Hear from the nine government executives profiled in our recent magazine. Join as we discuss with our authors such diverse topics as leadership, transparency, open government, and the rise of social media, performance reporting, and a first hand account of the Obama transition.

From the federal government’s response to the financial crisis, the H1N1 flu, or its movement towards greater transparency and accountability, our latest magazine gathers thoughtful perspectives from some of the leading practitioners and academics in the field. Hear from the nine government executives profiled in the recent magazine and interviews with several of our magazine contributors on such diverse topics as leadership, transparency, open government and the rise of social media, and a first hand account of the Obama transition.

The federal government’s chief performance officer, Jeff Zients, declared at a recent Senate hearing: “The test of a performance management system is whether it is used.”  He thought federal agencies were failing the test.

Transparency is one of the current buzzwords, which is notnecessarily bad. A keystone of democracy is accountabilityand transparency, i.e., providing information is one way forthe government to be accountable. Since no one wants tolook bad, transparency can be a major impetus for programimprovement.

The most effective way to access an agency’s accountability is with information about the performance of its programs: whether and how the agency is managing its resources to avoid waste, fraud, and abuse; the important amounts in its financial statements, their significance to the agency’s programs, whether and why these amounts have changed from the prior year; and conditions, trends, events, both existing today or likely in the future.