By Andrew McLauchlin, Director, CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government

June 24, 2009

On its face, the recent update to Recovery Act implementation guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget June 22 is the latest how-to for recipients of Recovery Act funds. But amid the pages of explanations and instructions, an opportunity for something much bigger is being born: a new model for performance reporting that could greatly improve government resource decisions.

Public attention and pressure have focused on getting 100 percent transparency into stimulus spending. What is often overlooked in this clamor is that the federal government is making significant progress toward consistent performance and financial reporting across dozens of agencies, hundreds of programs, and thousands of funding recipients, spanning numerous agency missions and each mission’s associated unique partner network.

The FederalReporting.gov process described by OMB would establish a consistent performance approach to capturing how much was spent, with whom, where, and for what result. In addition, it uses a standards-based data model that can be extended and scaled over the long term to capture additional program-specific information to meet management challenges unique to different missions and jurisdictions. The FederalReporting.gov process also brings tighter federal coordination with state and local governments, making it easier to see what federal grant dollars are buying out in the field, where they are actually spent.

By Andrew McLauchlin, Director, CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government

May 7, 2009

In testimony this week to the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board Chairman Earl Devaney expressed high hopes for the public to serve as the government’s eyes and ears, helping to spot misuse of Recovery Act funds. “I am convinced that heightened citizen participation will act as a force multiplier for IGs and others charged with oversight of Recovery Act funds,” he said.   

This concept of “crowd-sourced accountability” also was recently noted by OMB’s Kshemendra Paul at an April 15 executive seminar on practical transparency approaches, co-hosted by the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government and George Mason University.

Tapping into the power of crowd for Recovery Act accountability offers intriguing possibilities. But it also raises an important question for the RATB and other Recovery Act overseers at the Government Accountability Office, federal agencies, states, and localities: How can the government manage a potential avalanche of input, sort through millions of comments and allegations, focus scarce resources for maximum impact, and safeguard citizens from potential harassment and false accusations?

One answer – both for speed and effectiveness – is to tap into existing models that federal agencies affected by the Recovery Act are using to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse.

By Paul Posner, Director of the Public Policy Program at George Mason University and Founding Partner of the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government

April 21, 2009

The session that George Mason University co-sponsored with the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government was very timely -- and quite revealing -- about the challenges that federal, state, and local government managers face in implementing the stimulus program. Some features about this program set it apart as more challenging than most domestic policy initiatives from the past:

• The high stakes of “getting it right.” Nothing less than economic recovery and the prestige of our new president are riding on whether the programs deliver on their promises to create jobs and make for more effective programs.
• The extraordinary tension among the various objectives of the stimulus legislation. Managers are tasked with standing up programs quickly to give the most timely assistance to an economy desperately in need of an injection of new funding. Yet we also have laid out an ambitious range of policy goals for these programs, which will require considerable deliberation and thought to get right. Programs such as broadband, high-speed rail, and health IT constitute no less than a fundamental departure for the federal role.
• The premium on speed tends to favor centralization of the federal role in managing programs through one-size-fits-all models that may not be well adapted to the diversity of our federal system. Our federal system is not designed to be efficient or expeditious. But as Frank Bane, the first executive director of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, said many years ago, the one great advantage of our system is that “one damn fool at the top can’t screw it all up.”
• Federal officials must pursue new relationships with new partners in some major programs. While highway programs will have the advantage of pouring the stimulus funds into established networks of state and local managers, programs such as broadband must stand up new networks, which may vary by state and region within states. Some programs, such as health IT, must engage wide-ranging actors in the health field that may not see eye to eye on the issues.
  

By Andrew McLauchlin, Director, CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government

April 15, 2009

I am fresh from a fascinating and meaty discussion this morning on how federal agencies may handle the push for transparency under the Recovery Act. I was privileged to moderate a panel of true all-stars, featuring:

• Kshemendra Paul, Federal Chief Architect at OMB’s Office of E-Government and IT, who is actively involved in establishing a central governmentwide system for Recovery Act reporting.
• David McClure, Managing Vice President at Gartner Government Research, who has consulted with numerous federal, state, and local government executives about the Recovery Act.
• Stan Czerwinski, Director of Strategic Issues at the General Accountability Office, who coordinates GAO’s work on stimulus programs.
• Lisa Schlosser, Director of the Office of Information Collection at the  Environmental Protection Agency, who heads up EPA’s collection of environmental data submissions from state and local governments.

The session, Transparency as a Management Tool: Practical Strategies for Government Executives, was hosted by the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government in partnership with George Mason University.

We are rapidly documenting the results of the session to publish them in an executive summary. But here’s a sneak peak and my top-of-mind takeaways from the session:

• When it comes to managing program spending, communicate early and often with state and local government partners. Executives in the discussion sent a clear message: The success of the Recovery Act will rise and fall based on how well states and localities rise to the challenge in partnership with federal agencies.
• When it comes to managing agency operations, focus on teamwork. This means coordinating activities across program, CIO, CFO, acquisition, and human capital communities with a central view and clear roles and responsibilities. The discussion highlighted how this collaboration is vital to enabling an agency to balance the competing priorities of transparency, accountability, results and speed.
• When it comes to achieving meaningful results for the money, look to reuse or enhance performance management processes and systems. The session highlighted an example of the performance management approach from the Fish and Wildlife Service that agencies seeking a model can learn from and adapt to their environments.
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By Andrew McLauchlin, Director, CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government

March 20, 2009

Welcome to my venture into the blogosphere! In my 20 years working with government and technology, I have seen technology migrate from green screens to point-and-click desktop software to interactive web sites to exploding online collaboration. Over this time, I have had a special interest in helping federal agencies apply today’s technology for maximum benefit to their missions – and to do so within the context of government-wide policies that evolve from one administration to the next.

For the past two years, I have been pleased to tackle this challenge as director of the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government, a public policy initiative of CGI that analyzes best practices of government collaboration with the private and nonprofit sectors. The purpose of this blog is to share analysis of current events related to collaboration among government and the private and nonprofit sectors, and to highlight ideas to help solve key challenges or seize on new opportunities.

And when it comes to current events and key challenges, it doesn’t get more current and challenging than transparency and accountability under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the tough nut of gathering project status and job creation numbers from states, cities and others who receive Recovery Act grant dollars.

The OMB guidance mandates quarterly reporting starting July 10, 2009. The bad news is that federal, state and local government systems face a stiff challenge to gather required Recovery Act reports…and fast…and with impeccable transparency and accountability. The good news is that the federal government has tackled similar reporting and compliance situations before, and, if they act fast, can adapt successful models to make it work.