MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES SUBJECT: People Achieving your goals will depend on the hundreds, if not thousands, of people in your organization. While it has become a cliché to say that an organization’s most valuable resource is its people, the statement is true. The workplace is undergoing a significant transition that presents unchartered territory and tremendous opportunity. This transformation includes a workforce that now includes four generations.

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Dr. Yi Lu, Associate Professor, Department of Public Management, John Jay College, City University of New York. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Her research interests are performance management and budgeting, shared services, and MPA education.

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.

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.

Some encouraging insights for the global performance management movement include:

The World Bank seminars this past Spring continue to have me mulling about the progress of the performance movement internationally, and how surprised I was that several countries seem to be putting foundations for performance in place at two or three times the speed of more developed countries.  Four countries struck me as making notable progress, which are summarized in earlier blog posts:  Colombia, South Africa, Kenya, and Malaysia:

In October 2009, President Obama signed Executive Order 13514, which outlines leadership efforts the federal government can make to reduce energy consumption and lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Federal agencies are required to develop strategies, implement and report on projects, and continuously improve their processes as a model for the country. The Executive Order significantly increased the visibility of sustain­ability as a strategic imperative for the federal government and beyond, while potentially saving energy and taxpayer money.  

The World Bank seminars this past Spring continue to have me mulling about the progress of the performance movement internationally, and how surprised I was that several countries seem to be putting foundations for performance in place at two or three times the speed of more developed countries.  Four countries struck me as making notable progress.  I summarized two in a previous post (Colombia and South Africa).  Today I’ll focus on Kenya and Malaysia:

The World Bank seminars this past Spring on international progress in performance management continue to have me mulling about the progress of the performance movement internationally, and how surprised I was that several countries seem to be putting foundations for performance in place at two or three times the speed of more developed countries.  Four countries struck me as making notable progress.  I’ll summarize two today and two in my next post – along with notes on their commonalities: