of the administration’s approach – there’s been refreshed action at other levels of government to tackle this triad of governmental ills.   Here’s the problem. These three words are generally comingled as if they were one thing. But they’re not. And mixing them together as a single phenomenon can easily cause governments to lose a clear vision as to exactly what they’re trying to fix.  Fraud, at least, has a clear and specific meaning. When it comes to the other two, things get kind of mushy. As Don Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, told us the other day when we were talking about this column with him, “I’ve never seen a good definition of abuse” And waste – which we’ll carp about subsequently – is even more opaque.     Let’s start with fraud, which is simple to define, as it has a pretty straightforward, legalistic meaning. It is a white-collar crime, which victimizes the government, through deceitful practices in which people engage to enrich themselves. A whole variety of activities fit into this definition, including purposefully billing states or localities improperly for goods or services provided; lying about the quality of products or services provided; or using governmental funds for personal benefit. One big differentiator. Fraud is the only one of the three that, by necessity, is purposeful. (It’s probably worth noting here that the idea that there is ubiquitous fraud in government may well be an exaggeration. A few weeks ago, we wrote about  a report by KFF that pointed to a White House statement about fraud in the Medicaid and Medicare programs and made the point that many improper payment estimates, which are sometimes identified as fraud “ are not a measure of fraud or abuse and most improper payments are the result of missing documentation or missing administrative steps and are not necessarily payments made for ineligible enrollees or services.”)   Now let’s talk about abuse. The clearest definition we were able to find of this came from the Environmental Protection Agency, which defines it as “behavior that is deficient or improper when compared with behavior that a prudent person would consider reasonable and necessary business practices given the facts and circumstances.” The problem to us is that once you start talking about a “prudent” person there’s a lot of leeway for interpretation.  For example, unnecessary overtime is sometimes described as an abuse. But we’ve written enough about overtime to know that it’s a complicated issue and the decision of whether or not to use it is subject to a lot of variables. For example, fire departments sometime are attacked for abusing overtime expenses. But as we wrote in a white paper a few years  ago, “Although overtime may be expensive, it is critical to distinguish the instances where it is both necessary and useful from those where it is unnecessary and possibly even risky. Useful overtime allows departments to quickly deal with unexpected events and short‐term vacancies. Says Troy Valenzuela, (now retired) battalion chief for the East Fork Fire Protection District, located in the valley next to Lake Tahoe, “The reason overtime is unavoidable is that we have to fill those seats in the fire engines every day. The seats just can’t be empty. That’s the real reason why [most] fire agencies take heat for their overtime expenses.” Unnecessary travel is also sometimes considered an abuse. But, when we attend conferences, we see that frequently the best and highest benefit achieved by attendees is the opportunity to learn from others over lunch or in the hallways between sessions. We can’t think of any way to measure that, but it’s our opinion that if someone goes to a conference and comes back with three or four ideas that can help their entity run more effectively or efficiently, that may well have been money well spent – hardly an abuse of taxpayer dollars. Now we’ll come to the word that we find potentially pernicious: Waste. When we hear politicians use that word, it’s often tied more to their personal values – and the perceived beliefs of the voters – than to anything with clarity. To take an extreme example, let’s say that an elected official doesn’t believe in a particular expenditure, then it’s wasteful. Is it wasteful for states to expand their university systems? We’d say it’s a terrific investment, but we know others who think there’s little need for improved facilities. What they call waste, we’d call investment. Investments at the local level in affordable housing are sometimes described as wasteful. This description, naturally enough, comes from people who have easy access to a pleasant house or apartment. It’s the “I’ve got mine” syndrome. Money spent on something people themselves don’t need is labeled by them as wasteful. If we were asked to provide a definition of the word waste as it’s sometimes used in the public sector, it’d be this: Waste is money spent on something that benefits someone else, but doesn’t do you any good yourself. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentFraud #StateandLocalGovernmentWaste #DefiningGovernmentFraudWasteAndAbuse #StateandLocalGovernmentHumanResources #DefiningGovernmentAbuse #StateandLocalGovernmentOvertime #CityGovernmentFraud #CountyGovernmentFraud #CityGovernmentWaste #CountyGovernmentFraud  #StateandLocalGovernmentEfficiency #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #CityGovernmentPerformance #CityGovernmentEfficiency #CityGovernmentWaste #CountyGovernmentWaste #GovernmentEfficiencyAndEffectiveness #StateandLocalEfficiencyaAndEffectiveness #StateandLocalGovernmentTravelExpenses #CityGovernmentTravelExpenses #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

