Douglas W. Webster

Douglas W. Webster is a Senior Fellow with the George Washington University Center for Excellence in Public Leadership, where he teaches Enterprise Risk Management.  He is also the Director of Government to Government Risk Management at the U. S. Agency for International Development and the founder and former president of the Cambio Consulting Group.

Tom Stanton and Doug Webster

Thomas H. Stanton teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He is President of the Association for Federal Enterprise Risk Management (AFERM) and a former member of the federal Senior Executive Service. He is a Fellow and former board member of the National Academy of Public Administration and formerly chaired the Academy’s Standing Panel on Executive Organization and Management. With a career that spans the practical and the academic, Mr Stanton’s work has led to the creation of new federal offices and approaches to delivering public services more effectively. Mr.

Four Elements That Promote Effective Coordination

“Interagency coordination is an essential ele­ment of effective public leadership,” writes Dr. Andrea Strimling Yodsampa in a new report for the IBM Center on effective practices for interagency coordination, using U.S. civil-military coordination efforts in Afghanistan between 2001- 2009 as a case study.

Predicting Famine Through Analytics

The Famine Early Warning System is an interagency network among federal agencies and the United Nations that began in 1985, using scientific data to target about $1.5 billion in food aid from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to those who need it most.  Participating federal agencies include the U.S.

Open Gov Plans Countdown

Next week, agency Open Government Plans are due to the Office of Management and Budget.

The Open Government Dialogue

With little fanfare, the While House announced that 29 agencies launched their Open Government weblinks on schedule (per an OMB directive), on Saturday, February 6th. Virtually all of them also invited citizens to participate in a dialogue on how they could improve their approaches to transparency, participation, collaboration, and innovation.

Leadership Matters

The new administrator of the long-rudderless U.S. Agency for International Development is a real-time case study of how leadership matters. Rajiv Shah, 36, stepped into the job just five days before the devastating earthquake shattered Haiti. According to the Washington Post, Shah suddenly found himself designated the "unified disaster coordinator" and in meetings with the President in the Situation Room in the basement of the White House.

FY 2009 Financial and Performance Reports

If a tree falls in a forest, did it make a sound?

The November 15th release of federal department and agency annual performance and accountability reports went largely un-noticed. Not a mention in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post (even its Federal Page).

From Data to Decisions III

Today’s senior managers are tempted to begin analytics programs before determining the mission-essential questions they are seeking data to answer.  Older data-based analytics efforts often grew out of the discoveries of line employees who made connections and saw patterns in data after receiving new software or hardware that helped them make sense of what they were studying.