Building a Vision of Data-Driven, Next-Generation Government Management

By Anne Laurent
Director, CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government

President Obama’s data-driven management agenda is taking shape:

• The High-Performance Government Initiative sets high-priority performance goals for agencies with data-based reviews to keep organizations on track to deliver them.
• The president’s December 8, 2009 Open Government Directive and Data.gov create new imperatives for opening federal data to the public, thereby involving citizens in shaping policy goals and program strategy.
• The Recovery Act’s new approach to performance reporting and evidence-based decision-making gives citizens and agencies a direct line of sight on federal spending from federal agencies out to funding recipients and back again with results — in this case, the numbers of jobs created.
• The new data-based administrative management framework applies online dashboards to track information technology investments, contract spending and soon program performance.

In each case, by collecting data and making it publicly accessible on the Web, the administration hopes to spur improvement and enable more analytical management and more effective resource allocation.

This focus on marshaling data and technology to improve and refine government programs results from budget constraints and extreme mission challenges ranging from wars, economic recovery, oil spills and global disasters to emerging threats to homeland security. In this environment, agencies must deliver new capabilities faster, reduce administrative costs, prevent scope creep, keep projects on schedule and on budget, anticipate disruptive changes in requirements or technology and make frequent course corrections.

To help develop a more agile approach to meeting the demand for more and better data and the accelerated pace of change, the CGI Initiative for Collaborative Government is building a vision of next-generation management. Our first product in that effort is A Path for Optimizing Federal Financial Management Systems, written by CGI Initiative Fellows Vincette Goerl and Patricia Healy. It addresses the need for more agility in management of financial system projects.

Agencies have implemented financial systems over the past 20 years to enable compliance with a host of laws, Office of Management and Budget Circulars and regulations requiring them to publish reliable financial information upon

which to develop performance plans and deliver spending transparency. In fiscal 2009, 21 of the 24 agencies covered by the Chief Financial Officers Act received clean audit opinions — a testament to how far government has come in automating and standardizing financial management.

To muster the agility necessary to meet today’s challenges, financial systems must now become part of a management framework that establishes discipline across agencies in:

• Making evidence-based mission decisions,
• Maximizing allocation of agency resources to missions,
• Minimizing administrative expenditures, and
• Sustaining compliance with existing legislative requirements regarding financial systems, internal controls and federal spending transparency.

A Path for Optimizing Federal Financial System Implementations examines and explains two integrated actions the government can take to reshape its financial systems investment to fit the next-generation management framework:

1. Implement an incremental project-based approach informed by agency-specific context.
2. Apply disciplined governance to actively manage risks introduced by the incremental approach.

In the weeks to come, we will further analyze and offer practical advice for a next-generation management approach. We will rely on our CGI Initiative Fellows, experienced former federal executives, our academic partners and CGI Initiative participants from across federal, state and local government and the good government community for input, advice and recommendations as we move forward. So please don’t hesitate to comment here or contact us at info@collaborativegov.org.

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