The Public Manager articles from December 2004

The Public Manager archives from December 2004

The manager's musings.
December 22, 2004... Not Exactly a Forum Over the years, I have viewed The Public Manager as a forum for sharing techniques, tools, and views on current practitioner challenges. Setting aside for the moment how effective the journal has been in this capacity,...

Information technology can drive transformation: IT can modify management and business processes, alter inter-organizational relationships, and extend our concept of community--particularly for our people-oriented institutions, such as health care.(INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT)
December 22, 2004... From the perspective of 2004, it seems difficult to recall that practically all of what we consider to be modern information technology (IT) has been introduced and implemented broadly only during the past ten years. In 1993, for example, fewer...

Scenario planning: a new paradigm in transportation decision making; Regional communities are involving the public, business sector, and elected officials; educating them on growth trends and tradeoffs; and incorporating their values and feedback into future plans.(Regional governance)
December 22, 2004... Prediction is very difficult-- especially if it is about the future. --Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize Laureate How can regions cope with rapid land-use consumption, pressure on the environment, growing traffic congestion, rising...

Where is your risk? Identifying potential failure points in support organizations: support functions greatly influence the ability of an organization to meet mission needs and performance goals. Learn how to quickly identify functions that could impede your organization from achieving its goals.(PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT)(United States. Government Accountability Office)
December 22, 2004... Government organizations today understand the need to manage performance and its associated risks. All federal government agencies have built risk assessment into their program management procedures. Risk management has recently become even...

Florida's Baldrige journey: the Department of Revenue is finding ways to increase productivity, cut costs, and improve service to the public by committing to a quality management framework.(STATE AND MUNICIPAL MANAGEMENT)
December 22, 2004... The Florida Department of Revenue (DOR) is a large enterprise in the nation's fourth largest state, with 5,600 employees across the state and in out-of-state offices and an operating budget that exceeds $400 million. We have three main lines of...

National Drug Control case study (Part II): this two-part series describes how ONDCP and its partners linked four components of public governance to go from measuring progress to managing it. Part II focuses on the use of logic models, action plans, and performance partnerships.(PERFORMANCE-BASED MANAGEMENT AND PUBLIC POLICY)(United States. Office of National Drug Control Policy)
December 22, 2004... Performance management refers to a variety of mechanisms aimed at aligning the operation of an organization or agency toward the attainment of desired results. In the case of cross-cutting mission areas, the intent is to enable agencies to rise...

A new model for human resources performance measurement: the Navy is overcoming historic obstacles to effective performance analysis, and public managers can easily apply both the Navy's methods and lessons learned to other program areas.(Human resources management)(United States. Bureau of Labor)
December 22, 2004... Recurring efforts have been made over the last forty years to rationalize the program assessment and performance measurement of federal government operations. Since the 1970s, public-sector productivity measurement models have generally...

Internal auditors as ethics partners: exploring their role in building the ethical climate of government; In the post-Sarbanes-Oxley world and following numerous ethics lapses in all sectors, internal auditors, ethics officers, and public managers can look to one another for help in maintaining an ethical organization.(ARTICLE)
December 22, 2004... Most large public and private organizations have a formal internal audit function that provides independent and objective assurance, compliance, and consulting-type activities to improve the organization's operations. Internal auditing has been...

Pride and perspective: a case for constitutional literacy in the public service; The founders were politicians--in some respects not so different from those of today--so public servants can more realistically judge our constitutional system as a work of pragmatism rather than a utopian blueprint written by divine powers.(ARTICLE)(Column)
December 22, 2004... Now when I see Congress thinking about changing or even zeroing out my program, I have some perspective. I figure that's how the Constitution is supposed to work. James Madison would smile. --An executive, a year after training...

Self-leadership as a tool in management succession planning: planned research could prove valuable in meeting the challenges of succession planning and management.(ARTICLE)
December 22, 2004... Succession planning and management (SPM) is a deliberate and systemic effort by an organization to ensure leadership continuity in key positions, retain and develop intellectual and knowledge capital for the future, and encourage individual...

Violence, victims, and communities: a story of restoration; San Francisco is bringing together everyone harmed by violent crimes--victims, adult male offenders, and communities--in an innovative approach that other institutions have adopted as a model.(IMAGE OF PUBLIC SERVICE)(Resolve to Stop the Violence Program)
December 22, 2004... Jordan Cash spent his young boyhood in a large city in the southwest, raised by a divorced mother who worked full time. by age 11, he was attending school only irregularly. As teenagers, he and his friends stole cars and sold them across the...

Preparation for the real world: political science internship behavior; What kind of advice do you give college students as they prepare for a public management internship in a non-academic environment?(YOUNG PROFESSIONALS ARENA)
December 22, 2004... Although this article concerns recommended behavior for a student who serves as a political science intern, it has value for other students who serve other types of internships. Students from a wide variety of disciplines should find it very...

The countdown begins.(The uncivil servant)
December 22, 2004... And now we have only three years and eight months until the next election. Candidates are lining up. Parties are basking in their brilliance or licking their wounds. And Ralph Nader is busy constructing the rationale for another run. At least...

The end of information technology.(NEW IDEAS FOR MANAGEMENT)
December 22, 2004... Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. --Sir Winston Churchill, November 1942 Winston Churchill wasn't talking about information technology (IT), but his...

A postscript as a lament.(NEW IDEAS FOR MANAGEMENT)
December 22, 2004... And What of E-Management? In management circles, information technology (IT) never seems to get a break. All through the 1980s and 1990s, as information technology was reported transforming business and government enterprise, economists...

Imagine.(NEW IDEAS FOR MANAGEMENT)
December 22, 2004... With apologies to John Lennon, "Imagine no departments. It's easy if you try." In governments of the future, there will be few, if any, departments. These outmoded hierarchies will be replaced by highly trained employee service teams empowered...

The Price of Government, Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Osborne, David and Peter Hutchinson. The Price of Government, Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis. Basic Books, 2004. Before getting into a review of the book, a point of personal disclosure: I am not a...

Governing by Network: The New Shape of the Public Sector.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Goldsmith, Steven and William D. Eggers. Governing by Network: The New Shape of the Public Sector, Brookings Institution Press, 2004. Authors Goldsmith (a former mayor of Indianapolis turned innovation researcher at Harvard University's...