It's Hard to Be Cool

As the mid-term elections near, the debate over the size of government seems to be a hot button issue.  Interestingly, the debate seems to have taken an unexpected turn. Two recent polls show a significant decrease in voters’ confidence in federal employees.  According to a Politico-George Washington University-Battleground poll, confidence slipped from 75 percent in July 2009 to 66 percent in September 2010.

Weekly Round-up: October 15, 2010

Gadi Ben-Yehuda
  • Salon interviews Steven Johnson, the author of "Where Good Ideas Come From," who argues that what we need to focus on is making incremental changes rather than trying to achieve singular epiphanies or game-changing brakthroughs.

Engaging Partners in Measuring Program Effectiveness

Jeff Tryens, the former director of the Oregon Progress Board, conducted a survey for Metro, which is Portland, Oregon’s area regional government, to find out.  He surveyed over two dozen existing programs to identify best practices in developing and using community-level indicator systems to “inform, engage, intervene, or fund” efforts to jointly improve the results communities (not just

Weekly Round-up: October 8, 2010

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

Becoming Citizen 2.0: Step Four, Co-ordinator

If most of government, and Gov 2.0, is about ordinary people doing ordinary (though necessary, ennobling, and underappreciated) things, Coordinators are the people who are doing extraordinary things.  Both within government and beyond it, coordinators are the ones who are looking at the big picture and creating the tools that co-deliverers and creators use.  

What do coordinators do?

Congress Hits "Refresh" Button on Results Act

Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) summarized the need for a refresh when he introduced his bill with bipartisan support:  "Producing information does not by itself improve performance and experts from both sides of the aisle agree that the solutions developed in 1993 have not worked.”

Weekly Round-up: Palindrome Issue: 10/01

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

Regulatory Partnerships: Good or Bad? (Part 2)

For example, Vice President Gore’s reinvention lead, Bob Stone, noted in 1998 that: “In Kansas City, the OSHA team offered training and a voluntary self-inspection to meatpacking companies with high injury rates. Working in partnership with OSHA, these companies reduced lost workdays by 15 percent. Even better, in response to their training, the employees identified and corrected 840 workplace hazards – far more than [OSHA] inspectors ever could.”

Regulatory Partnerships: Good or Bad? (Part 1)

Three recent IBM Center reports present a different perspective, showing the value of regulatory partnerships.  These reports offer lessons learned on how to create and effectively maintain regulatory partnerships so they don’t result in the failures highlighted in a penetrating Washington Post article “

Weekly Round-up - September 24, 2010

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

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