If We Can Put a Man on the Moon …

Alan Balutis — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:44:41 +0000

Earlier this week, I attended a book signing event sponsored by Deloitte to mark the publication of “If We Can Put a Man on the Moon… Getting Big Things Done in Government.” This is a wonderful study by Bill Eggers of Deloitte and John O’Leary of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Based on a review of over 75 government undertakings in the United States and abroad, the authors look at the process by which government tackles its biggest challenges.

As I poured through the volume these last two days, I came back again to the view that for at least the last 30-plus years in federal government we’ve been over-led and under-managed. