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NLPES Site Map

NLPES News

Inside the News

Chair's Corner
Surfing the New Wave of Evaluation Reports
Government Auditors: Can they remain Relevant
2000 NLPES Executive Committee Elections
From the Editor
Tech Talk

Chair's Corner

Craig Kinton (TX)

It has been another busy year for NLPES. We had two resignations from the executive committee, Gerald Hoppmann (Louisiana) and Dr. Antonio Jones (West Virginia) but were able to gain able recruits in David Greer (Louisiana) and Shan Hays (Arizona) to complete their terms. Elections were held in April with the results providing a mixture of new faces (Shan Hays-Arizona, Wade Melton-Florida, and Kate Wade-Wisconsin) and experienced hands (Gary Brown-Michigan, Heather Moritz-Colorado). Plans are well underway for the NLPES offerings at the NCSL annual meeting in Chicago. Concurrent sessions are being developed to address issues regarding program evaluation of economic development programs, education reform, and accountability efforts.

At the NLPES luncheon/business meeting, the winners of the following awards will be announced: EXCELLENCE IN EVALUATION, EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH METHODS, and CERTIFICATE OF RECOGNITION OF IMPACT. Following the NLPES business meeting, there will be a roundtable discussion on topics of interest to NLPES members.

The fall training conference in Austin is also taking shape and promises to be a fun and informative learning experience. We are fortunate this year to be joined by the Research and Committee Staff Section (RACSS), whose participation will certainly enrich our discussions and learning.

The centerpiece for the conference is the exciting work that Max Arinder (Mississippi) is leading (Legislatures of the Future study), which examines the forces of change that are affecting state legislatures and the effects these influences will have on legislatures by the year 2025. This study will also be presented at the NCSL annual meeting in Chicago in July.

For the balance of the Fall Training Conference, we will continue to build on the theme of Max's study by examining the impact of the potential "futures" on the fields of legislative program evaluation, auditing, research, and committee staff work. Three thematic tracks will be offered. The first two will address skills development and information technology issues. The third track will examine the forces of change shaping specific functional areas of government and the new challenges these will present to auditors, evaluators, and other legislative staff.

If that is not enough, we are also planning some fun as well! The closing reception should meet the "fun" criteria as we descend on Carlos'n Charlie's, a popular spot on Lake Travis, the crown jewel of the beautiful central Texas Highland Lakes. Our night in the hill country will be enhanced by the Texas swing sounds of Alvin Crow and the Pleasant Valley Boys. If Alvin's fiddle music doesn't get you out of your seat, his morph into "Rock'n Leon" will surely do the trick.

Mark your calendars now! This is a training conference you will not want to miss!

All of this and I still haven't told you about the work being done on strategic planning, the NLPES web-site, the Legislative Program Evaluation database, or other initiatives that are being undertaken by the executive committee. Come to Chicago (July 16-20) to hear more! And, plan to be in Austin, Texas for the Friday through Monday after Labor Day (September 8-11).

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Surfing the New Wave of Evaluation Reports: The "LPE" Database

Joel Alter (MN)

When I began working in legislative program evaluation, one of my important early discoveries was NCSL's "Legisnet" information system. After dialing into the system with a modem, I could employ Legisnet's rather arcane search language to find references to legislative reports on a variety of topics. The search results usually included useful abstracts and lists of states that were referenced in the reports. Legisnet seemed like a pretty cool tool at the time-although so did "portable" PCs that weighed a ton and had green lettering on the screen.

Today, we are five years into the "post-Legisnet" era. Staff can still do searches of Legisnet at the NCSL web site (an NCSL username and password are currently required to access this database), but new documents have not been added to Legisnet for several years. In part, Legisnet's passing occurred because it was a labor-intensive system to maintain. It relied on states to submit information for each report-such as the report abstracts that I used to find so useful.

Legisnet's successor is the Legislative Program Evaluation (LPE) database-also at the NCSL web site. The LPE database contains state program evaluation reports from the past five years. But, unlike Legisnet, this database does not rely on states to submit information on their reports. Rather, an NCSL robot (this is the new millennium, you know!) "grabs" information on states' reports from their web homepages and puts it into the LPE database. If you are trying to find out whether other states have recently issued a program evaluation report on a particular topic, this should be your first stop.

As with any young information system, you will likely find some bugs. For instance, the results of an LPE search presently do not show reports' dates of publication. This is not a huge problem at the moment-nearly everything on the LPE database is less than five years old, and document URLs (which are shown in the search results) sometimes provides clues to report publication dates. NCSL staff hope that it may be possible to add a date field to the LPE database in the future-if states' own web sites group their reports into separate folders for each year of publication.

The NLPES Communications Committee recently looked at the "user-friendliness" of the LPE system and identified issues to work on in the future-including some that individual states can help to solve. First, there are a lot of reports in the LPE database without titles. A simple suggestion is to be sure that your agency includes descriptive information-including title "tags"-in any HTML documents on your agency's homepage.

Second, someone from your agency should periodically check the LPE database to see if it appears to contain all of your state's recent reports. For example, if your agency issued a report on child protection a couple of years ago, see if the report turns up in a search that uses your state's name and the key words "child protection".

Or, to see how many total documents your state has in the LPE database, go to the search page and (1) select your state, and (2) enter any key word (such as "evaluation") to see how many total documents are searched. Earlier this year, I found that 14 states had no evaluation reports in the LPE database. Most of these states are ones without active evaluation offices. But I also saw that some active states appear to have very low numbers of reports in the database-such as Missouri with 3 and Wyoming with 5. If you think that some of your reports are missing from the database, feel free to contact me and I'll see if NCSL staff can help resolve the problem. The LPE database is a work in progress, and we'll keep looking for ways to improve its usefulness.

Please pass along any comments or suggestions to me or other members of the NLPES executive committee.

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Government Auditors: Can They Remain Relevant?

Mordecai Lee, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Copyright 2000, Mordecai Lee)

submitted by: Don Bezruki, (WI)

This is a revised version of an address to the Spring Conference of the Midwestern Intergovernmental Audit Forum on April 13, 2000 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Mordecai Lee was appointed Assistant Professor of Governmental Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1997. One of his major responsibilities is to coordinate the new Governmental Affairs Consortium of the University of Wisconsin-Extension. The consortium is a new effort by the University to provide training, continuing education and consulting services to governments throughout the state on a coordinated and systematic basis.

Previously, Mordecai was elected to three terms in the Wisconsin Assembly and two terms in the State Senate, where he served as Co-Chair of the Joint Audit Committee. Milwaukee Magazine named him as one of Wisconsin's Ten Best Legislators. He has been invited to address conferences on legislative auditing in Maine, Louisiana, Kentucky and Washington. Besides his legislative service, he has also worked as the Executive Director of a nonprofit agency, as Legislative Assistant to a congressman on Capitol Hill and as a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Mordecai received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, a Master's of Public Administration from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in Public Administration, also from Syracuse University. He is active in the American Society for Public Administration and was chosen to serve on the Program Committee for its 2001 national conference. He has published articles in the Public Manager, Public Administration Review, Public Relations Review and International Journal of Public Administration. He recently received two awards -- from the Association for Continuing Higher Education and the University Continuing Education Association -- for a training program he helped create for the staff of the Wisconsin State Assembly.

I stepped down as State Senator and Co-Chair of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee about ten years ago. Serving in elected office today is astoundingly different than what it was like back then. The changes make the job nearly unrecognizable. Has legislative auditing kept up with the legislative world? Is auditing today as unrecognizable as politics is, compared to a decade ago?

If the answer is 'no' or 'not really' or 'sorta,' then we need to review what amounts to a problem in the profession: of auditing not keeping up, of falling farther and farther behind in terms of relevance. There is a danger of becoming an anachronism, virtually irrelevant to decision-makers, as irrelevant as the green eye shade is to modern auditing.

We have moved into an era of e-government and e-politics. Therefore, the question is what changes need to occur in the auditing world to adapt to these changes in the external environment. In other words, what would e-auditing look like? What would e-auditing mean? It means more than adapting to the technology of the digital revolution. It means coping with the overall changes in government that are an outgrowth of the digital transformation.

Moving from the general to the specific, first, what are the changes in the broader American society that will affect the environment of government auditing?

Demographic changes in the US: The United States is undergoing massive demographic change. For example, since the US was founded, white Christians have always been a majority of the population. Sometime in the next 30 years, they will become a minority.

The largest non-Christian denomination in the US is no longer Judaism, it is Islam. The phrase "Judeo-Christian values" no longer encompasses 95%+ of Americans. Previously unfamiliar religious affiliations are becoming larger portions of the population: Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.

These trends will have significant impact on American society and daily life. Can America adjust to be a truly multi-ethnic, -racial and -religious country as Australia has tried to?

Bowling Alone: Harvard's Robert Putnam has documented the implosion of the social institutions that contribute to our 'civil society.' Just like most people nowadays bowl alone instead of in leagues, people don't have time for the PTA, civic involvement, fraternal organizations, veterans groups, etc. The web of community life, of networks of involvement, information and support, are atrophying.

What are people like me, professors of public administration, teaching in our classes for tomorrow's public managers or in our continuing education sessions for today's middle managers?

The Virtual Agency: We can begin to imagine when all administration is contracted out. Some theoreticians are speculating about the 'virtual government agency' where everything is contacted out, not just service delivery but also program evaluation, personnel and budgeting. A government agency essentially becomes the Cabinet Secretary and a procurement officer! We need to think through the auditing implications of this development.

New Approaches to Privatization: Professor Don Kettl of the University of Wisconsin has written about the need for government to become a 'smart buyer.' Some services need to be kept in-house, if only for evaluation and benchmarking purposes. A threat to de-privatize a program would be an empty one if the agency has lost all capacity and institutional memory to do so.

Others have urged relying on 'government competition' where public employees bid on contracts just like private competitors would.

Second Thoughts on Public Sector Entrepreneurship: Americans want entrepreneurship in government, as long as there are no losses, only upside outcomes. However, do they really want entrepreneurship when the risk leads to a bad result? No! Can you imagine the politicians, press and, yes, auditors, saying that it's OK? Of course not. That's why government is essentially a risk-averse activity, rewarding cautious behavior over actual losses.

Where does government end and private sector begin? What standards that we apply to government agencies can and should be applied to private contractors? What can't or shouldn't be?

NASA's Challenger explosion was an example of public-private partnership gone awry. Who's in charge? When everyone's in charge, no one is in charge.

Who's the Boss: Civil Servants or Political Appointees? There is a pendulum in American government between the goal of neutral expertise and political accountability/ responsiveness. The early 1970's were the high water mark for the civil service system. Then, the only political appointees in government agencies tended to be the Secretary and the first level of administration down. Everybody else was a classified permanent civil servant. This meant that 99% of all decisions in government were made by professional managers who were not accountable in their jobs to the elected president, governor, county executive or mayor.

Then the political mood shifted. There was a feeling that public administration was too insulated from elected decision-makers. After all, the argument went, if the voters are going to hold the Governor accountable for the performance of the Executive Branch, then we need a personnel system that gives him/her the power to do the job. So, there was a major declassification of several ranks in the Executive Branch.

I expect that the pendulum will swing back again - as it inevitably will - with a new consensus opposing the 'over-politicization' of government agencies, the need for permanent and neutral professional expertise, etc.

Catalytic Leadership: Contemporary literature in public administration directs senior managers to provide leadership not just to their agencies but to the entire external coalition of stakeholders involved in the agency. This changes what a manager does and takes him or her into activities that were previously shunned. If public administrators should be steering rather than rowing, who does the rowing? How does one evaluate and audit out-of-out leadership?

Citizen Participation: Most people are familiar with the NIMBY syndrome: Not In My Back Yard. In action, it looks and sounds like 'maximum feasible citizen participation' - the rallying cry of the 1960s for change in government to help citizens. However, modern citizen participation has now been transmuted into glorifying opposition to change by the middle class. That means that the public administrator is the locus for advocacy for change and for identifying the public interest, rather than the citizens.

Service Excellence: A healthy development has been breaking down the silos to provide integrated delivery of government services. But, the laudable experiments with 'hassle free government' and with 'the government general store' have demonstrated that citizens don't care which government agency or even which level of government is providing them the service they want. Instead, they only care about getting the service and having it delivered in a quality way. This threatens the essence of the structure of government in the US. What are the implications of such a trend for auditing?

Third, let's survey changes in politics. What is the real working world of an elected official today? How has it changed from when I was in the Wisconsin Legislature?

Virtual Campaigns: Candidates used to go out on the 'hustings'. Nowadays there are no more hustings. Instead, a campaign is a telephone and a checkbook. Candidates spend their time calling people for campaign contributions and then writing checks to television stations to air their campaign ads. There is very little person-to-person contact with voters and very few campaign volunteers (see "Bowling Alone," previously).

Hijacking of Campaigns by Special Interest Groups: The amount of independent spending on campaigns by special interest groups has the effect of hijacking campaigns and imposing the issues of those groups into the forefront of the campaign, notwithstanding the preferences of the candidates themselves.

In their re-election campaigns, legislators no longer know which special-interest group will jump in with independent ads or try other ways to elect or defeat them. As a result, we end up with legislators who aren't too sure how they got elected, and who helped them and who hurt them. They aren't sure what issues they ought to showcase, because who knows what independent spending might go on about that issue. The elected legislator is being transformed into the passive participant in the electoral process, instead of the active participant.

Internet voting: The spring 2000 Democratic primary in Arizona permitted, for the first time in the US, internet voting. This is bound to grow. It is too early to tell if this is a positive or negative development - but it is sure to be a major one.

The Permanent Campaign and Legislative Gridlock: Governing was what elected officials did between campaigns. However, nowadays, the need for larger and larger campaign budgets means that elected officials never stop raising money. When they are permanently in a campaign mode they are likely to view issues differently and be more wary of unpopular stances, whether unpopular with the public-at-large or unpopular with a check-writing special interest group.

Campaigns are win-lose environments, while legislative bodies tend to be compromise-oriented ones. Passing legislation is an activity that requires comprising with opponents. The mentality that half a loaf is better than none is the opposite of a campaign mentality. With the permanent campaign, behavior in the legislature tends more to making the other side look bad in the next election rather than accomplishing something tangible. From this campaign perspective, it doesn't make sense to compromise. Instead, the focus is on highlighting the differences between each party with the hope of looking good to the public in that juxtaposition and winning the next election.

Instant Communications: During the impeachment months, some congressional offices were getting 6,000 emails a day. Think of what that means. A congressional office may have about 10-20 employees, depending on the rank of the person. How many emails a day does each staff member have to read, let alone think about and answer? What happens to the time needed to legislate?

Similarly, having the floor sessions of an elected body live on the Internet can change the context of decision-making by elected officials. Communications technology has made legislators a lot warier of engaging in activities that might be controversial, unusual or groundbreaking. With every vote they cast, there's an instant electronic referendum. "I better change my vote, because I just got 20 e-mails in the last 15 minutes" is a phenomenon that is just around the corner.

I suggest that the goal of an auditor should be to become a key player in the policy process. The sources of your power are your expertise and disinterestedness. This is what needs to be highlighted, emphasized and deployed.

In my view, the relevant auditor is defined by pursuit of these goals:

Timeliness: Continually adjust your audit program and schedule so that your products will be relevant to the decision-makers, based on their schedules, the headline agenda and the pace of the legislative process.

Initiative: Auditors take the initiative to be relevant to the policy process, instead of passively awaiting directives.

Relevant Information: Auditors provide information to policymakers that is relevant to decision-making, rather than 'important' from the auditors parochial perspective.

Use-ability: The relevant auditor produces information and materials that can be used by legislators and other decision-makers for their work. Broad, ivory tower and abstract papers should be left to academics!

Source of New Ideas: The auditor scans the horizon for the busy legislator and calls attention to new issues that the policymakers aren't thinking about yet, but ought to be. Auditors are the source of new ideas from the 'outside' that can be incorporated into the policy process.

Advocacy for the Public Interest: The auditor's loyalty should be to the public interest, nothing less. With the disintegration of civil society and the dominance of the campaign mode in legislative bodies, the auditor is one of the few voices who can advocate for a perspective that is in the best interests of the citizenry over the long term. Be the voice of the 'future generation,' the 'silent majority' and the 'responsible middle.'

Three other characteristics contribute to a relevant auditor: active involvement in the legislative process, product development and enhanced popular reporting.

A good auditor is neither a passive slug nor a legislative eunuch. Auditors must be proactively involved in the legislative process. However, this mentality goes against the culture, ethos and values of the profession. Just like most bills have a 'fiscal note' on their budgetary implications, how about creating a standard 'auditor's note' that would review the auditing implications of each proposal?

I'd also urge a more active role in the legislative process after an audit is released. The auditor should act, independently if necessary, to move the recommendations of an audit through the legislative process. Similarly, if a bill would undo an audit recommendation that was enacted, degrade the ongoing implementation of audit recommendations by an agency, etc. I'd urge a more active role in the legislative process to oppose it. The auditor could develop a standard opinion that is expressed about relevant bills in a letter or through testimony at a public hearing: "This bill would help/hurt ongoing implementation of recommendations contained in Audit # ____."

Auditors also need to engage in 'product development.' Auditing offices should have product development specialists just like private corporations do. Since one size does not fit all, auditors need to be more adaptable and fleet-footed. Given the changing demands of their clients, customers and stakeholders, they need to invent products that respond to changing circumstances.

Finally, auditors need to move to the second generation of popular reporting. Do you consider the citizenry to be one of your major stakeholders? Probably not. However, they should be. Democratic accountability is not really accomplished merely by posting your audit reports on your web site. What can you do to obtain civic attention to your audits? What can you do to increase your contact with the public-at-large? The release of an audit should not be the last step in public reporting. Rather, it should be the first step.

Auditors need to think about the unthinkable. They need to consider changing their professional standards, ethos and values so that the auditor's work will continue to be as relevant in the era of e-politics and e-government as it has been in previous eras.

Mordecai Lee can be reached at mordecai@uwm.edu and 414-227-3282. For information about the University of Wisconsin-Extension Governmental Affairs Consortium, see: http://www.uwex.edu/gac.

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2000 NLPES Executive Committee Elections

The following individuals remaining to serve the second year of a two-year term are:

Joel Alter, Minnesota
James Barber, Mississippi
Martha Carter, Nebraska
Rick Coleman, Utah
Robert Krell, Washington
Jane Thesing, South Carolina

The following individuals were elected to serve on the 2000-2001 NLPES Executive Committee:

Gary Brown, Michigan
Shan D. Hays, Arizona
Wade Melton, Florida
Heather Moritz, Colorado
Kate Wade, Wisconsin

You will have an opportunity to meet with the "new" NLPES Executive Committee during NCSL's Annual Meeting that will take place in July 16-20 in Chicago. Stop by during one of the NLPES functions and congratulate the new additions to the committee and share your ideas!

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From the Editor

Mary Goehring (TX)

Hi! I'm Mary Goehring---your new NLPES Newsletter Editor.

First, a little bit about myself: I have over 13 years of audit experience in Texas state government. I worked at the Texas Department of Transportation audit office prior to my current time as Manager at the Texas State Auditor's Office. And prior to my public service life, I worked in senior line management in retail and fast food (I can still recite--in song--all ingredients contained in a Big Mac from memory in my sleep!). I have specialized training in Facilitation, Reengineering, and Continuous Improvement. Specifically, Information Technology in auditing is my key expertise area and passion. I've also volunteered as an officer at the local, state, and national level with various professional development organizations. I hold a BBA from the University of Texas at Austin (Hook 'em Horns!) and an MBA from St. Edward's University in Austin (Go Hilltoppers!).

When Craig (Kinton), the current NLPES Chair, approached me about assuming the role of newsletter editor, I accepted without giving the idea much thought. After all, I had developed from the ground up, a newsletter for one local organization and was the newsletter editor of another professional development organization for two years. It was only when I started preparing this edition a few weeks back that it hit me. I have the opportunity to EDIT my boss's work (for a change), since he is currently responsible for writing the Chair's Corner column! How many times does an opportunity like this present itself in any one person's lifetime! Well, this "illusion" lasted for only a short time because when Craig gave me his column, there was really nothing to "edit". He had done his usual fine job of composing a wonderfully informative (and funny) column. Most importantly, he's been a source of support and encouragement as I transitioned into this position.

On a more serious note, this newsletter is for the benefit of the membership; therefore, it is only as good as the membership makes it. So, I'm requesting that each of you think of something you can contribute to the newsletter that others will find interesting, informative, and most of all---USEFUL. As you can see from the contents of this newsletter, I have already received a tremendous amount of support from very key members of the NLPES community. But, everyone from all levels should contribute. This is one way to build and foster your own ideas---share them nationwide! My vision of this newsletter, which, by the way, is the same vision as that of the Executive Committee...It is to be a conduit of ideas between all members. I am currently considering several improvements and would welcome any of your thoughts and ideas. (Can't tell them to you yet-----the changes will just have to be a surprise!) We don't get to see each other that often; however, email and the Internet have made virtual sharing very easy and I am looking to capitalize on that.

Here's to the dawn of a new and exciting era for the NLPES Newsletter! Thanks Mark B. for the wonderful groundwork that you left for me!

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Calendar

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T² (Tech Talk)

Mary Goehring (TX)

Since I mentioned in my Note from the Editor that I have a passion for Information Technology, I thought this would be yet another forum where I could share some of the resources I've collected that I find useful regarding computers, Information Technology, and such. The two links below provide technology definitions as well as risk assessment information and audit programs.

Look for these tidbits each month! And, if you have a resource (hard copy or online) that you think is particularly useful, send me the info and you'll be featured in TechTalk in the NLPES newsletter!

www.itaudit.org .....(IIA IT Audit)
www.auditnet.org .....(Audit Net)

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