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 tell stories about cities, counties and states – all of which are carefully fact checked -- we’ve developed a kind of radar (not that it’s infallible by any means) for data which can be misleading, misplaced or downright wrong. The following is a distillation of some of the approaches we’ve developed over the years that have helped us to steer clear of prose that is gritty with numbers that stand in the way of an honest interpretation of the facts. Here are eight:     1)    Watch out for any information that compares present day data to that which was gathered during the pandemic. In 2020 and 2021, there was an upheaval in many sectors of society. Now, a little more than five years after the onset of the pandemic, any changes that use 2020 or 2021 as a baseline are nearly sure to be misleading. That’s why some institutions that are particularly careful about their use of data compare pre-pandemic to post-pandemic.  2)    Beware of huge ranges in costs for projects.  We frequently see data that purports to show how much a project will cost, or the number of people affected by a policy. When the range is huge, we suggest you ignore it entirely because with this little precision it’s pretty much meaningless. For example, a few years ago a Dallas based media outlet  reported that “researchers say it would cost anywhere between $5 billion and $20 billon to winterize all plants in Texas.”    3)    An additional cautionary note along the same lines. Sometimes ranges like this are translated into wording like “up to $16 billion,” in order to prove that it’s an enormous number or, for the same project, around $5 billion, when the author wants to minimize things. It’s hard to ferret out this kind of misrepresentation, but worth watching out for. 4)    Super precise numbers are rarely reliable, outside of budgets, where precision is necessary. But when a report or a study talks about something and goes out many decimal places, in most cases such precision doesn’t exist in real world activities. 5)    It’s amazing how many academic reports ground themselves in data that’s more than 25 years old. Very little that was true then is true now, and yet these ancient numbers seem to be stuck in time. For example in a 2024 paper about   “The effect of pay for performance on work attitudes,” it’s stated that “expectancy theory posits that individuals act to maximize expected satisfaction with outcomes.” This may still be true, but the source is footnoted to a paper written in 1964.  6)    Make sure the sample size for any kind of survey is reasonably large. While anecdotal evidence can be gathered in surveys that are answered by a couple of dozen respondents, when those numbers are converted into percentages, then the flaws creep in. If the sample group is really small, then the conclusions drawn from them can be totally worthless Say, for example, you read that an astonishing 25% of people believe something that, at first glimpse, seems unlikely. But if only 16 people responded to the survey, then the four of them that make up the 25% can’t be held to be representative of society at large.  7)    Beware of bar charts and similar comparative graphics. If data   is shown on a bar chart with a smaller range, then relatively small changes can appear to be quite huge. Let’s say, for example, that the chart shows a range from 1 to 100, and it’s moved by 3 units from 1-4 say. That movement may look relatively minimal.  But, instead, consider someone who decides to have the chart peak out at 10. The same exact change can appear to be cataclysmic. 8)    Try to find the time to read beyond the executive summaries that focus on the data in a report. For organizations that want to make a particular point, it’s a strong temptation to use the executive summary as an opportunity to boast about the positive and underplay the negative (or the other way around). With little time to read through every page in a report, it’s easy to be trapped by this phenomenon (and we suspect that occasionally that’s been true of us). But it’s worth the time to dig a little deeper before believing everything you read.   #StateandLocalGovernmentMangement #CityGovernmentManagement #CountyGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #CityPerformance #CountyPerformance #StateandLocalGovernmentData #StateandLocalDataVisualization #StateandLocalDataUse #CityDataCaution #CountyDataCaution #StateDataCaution #StateandLocalTransparency #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalDataGovernance #CityDataUse #CityDataGovernance #CountyDataUse #CountyDataGovernance #MisleadingData #GovernmentData #InterpretingStateandLocalGovernmentData #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

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 lives to public service, we thought it was only appropriate for us to send you this note, in honor of the occasion.   To be clear, we’re addressing these comments to the public servants whose work is largely invisible. While some – like firefighters and teachers -- have jobs that are seen and appreciated by the public, this is not the case with people who labor into the night in areas like procurement, who ensure that the teachers have computers in their classrooms and provide firetrucks and hoses without which firefighters can’t do their heroic jobs.   Much the same is true in fields like human resources, where workers spend their days trying to hire and retain the best and brightest. Or those who work in budget offices, trying to make sure that the public books are balanced, honest and timely. We thank you, the unrecognized, underappreciated people who keep the government services coming our way.  These are tough jobs. As our friend and colleague Bob Lavigna of UKG wrote recently, “Now more than ever, public service and public servants are under the microscope, and not just in the federal government. The work of government at all levels is being intensely scrutinized, too often unfavorably and unfairly. It’s no wonder that trust in all levels of government has  declined , and government is struggling to attract and retain talent. “What can get lost in the often-overheated rhetoric about government is that public servants perform vitally important work that affects us all every day in critical ways.” Worse yet, though the public wants to be sure all the services government promises are kept, many are more inclined to complain about the taxes they pay than to appreciate what they’re getting for them. Good restaurants are packed with people who are uncomplaining when they get their bills – and take some pleasure in leaving a good tip for a server who has done a superior job. But it’s our impression that there’s minimal appreciation for the health inspectors whose work is to make sure that you’re not eating an overabundance of rodent hairs. In these jaded times, when people hear the phrase “good enough for government work,” they often think it’s a pejorative that suggests something that is of inferior quality. But back during the Second World War, when the phrase first gained currency, it meant the top-of-the-top work that exceeded expectations. We’re not ignorant of the flaws in government programs, but we’ve devoted much of the last 30 years to uncovering programs and policies that work well and have the potential – if funded – to make life better for all of us. Let that be our thank you, to the public servants we try to serve. #DedicatedToStateandLocalGovernment #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #CityPublicAdministration #StateandLocalHumanResources #CityHumanResources #StateandLocalFinanceOfficials #StateandLocalPublicServants  #StateandLocalPerformanceAuditors #StateandLocalBudgetOfficers #StateandLocalGovernmentProcurementManagement  #CityWorkforce #CountyWorkforce #CityPublicServants #CountyPublicServants #StatePublicServants #PublicServiceAppreciationWeek #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentWorkforce #StateandLocalPerformanceManagers #StateMedicaidManagers #StateandLocalEmergencyManagers #BobLavigna #BandGoReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Over the last few months, we’ve written extensively about Artificial Intelligence. Mostly we’ve been focusing on the usual issues; its benefits, hidden bias and the potential impact on the workforce. But in a recent conversation with someone who is attuned to all things environmental, we realized that we’ve been leaving out a very important issue that’s surfaced over the last couple of years. But it’s escaped our attention nearly entirely. In fact in an IBM Center for the Business of Government AI roundtable we wrote about, it didn’t come up once. Nor is it mentioned in the National League of Cities report,  “ AI in Cities .” Here’s the deal: AI has the potential to use incredible amounts of electricity, and at a time when global warming is no longer a matter of debate in the serious scientific community, this feels to us like the kind of emerging problem which soon enough will be in the headlines everywhere. So, though this column can hardly be described as a scoop, maybe it’ll be an eye-opener for some. Though the major threats do not appear to come from the use of AI to generate simple text, when it comes to more complex tasks, like generating images, some researchers have found that creating one image on a powerful AI model can use as much energy as fully charging a cell phone. This is put into perspective in an article in Medium , that found that as of the end of 2024, “AI creates about 34 million images every single day. That’s 1.4 million images an hour. Roughly 23,333 images every single minute.” And that’s right now. The growth in the use of AI to create images, though unpredictable, is bound to be incredibly fast for as far into the future as anyone can see. As we started to dig a little deeper into this topic, we were particularly jolted by an article in Harvard Business Review  that stated that “the global AI energy demand (is) projected to exponentially increase to at least  10 times  the current level and exceed the annual electricity consumption of a  small country like Belgium  by 2026. In the United States, the rapidly growing AI demand is poised to drive data center energy consumption to  about 6%  of the nation’s total electricity usage in 2026, adding further pressure on grid infrastructures and highlighting the urgent need for sustainable solutions to support continued AI advancement.” This isn’t just theoretical. In early April,  a Reuters survey of 13 major U.S. electric utility earnings transcripts  “found nearly half have received  inquiries from data center companies  for volumes of power that would exceed their peak demand or existing generation capacity - that's everything they supply to homes and businesses – a metric that reflects the sheer size of oncoming data center needs.” To be fair, some futurists believe that Artificial Intelligence, itself, will help to figure out ways to save the energy it consumes. A November 2023 report by the California Government Operations Agency  indicated that “ Incorporating GenAI in government can drive environmental sustainability by optimizing resource allocation, maximizing energy efficiency and demand flexibility, and promoting eco-friendly policies. For instance, this technology can enhance operational efficiency, decrease paper usage and waste, and support environmentally conscious governance. Notably, stakeholders also highlighted the need for reducing environmental impacts of GenAI use and ensuring environmental costs are equitably distributed.” We’ve noticed that many cities, counties, states and the federal government all appear to be focused on seeing who can make the most use of AI as quickly as they can. In fact, there appears to be something of an international race going on between the U.S. and China to see who will dominate in AI. We understand that the potential of AI is so breathtakingly large that we don’t expect environmental concerns to slow it down. But like other genies that can’t be put back in the bottle, we’d argue that governments everywhere take this into account as they find new and better uses for a technology with such enormous potential. “ In the 2024 legislative session, at least 45 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C., introduced AI bills.” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. We thumbed through the NCSL’s list of these bills  and couldn’t find one that mentioned environmental dangers. That has to change. #StateandLocalGovernmentGenerativeAIPolicyandManagement #StateArtificialIntelligenceManagement #AIandGlobalWarning #StateEnergyManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentAIManagementandPolicy  #StateandLocalGovernmentArtificialIntelligenceManagement #AIandEnvironmentalConcerns #StateGovernmentEnergyUseAndArtificialIntelligence #CityGovernmentArtificialIntelligenceEnergyUse #CityGovernmentEnergyManagement #NLCAIinCitiesReport  #CityGovernmentEnergyPerformanceManagement #ArtificialIntelligenceEnergyUse #StateandLocalEnergyUseManagementAndAI #StateGovernmentEnergyPerformanceManagement #CountyArtificialIntelligenceEnergyUse  #NCSLArtificialIntelligenceBills #CaliforniaGovernmentOperationsCenter#StateGovernmentGenAIManagement #CountyGovernmentEnvironmentManagementandPolicy #StateGovernmentGenAIUse #StateGovernmentEnvirnmentManagementandPolicy #NationalLeagueOfCities #IBMCenterBusinessOfGovernment #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Generally speaking, we see the positives in the world in which we live. We’re grateful for our work, family, and one another. Right now, we’re particularly grateful that the niche we’ve carved out for our lives’ work is focused on state and local government management and performance and has excluded writing about politics or the federal government. But frequently enough, over the dinner table, we find ourselves venting about the issues that have come up in the work of our day, attempting to research, analyze and write about states, counties and cities. So, welcome to our dinner table, pretend that you’re enjoying a nice glass of white wine, and join us as we whine about six (admittedly trivial) things. We’ll bet that you have similar issues, too. Here goes: 1)    We don’t understand organizations that have dropped their full names in favor of acronyms. We’re not talking about something like “NASBO,” which is just a shorthand for the National Association of State Budget Officers, and pretty much everyone in state and local finance knows that. Rather, we’re talking about groups that pretty much obliterated any use of their full name.   Take for example, KFF, which used to be called the Kaiser Family Foundation. For reasons that probably made sense to someone there, it now only goes by its acronym. And when we write about the great work the organization does, we feel obliged to put its original name in parentheses so people will know what we’re writing about.   2)    On a regular basis, we find ourselves carping about people with whom we work, who don’t understand the real meaning of a deadline.  The origin of this word goes back to the Civil War, when a deadline wasn’t a marker in time, but a physical boundary in prisons. If someone sauntered over the line, they would be shot.   Obviously, that is an archaic use, but we believe that the word still has a meaning, which to us is the point in time at which something needs to be done. Not to attack some of our academic friends, but in that world, it seems to us like deadlines are aspirational, unlike the way they’re used in the old-fashioned journalistic world from which we learned our craft.   3)    Very, very, last-minute cancellations are another ongoing frustration. Like almost everyone we know, we tend to work long days, and schedule ourselves from hour to hour. So, when we’ve set up a Zoom interview, and while we’re sitting staring at ourselves on our screens, we get an e-mail or a text apologizing for the need to postpone. We can understand that sometimes public officials’ calendars can change from moment to moment (when the mayor calls, everything else takes second place). All we’re really asking is to postpone at the time we’ve arranged, not fifteen minutes later.   4)    Frequently, when we send out an e-mail, on the subject line we include words like “please confirm that you’ve received this”. It’s amazing how many people don’t pay any attention to this seemingly simple request. And then, when we follow through a day or two later, apologizing for writing multiple times with the same query, it turns out that they actually got the original note, but since they couldn’t respond in full right away, they just ignore our plea to confirm that they got it.      5)   A remarkable number of people we interview are quick to provide data to demonstrate a point. But when we try to understand the number or percentage that’s been cited, we realize that it’s not really data, but more like a rough guess or the repetition of a statistic that’s been echoed with no reason to know it’s true. We wish that people would be more cautious about repeating a number they once heard – or wish to be true – if they don't know it's backed by evidence.   6)    We’ve written eight books over the years. And with remarkable frequency someone will tell us that “I saw your book.” We never know quite what to make of this. While we yearn for praise, the simple act of seeing a book, doesn’t get us very far, and makes us reticent to say “thank you,’ because we’re not clear what we’re thanking them for.   #StateandLocalGovernmentFrustrations #MissedDeadlines #FrustratingOrganizationalAcronyms  #GovernmentAcronyms #UbiquitousPublicSectorAcronyms #KFF #UnverifiedData #OnlineMeetingLament #WildGuessesMaskedAsData #AuthorFrustrations #BarrettandGreeneFrustrations #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc #DedicatedToStateandLocalGovernment #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance

Last week, in a B&G Report titled, “Information Can Be a Buried Treasure,” we wrote about our concerns about the use of artificial intelligence as a the be-all and end-all source of information for a growing cadre of researchers. Our fundamental point was that AI only can draw upon information that’s been digitized and available on the internet, leaving out potentially valuable information that has no flaw other than that it was never scanned.   One personal example. We have many years of completed survey instruments  from the Government Performance Project, which was supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts for over a decade until 2010. These surveys are unique repositories of information from all fifty states about areas like human resources, budgeting and performance management. A treasure trove, we think, but one that is currently buried in boxes in an office we rent. Someday we’ll get around to having them scanned and available to researchers, but for now they might as well not exist.   We were chatting about the general idea of valuable historical information that’s not now available, with a public official at the recent American Society for Public Administration’s annual conference in Washington D.C., and he called this phenomenon “The Death of History.”   Pretty strong words, and the more we reflected, the more we began to realize that they’re right on target.   The fact is that as time passes, we’ve become increasingly aware that many of the leaders in state and local government come up with ideas they think are brand new, without digging into the files, or talking to people who preceded them, to see whether their notions are really new or just a retread of something that’s been tried before.   Exhibit A: A few years ago we were interviewing a leader in performance management in a large southern city. The individual told us that the city had embarked on a new and innovative performance management effort that hadn’t been tried before and that it was relying on outcomes or results and not just outputs.   At risk of seeming overly snarky (which maybe we were) we pointed out that this city was well known about 25 years ago, for something not very different than was being tried today. We had written about it back then.   Honestly, we didn’t know why the previous initiative hadn’t lasted, but it seemed abundantly clear that this was information that could be very helpful now.   The value of describing something as an “innovation,” helps feed this unfortunate fire. We speculate that it’s not easy selling the legislature on a program that existed in the past, but didn’t last. As we wrote in this space some few months ago, “ The very word innovation (or its cousins, “innovate,” and “innovative”) is used by elected officials as a kind of magic wand that can create better tomorrows. ”   This phenomenon is nothing new. We recall several conversations with Harry Hatry, one of the great gurus of performance management, after the book "Reinventing Government" came out in 1992. It was a huge best seller (and allegedly sat on a shelf next to President Clinton’s bed), and popularized a number of ideas, including the benefits of looking at outcomes when trying to evaluate government.   Though the book had great value by popularizing concepts that continue to make sense today, Hatry was annoyed at the general sense that this was the first time such notions had been written about. He had been preaching this gospel for years, and as Shelley Metzenbaum, an American nonprofit executive, academic, and former government official specializing in public sector performance management, told us, “Harry called for increased attention to outcome measurement and management as early as the 1970’s.”   We don’t want to be too harsh on researchers, practitioners and academics for missing out on the important history that could help inform their current work and we have to give credit, as well, to internet resources like Google Scholar with its vast repository of academic writing that record contemporary government history.   But with the speed of change today and the increasing reliance on summarized answers from AI we can’t help worrying about what is lost. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentHistory #GovernmentPerformanceProject #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceManagementHistory #StateandLocalGovernmentBudgeting #StateandLocalBudgetingHistory #StateandLocalHumanResourcesHistory #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #StateandLocalGovernmentInnovation #AmericanSocietyForPublicAdministratioin #ASPA #PewCharitableTrusts #ReinventingGovernment #HarryHatry #ShelleyMetzenbaum #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

A few weeks after we left our then-18-year-old son off at the University of North Carolina in 2005, we got a note from him, thoroughly excited about having discovered something called microfiche. For those of you for whom that technology is long forgotten, it was a way to see originals of documents on a transparent card – using a so-called microfiche reader -- in order to gain access to long forgotten archives of magazines, newspapers and other sources of information. By that time, the Internet had already become ubiquitous and Google and other search engines were increasingly turned to as the be-all, end-all source of information.  But he had discovered the joy of deep-digging research, using original documents that could never be found online, but represented a kind of buried treasure for a diligent researcher.. We were thinking about this the other day when we were chatting with someone about the fact that AI is rapidly becoming the current equivalent of Google as the source for all the information in the world. Increasingly, researchers in the realm of state and local government and elsewhere are turning to AI to give them the information they need to help write reports or even make important decisions. But there’s a problem. What AI can find for you is information that has been digitized. But there’s tons of valuable material that’s never been put in digital form. That includes information about groups and cultures, with histories that have been written about less and never picked up by the digitizers of the world.   