Transparency

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.

These funds were accompanied by a new, centralized system of strict financial accountability and perfor­mance reporting, with frequent reporting requirements. These new requirements, as well as the rapid implementation time­frame required by the Recovery Act, created an enormous implementation challenge for all the participants in our federal-state-local-non­profit intergovernmental system.

Government leaders are deluged with thousands of streams of data about the performance of their agencies and programs.

One approach the Obama administration has latched onto to make sense out of the deluge of data is the use of on-line “dashboards” of performance data that track the key performance metrics of various federal agencies and programs.  The administration has touted the benefits of dashboards as a way of organizing and filtering performance data so it makes sense to decision makers so they can understand and act on it.