The IBM Center report, “A Leader’s Guide to Transformation:  Developing a Playbook for Successful Change Initiatives,” is by Robert Reisner, the former vice president for strategy at the U.S.

Our aim is to produce research and analysis that helps government leaders more effectively respond to their mission and management challenges. The IBM Center is named "The Business of Government" because its focus is the management and operation of government, not the policies of government. Public sector leaders and managers need the best, most practical advice available when it comes to delivering the business of government. We seek to “bridge the gap” between research and practice by helping to stimulate and accelerate the production of actionable research.

A series of separate initiatives to encourage innovative cross-agency and cross-governmental efforts seem to be beginning to connect the dots among themselves.  These include:

The non-profit Policy Consensus Initiative, in collaboration (how fitting!) with the 26-member University Network for Collaborative Governance, have developed a “Guide to Collaborative Competencies.” The guide draws “upon the collective knowledge and vast experience of the Network to provide an overview of the concrete skills needed to initiate and participate in collaborative approaches for public issues.”  The

The Partnership Fund for Program Integrity Innovation

Nancy Roberts, in a recent article for Public Administration Review, “Beyond Smokestacks and Silos,” explores “open-source, web-enabled coordination in organizations and networks.” She observes that there are different approaches used when the goal is to coordinate action within organizations vs. when the goal is to coordinate across networks.

Since creation of the IBM Center for The Business of Government more than 13 years ago, it has been our goal to help public sector executives and managers address real-world problems by supporting leading researchers who produce empirical evidence to inform the debates about whether particular management approaches will improve government performance.

The September 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review has a great article, “Smart Rules:  Six Ways to Get People to Solve Problems Without You,” by Yves Morieux, which provides useful advice to busy managers in large organizations.  While he focuses solely on private sector companies, the insights and lessons he offers are clearly relevant to the public sector.  This is especially true when it comes to implementing President Obama’s

This is the underlying theme of a new report by Congressional Research Service specialist Fredrick Kaiser, in “Interagency Collaborative Arrangements and Activities:  Types, Rationales, and Considerations.”  Given the recent big push by Congress to deal with overlapping programs, and recent reports by the Government Accountability Office, it is quite timely.

This is the underlying theme of a new report by Congressional Research Service specialist Fredrick Kaiser, in “Interagency Collaborative Arrangements and Activities:  Types, Rationales, and Considerations.”  Given the recent big push by Congress to deal with overlapping programs, and recent reports by the Government Accountability Office, it is quite timely.