reform

One path to address this imperative involves a buying reform widely used in the commercial world and other countries – notably the United Kingdom – called “category management.”   Given its potential for driving reform and reducing unnecessary spending, category management is increasingly seen as one of the U.S. federal government’s top Cross-Agency Priority Goals.

John Kamensky

Among the topics that I discussed in introducing this blog series was healthcare payment reform. Interestingly, HHS announced last week (Jan 26:) that they are moving their payment model from traditional “fee for service,” seeking to achieve a target level of 30% alternative payment model quality initiatives by 2016 and 50% by 2018. This move has great promise -- however, the change needed to accomplish reduced cost and improved care/outcomes is significant.

U.S. CIO Tony Scott: OMB's draft FITARA guidance aims to advance IT reform. OMB released the much-anticipated guidance to reform how agencies buy and manage information technology for public comments. The comment period will remain open until May 30, but federal CIO Tony Scott, in an exclusive Federal News Radio interview, said OMB wants to move on the comments and refinements with a sense of urgency. DHS' Unity of Effort seeds the roots of change. The joint requirements council is one of the best examples of just how much the Homeland Security Department has changed over the last year.

The scenario: A House government oversight subcommittee chairman and ranking member have a strong interest in how agencies are managing technology, in light of a new law that gives agency CIOs more leverage over operations. The subcommittee leaders ask the Government Accountability Office to assess agency performance in key areas, and the subcommittee then takes the assessment and assigns grades that come back with far more Ds and Fs than As and Bs.

question of additional Intelligence Community reform. Did the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 "get it right?", the question goes. Is a sweeping reorganization of the Intelligence Community required to "fix the problem?"

Background

Not too long ago Ireland was the miracle of the “Celtic Tiger” and briefly the second-richest country in the European Union.  Then came the economic crisis - leaving Ireland’s people in a wrenching recession and the Irish government carrying an intolerably large debt burden.

I recently participated on a citizen engagement roundtable with leaders from a variety of agencies, moderated by FCW, as part of a broader set of panels on citizen engagement (see FCW's summary here).

John Kamensky

John Kamensky

Risk & Reform. In an op-ed for Government Executive, Linda Miller writes: “Making decisions about which programs to eliminate or how to restructure the organizational functions of an agency is a challenge. It’s even more difficult when an agency lacks adequate information on either performance or risk or a mechanism with which to analyze it.”