John Kamensky

Data Failure. Don Kettl, in commentary for Government Executive, writes: “Without a standard, trusted language of COVID data collection, it’s been hard to measure the disease, track its trend, and build effective policy.  . .

Technology innovation is happening via cross-agency communities of practice and incubation hubs supported by the federal chief information officer and the General Services Administration.

[Note: This column also appears in Washington Technology. It is the sixth in a series on how the COVID-19 crisis has changed how government works. Emily Craig and Michaela Drust, IBM, are co-authors of this column.]

John Kamensky

Need Evidence, Data. Robert Shea, in commentary for Federal News Network, writes: “Government agencies must step up their arbitration of evidence about effective practices in the current crisis and in every other domain in which they have expertise. It is the perfect time to add questions about what works to agency learning agendas.”

John Kamensky

However, there are more than a few scattered pockets of innovators across federal agencies who sometimes come up with startling changes to operating models, business processes,  services, or management.  Some of these initiatives are orchestrated from the top of an agency, but many happen organically on the front lines in response to a concrete problem.  How have federal approaches to innovation evolved over the past 30 years?  Following are four of the more prominent initiatives over this period

[Note: This column also appears in Washington Technology. It is the fifth in a series on how the COVID-19 crisis has changed how government works. Emily Craig and Michaela Drust, IBM, are co-authors of this column.]

A 2016 Forester Research report, said that the federal government had a “Near monopoly on the worse experiences.” By 2019, its survey showed that customer experiences with federal services “remains weak and uneven,” even though the White House

[Note: This column also appears in Washington Technology. It is the fourth in a series on how the COVID-19 crisis has changed how government works. Emily Craig and Michaela Drust, IBM, are co-authors of this column]

But will individual telework only be seen as a workaround until everyone returns to the office, or will agencies consciously decide to change how work will be done from now on, as distributed teams working from anywhere?

John Kamensky