NLPES Conference Notes

Guest Speaker: Katherine Barrett
Friday, September 7, 2001

In this general session, Katherine Barrett lectured about her and her husband’s work as special project editors for Governing magazine.

As lead project editors on The Government Performance Project, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene have issued management report cards for all 50 states twice (1999 and 2001), 35 cities with the largest total revenue (2000), and are in the process of evaluating 40 counties (ten from each of four regions) with the largest total revenue.

Ms. Barrett’s first interest in grading municipalities centered around the question: How does Government work? Ms. Barrett said that the idea of comparing all 50 states received much skepticism. The results of the original "one-shot deal" garnered such tremendous coverage that the study turned into a four year project.

Highlights of Ms. Barrett’s presentation:

Grades are based on scores in the following five areas: financial management, capital management, human resources, managing for results, and information technology.
Ms. Barrett’s work gives the local press a perspective of what’s going on in their government. For example, the realization that $1 million is only one percent of the total.
The best way to manipulate a journalist is not to withhold information, but rather to deluge them with information.
One can not always trust surveys, watch for respondents that may check yes or no and then later contradict themselves in narrative sections.
States look a lot different than cities and counties. States are much harder to grade – measurement is easier on the city/county level.
The current study of counties (south and midwest regions only to date) has been fascinating to Ms. Barrett because the counties are all tremendously different. Counties have taken managing for results as their anchors and are often more well-run than states.
The need for leadership is the most significant standout. You cannot have managing for results without someone at the top of the organization who wants it.
A few of the states are doing a good job of trying to train their legislatures along with their staffs about the importance and benefits of performance management.
Common for legislatures to fear losing line-item authority (control of purse strings) with performance-based budgeting and are therefore resistant to the concept.
With regard to performance measures, be aware of incentives that move in the wrong direction.
Other problems with performance measurement are the temptation to cheat to create good data, governments have not figured out how to communicate results to citizens, and the fear of repercussions for publishing bad results.
Putting in a good, useful performance management system takes more time than anyone’s best educated guess.

A question and answer session followed.