John Kamensky

Holiday Cheers. The White House hosted a ceremony earlier this week that highlighted a number of good news stories in government. The ceremony included remarks by the White House chief of staff, the Director of OMB, and the Director of OPM. The event was well-covered in the media. Federal News Radio highlighted a new presidential executive order that includes new initiatives for recruiting and training new senior career executives. Government Executive highlighted the executive order’s raising of caps on how much agencies can spend on senior executive recognition awards.

Former Vice Presidential National Security Advisor Leon Fuerth, working with Evan Faber, has released a white paper that has been a decade in the making.  The paper describes how the federal government is increasingly facing challenges of greater complexity that demand faster action than the current institutional structures can respond to effectively.

If President Obama meets with Governor Romney to discuss ways to reform the operations of the federal government, here are some resources they have to draw upon. A number of think tanks have busily been preparing a series of white papers to spark the imaginations of those developing a reform agenda. These are not to be confused with agendas for new policies (such as climate change or immigration reform) or budget decisions, such as the pending fiscal debates.

In only four cases since 1975 has Congress passed all appropriation bills before the beginning of the fiscal year.  In some years, like 1996, inaction led to agencies suspending operations.  This year, Congress adopted a six-month Continuing Resolutionfor all fiscal year 2013 appropriation bills, delaying final decisions until March 31st.  What do these kinds of delays mean for how agencies manage their monies and op

I’ve been asked to participate as a “practitioner” on a discussion panel at the upcoming conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM)  It is a high-powered conference of top academics from around the U.S.

Cracking the challenge of measuring unobserved behaviors – drug smuggling, tax fraud, counterfeiting, and illegal immigration – is key to developing better strategies and targeting resources in the right places to catch and deter illegal actions.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has developed an inventory of “mechanisms that the federal government uses to lead and implement interagency collaboration,” along with a self-assessment checklist to consider when using them.

GAO’s latest study on collaborative governance is based on an analysis of more than 300 past GAO reports covering issues such as homeland security, agriculture, and health, as well as a series of interviews with experts on the topic.

Investing in, and using, program evaluation has been a hard sell in many agencies for years.  While evaluation is important for long-term program assessments, it can be expensive and take years to complete.  But with new technology and greater availability of data, many agencies are beginning to take advantage of the value of existing real-time administrative data.  This movement is called “data analytics.”  And the immediacy of results is appealing to many executives.

• Strong statutory and institutional structures and an investment in performance management systems seem to be more common in emerging countries.  For example, in Columbia this is embedded in their constitution and Kenya has created a department to lead the nation’s transformation efforts.  In more developed countries such as the United Kingdom and Ireland, these efforts are more administratively-based, oftentimes at the discretion of the prime minister.

• The use of multi-year national strategic plans is on the rise.  Ag

Twenty years ago, federal agencies typically did not have senior executives leading key mission support functions such as finance, technology, acquisition, or workforce.  Over those two decades, Congress created a series of “chief” positions, reflecting trends in the private sector – chief financial officers, chief information technology officers, chief acquisition officers, and chief human capital officers.  They recently added performance improvement officers but without the “chief” title.