Predictive Analytics: How to Prevent Crime from Happening

City police departments across the country are turning traditional police officers into “data detectives.”  Police departments across the country have adapted business techniques --  initially developed by retailers, such as Netflix and WalMart, to predict consumer behavior -- to predict criminal behavior.  A new IBM Center report, by Dr. Jennifer Bachner at Johns Hopkins University, tells compelling stories of the experiences three cities -- Santa Cruz, CA; Baltimore County, MD; and Richmond, VA – are having in using predictive policing as a new and effective tool to combat crime.

What Does Performance Management Look Like in India?

Sometimes it is refreshing to look at how other countries approach the challenge of measuring and managing performance in their governments. Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a World Bank seminar where the Secretary of Performance Management for the Government of India described how his country is doing it.

Four Elements That Promote Effective Coordination

“Interagency coordination is an essential ele­ment of effective public leadership,” writes Dr. Andrea Strimling Yodsampa in a new report for the IBM Center on effective practices for interagency coordination, using U.S. civil-military coordination efforts in Afghanistan between 2001- 2009 as a case study.

Baltimore's Outcome Budgeting Approach

The topic of performance budgeting has been talked about for decades.  Most state governments claim to be doing it.  The Government Accountability Office and others have written numerous studies about how it could and should be done at the federal level.  But the City of Baltimore has put in place an outcome-oriented budgeting system that is now in its fourth year of operation.  What does it look like?

 

Three Levers for Better Budgeting

A timely new book by veteran public finance experts at the International Monetary Fund describes how budget and finance reforms have evolved over the past two decades in more advanced countries.  While their book doesn’t contain any magic formula for success, it does provide a useful context for understanding what is going on in the field.  It also provides some poor comfort for the fact that what the U.S. is facing is not uncommon and that there may be some avenues for being more successful in the future.

Trend 1: Performance

But it has been a long road.  In 2011, two European academics conducted a meta-analysis of 519 studies on performance-oriented management reforms undertaken across Europe in the previous two decades to determine if they resulted in improved processes, outputs, or outcomes.  They concluded the answer was “yes,” but not a resounding “yes.”  Their analyses showed 68 percent of the studies found improvements in administrative processes and activities, 44 percent in programmatic outputs, and 53

A Look at STEM Education: A Cross-Agency Priority Goal

Since the late 1950s, after the Russians launched Sputnik to the surprise of America, the federal government has promoted the development of a national workforce skilled in the sciences as a national security priority.  But the government also invests in developing similar skills for the federal workforce, given the hundreds of thousands of scientists, engineers, computer specialists, and doctors its employs.

Predicting Famine Through Analytics

The Famine Early Warning System is an interagency network among federal agencies and the United Nations that began in 1985, using scientific data to target about $1.5 billion in food aid from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to those who need it most.  Participating federal agencies include the U.S.

Making Strategic Decisions

Dr. Rosenzweig says in his article this is not because executives don’t want to make good decisions, but rather the research has focused predominantly on one type of decision – and this type is not the one most challenging for leaders to make.

Trend 4: Mission

Twenty-five years ago, federal agencies typically did not have key executives leading mission support functions. These functions were largely seen as administrative transaction services. However, ineffective mission support operations can be quite costly. For example in 2010, there were $641 million in grievance settlements at the Postal Service because of poor management training and inadequate labor-management relations.

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Emeritus Senior Fellow
IBM Center for The Business of Government

Mr. Kamensky is an Emeritus Senior Fellow with the IBM Center for The Business of Government and was an Associate Partner with IBM's Global Business Services.

During 24 years of public service, he had a significant role in helping pioneer the federal government's performance and results orientation. Mr. Kamensky is passionate about helping transform government to be more results-oriented, performance-based, customer-driven, and collaborative in nature.

Prior to joining the IBM Center, he served for eight years as deputy director of Vice President Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government. Before that, he worked at the Government Accountability Office where he played a key role in the development and passage of the Government Performance and Results Act.

Since joining the IBM Center, he has co-edited six books and writes and speaks extensively on performance management and government reform.  Current areas of emphasis include transparency, collaboration, and citizen engagement.  He also blogs about management challenges in government.

Mr. Kamensky is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and received a Masters in Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, in Austin, Texas.