We’ve become acutely aware of this when we consider the articles we wrote for the now defunct magazine, Financial World. This work includes the predecessor to the Government Performance Project, (published in Governing magazine and sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts). Boxloads full of information  accompanied those evaluations of cities, counties and states, but unless we can find the original publication (we have a bunch, but they’re hidden away in boxes), they might not have been written at all. Financial World went out of business in 1998. For the purposes of this B&G Report, we checked to make sure the preceding paragraph was accurate. So, we used Perplexity, one of our favorite AI Tools and searched using the prompt, “Tell me about work done evaluating cities in Financial World Magazine.” The response it spat out instantaneously began with “CEOWORLD magazine evaluates cities through its International Financial Centers Index. . . . ” That had nothing to do with the years of work we put into our Financial World efforts – which we immodestly believe, could be of huge use to anyone who wants to delve deeply into the history of topics like performance measurement. We fear that as researchers increasingly rely on AI for their work, much material that is of value will become lost to future generations. Sometimes, the best repositories of information are in the minds of the human beings who were around at the time. There are multiple one-on-one conversations with people who have recounted memories that were never scanned. We’ll boast a bit and give an example of the kind of research we’re talking about. Long ago, when we were writing a biography of Walt Disney, we grew intrigued with his favorite teacher, Miss Daisy A . Beck. Previous biographers had taken note of her existence, and referred to some correspondence he had with her, which could be found in the Disney Archives. But that was about it. We thought that since she was such an important influence on him (she encouraged his drawing) we’d dig a little more. Fortuitously, we discovered that her aged niece and that woman’s son were still living near Kansas City, Missouri, and that they’d be willing to visit with us. We learned that Daisy Beck was “a stylishly dressed woman in her late 30s,” at the time, and that she coached the track team. Though he was no athlete, we were able to write that she urged Walt to try out for track and she’d tell him “Hop right out there at recess and show me what you can do.” We looked Daisy Beck up on Perplexity and although the AI tool told us who she was and the usual stuff from other biographies, you won’t find any of that there. Robert Caro, author of the Powerbroker, and the first four of a five-book biography of Lyndon Johnson has no parallel in this kind of work and though his diligent research is out-of-reach for most biographers, his digging for details shows how much treasured information is buried away. As he wrote in the Paris Review , The “LBJ Presidential Library is just massive. The last time I was there, they had forty-four million pieces of paper. These shelves go back, like, a hundred feet. And there are four floors of these red buckram boxes. His congressional papers run 144 linear feet. Which is 349 boxes. A box can hold eight hundred pages. I was able to go through all of those, though it took a long, long time.” Will future journalists, authors and students continue to dig? It used to be said that history is written by the winners. Now, we fear it will be written by the digitizers. #StateandLocalGovernmentResearch #StateGovernmentAndArtificialIntelligence #StateLocalGovernmentGenerativeAIPolicyAndManagement #ArtificialIntelligence #ArtificialIntelligenceAccuracy #ArtificialIntelligenceAndHistory #ArtificialIntelligenceBlindSpot #WhatAIMisses #GovernmentPerformanceProject #FinancialWorldCityEvaluation #FinancialWorldStateEvaluation #ArtificialIntelligenceInStateAndLocalGovernment #WaltDisney #DaisyBeck #WhatAILeavesOut #DigitizedHistory # #BandGReport #BarrettandGreene

More than ten years ago, leaders in West Haven, Connecticut (where the Greene of Barrett and Greene grew up), began planning a fabulous new development called “The Haven.” It is still described on its website as an “unprecedented waterfront destination that blends an inspired outlet experience with the ambience of luxury resort.”   Sounded like a dream to economic developers, and in preparation for the project, a section of the city was effectively decimated. So, far, however, nothing has happened. And the city is searching for a new developer.  Residents like Vicenta Gibbons are thoroughly angry. As she told us, “ People were forced to move out of that area and were deceived, as well as the rest of West Haven by promises of a high-end mall area, where sheiks would fly in to shop . . . It is (now) blighted and depressing. We could have a wonderful venue for concerts, sports, etc., (as they have in Bridgeport) since it is right off the highway and certainly is a large enough parcel. The city could have been collecting taxes for several years now.” We’ve been thinking a lot lately about trust in government, and it strikes us that delays like this are the kind of thing that detracts from people’s faith that their governments are functioning well. Once a project has been announced, when voters see that it hasn’t actually come to pass, that builds the sense that government simply doesn’t get things done.   Of course, a great many efforts do come to fruition on time and on budget, but given human nature, it’s often the ones that are sadly put off that stick in the public consciousness.   This phenomenon isn’t limited to giant infrastructure projects.     Consider the effort in Massachusetts to come up with proposals for a new state seal by July. Seems like the simplest of efforts, right? But it’s currently running months behind schedule. Worse yet back in 2021 a 20-member panel couldn’t come to any decisions about the new seal, after extending its deadline several times, prompting Secretary of State William Galvin to call the effort a “complete failure.” Debates currently go on, and nobody has any idea when a new seal will actually be accepted.   Then there was the effort we described a couple of weeks ago, in a Management Item  about the delays in Colorado’s efforts to cut back its owned and leased space by 1 million square feet by July 1, 2025.   As we explained, the goal was overly optimistic, and difficult negotiations over long-term leases have meant that the state has pushed that goal back to July 1, 2027 (and cut back its goal to 800,000 square feet.)   There are a number of reasons why governments frequently don’t deliver on time. Sometimes, as in Colorado, one element of the project wasn’t taken into account at the outset. Other times, it’s a matter of underfinanced projects or politics intruding on an announced plan. There are also any number of challenging factors that weren’t predicted at the outset (like rising costs of concrete).   In an opinion column in Governing last year, Stephen Goldsmith,  professor, former mayor of Indianapolis, and one-time deputy mayor of New York City, wrote that “officials should create a culture of urgency.” He cited the way former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg had “placed clocks on every conference room table, all set at a maximum of 30 minutes, in an attempt to render obsolete needlessly long meetings.”   The column quoted Brad Keywell, author of the "Story of Time," recommending  “killing bad regulations and processes, halting obsolete approaches, which would be a refreshing, even thrilling, way of governing.”   There’s one more element at play here, and that’s the efforts that are simply unrealistic, or badly planned from day one.   The poster child for this kind of thing is the Second Avenue Subway in New York City, which was intended to run 8.5 miles along Manhattan’s east side. It was (believe it or not) initially proposed over 100 years ago, and the first tangible progress made was in 2017 when three new stations opened. There’s no guarantee that anything more will be done anytime soon. It effectively lives large in the minds of many old-time New Yorkers as an example of how big projects don’t get done. There are no magic bullets to guarantee that government projects will be completed on time and plenty of hazards, as well, in setting highly unrealistic goals or rushing action without due consideration of potential negative consequences.  As for the more common reasons for delay, we do have one piece of advice . When action slows down, and residents begin to roil with disappointment, explain, as publicly as you can, the reasons. At least then, the public is less likely to lose trust due to a lack of understanding of the exogenous factors that aren’t under the government’s control. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalPerformance #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #CityGovernmentManagement #CityPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #StateandLocalTransparency #CityGovernmentTransparency #StateandLocalInfrastructureManagement #TrustInGovernment #CityInfrastructureManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentProjectDelay #NewYorkCitySecondAvenueSubway #TheHavenWestHavenCT #PublicSectorGovernmentTrust #CityProjectDelay #StephenGoldsmith #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Nearly every city, county or state gathers huge quantities of data for a variety of purposes. Some of it is effectively used, some is entirely ignored, and some of it is denied. But one thing is clear: Data has become the language of government. With that in mind, it’s increasingly critical that government employees are bilingual; not only must they be traditionally literate in that they can speak clearly and understand what others have said, they also need to be steeped in something that’s become widely known as data literacy. This is not intended just for people who would identify themselves as data specialists, whose jobs are primarily to help create or analyze data. Data literacy efforts must spread throughout any well-run government organization.  The need for government leaders to understand data – and for data specialists to translate it into clear comprehensible English – has become especially critical for those who are using it to make important decisions or monitor the programs in which they’re involved in order to take steps to improve them. But, in the real world there’s no requirement that elected officials really understand the charts, graphs and spreadsheets that are put before them. When was the last time you heard someone running for city council or selectman boasting that “I’ll be able to do my job well because I’m data literate”? What’s more, it’s critical for staff at many levels to understand the data and its significance, even if they’re not using it to make decisions. That’s because many employees collect and input data. Multiple cities have found that data quality improves when their workforce understands the use to which the data is put, its importance to the taxpayers they serve, and its connection to the success of their departments. This idea was well spelled out in a 2022 Deloitte report , “Data Literacy for the Public Sector: Lessons from Early Pioneers in the U.S.” One of its most important findings was that, “In order for agencies to effectively engage in the ever-changing data landscape, organizational data literacy capacity and program models can help ensure individuals across the workforce can read, write, and communicate with data in the context of their role. Data and analytics are no longer ‘just’ for specialists, such as data engineers and data scientists; rather, data literacy is now increasingly recognized as a core workforce competency.” The ways that cities are achieving better staff data literacy come not only from live or online classes and, study-at-your-own pace materials, but also from established communities of interest that encourage employees to meet and learn from each other. Still, not all employees are going to be willing students, as the time they spend achieving data literacy can add onto an already overwhelming work week. We’ve never heard of a place that offered overtime hours for employees who were taking an online course in data literacy. Early efforts to foster data literacy in the public sector workforce began nearly a decade ago, when President Barack Obama signed an executive order that boosted the development of open data 3 – the notion that, absent an overriding reason, all government data be accessible to all Americans. That idea quickly gained traction with the nation’s cities, and they began to make their data more accessible to a broader range of people both inside and outside of government. But simply providing data to people is only half the battle. It’s equally important that they are helped to have the capacity to evaluate it, understand it and ask the appropriate questions about its meaning. Not only is it important for people in the public sector to be able to understand data, it’s also important that they use the words of data to mean the same thing as other people think they mean. In the first book of the Old Testament, the story is told of the Tower of Babel. At heart, the tale concerns the effort of Babylonians to create a tower that would “reach to the heavens.” But that lofty goal proved to be a failure because the people building the tower spoke many different languages. This ancient story has a lesson for cities now that data has become the language of government. It’s critical for them to speak the same language – to be data literate – or else their programs and policies can risk facing the fate of the Tower of Babel. One challenge that confronts people who are pushing data literacy programs in their cities, counties and states is the lack of resources for adequate training. Like all other government efforts, promoting data literacy isn’t free. As a result, it’s important for elected and appointed leaders to have sufficient buy-in to this process for them to make the necessary resources available. This is particularly worrisome, as many states and localities are confronting a “fiscal cliff,” and when expenses outpace revenues, the first thing to be dropped are often training programs. But despite this tendency, governments that cut back on this kind of education are shortsighted, and their reliance on data is ultimately doomed to be less than successful.  #StateandLocalDataGovernance #CityDataGovernance #StateandLocalTechnologyManagement #CityTechnologyManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #CityandCountyManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #CityEmployeeDataLiteracy #CountyEmployeeDataLiteracy #StateEmployeeDataLiteracy #PublicSectorDataLiteracy #StateandLocalGovernmentHumanResources #StateandLocalWorkforce #DataLiteracyTraining #DataLiteracyAndElectedOfficials #CityDataQuality #CountyDataQuality #StateDataQuality #CityDataUse #CountyDataUse #StateDataUse #DedciatedToStateandLocalGovernment #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc

Over the years, we’ve written a great deal about ways in which government officials can improve their relationship with the press. We know there’s a lot of frustration in state and local governments about the coverage (or lack of coverage) they receive. In our conversations with government officials we often inquire as to ways that members of the press could do a better job in covering their governments. So, based on decades we’ve spent writing about state and local management and policy, we've collected a handful of ideas we’d like to share. (If you have other thoughts we should include, please send them in and we'll add to the list in a subsequent column. Six tips to help journalists improve state and local government coverage: 1.     Don’t expect rapid change when new policies or practices are introduced. Articles that take governments to task for the absence of results shortly after a new policy is put into place can miss the fact that it takes time to implement almost any new policy — and if the results aren’t immediate, it doesn’t mean that it’s a failure. 2.     Social policy issues are complex and despite the publicly absolutist stance taken in political discussions, government practices and policies are rarely all bad or all good. They usually have some elements that are working well and others that cause problems. A flaw, or even a bunch of flaws, in a new policy may not signal the need for the policy to be abandoned. It’s kind of like the proverbial dike with a hole. The solution isn’t to tear down the dike, but to securely plug up the opening. 3.     Government officials who are trained to deal with the press (actually just about anyone who is trained to deal with the press) have learned to skirt questions asked so they can answer entirely different questions of their choosing. At various times we’ve had media training, and this is exactly what we’ve been told: “Don’t worry about the questions you’re asked. Just answer the question you wanted to be asked.” We try hard not to let government officials get away with this frustrating bait and switch.   4.     Tamp down on cynicism. All journalists covering government have been lied to at various points in their careers, but in our experience — and we’ve had thousands of interviews covering every state and large city and county in the country — we’ve found that most government employees are diligent, hardworking and inclined to be as candid as they’re permitted to be. 5.     Just because a policy or new program is passed by the legislature and is signed by a governor doesn’t mean it’s actually going to happen. If a bill isn’t funded, the fact that it passed may only be symbolic. We wish more journalists would follow up on important new policies to see what’s actually happened after some legislator ballyhoos this grand accomplishment. 6.     Most ideas in government have been tried before. Just check out our slide show on transparency and you’ll see all the new ideas about budget transparency that were on exhibit in 1908. Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with trying them again. “Whatever government tried before in performance management, can be tried again, with the new technologies available,” John Kamensky, emeritus senior fellow with the IBM Center for the Business of Government, told us some years ago. It’s truer than ever now. #StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalGovernmentPerformance #GovernmentPressRelations #GovernmentPressCoverage #CityPressCoverage #StateandLocalMediaRelations #StateandLocalMedia  #AdviceForJournalistsCoverningStateandLocalGovernment #GovernmentTipSheetForJournalists #StateandLocalPublicAdministration #CityGovernment #CityPublicAdministration #CityPerformance #CityGovernmentManagement #CityMediaCoverage #StateMediaCoverage #CountyMediaCoverage #StateandLocalPressRelations #StateandLocalGovernmentCommunications #BudgetTransparencyHistory #Early20thCenturyBudgetExhibits #StateandLocalGovernmentBudgeting #StateandLocalGovernmentTransparency #BandGReport #BarrettandGreeneInc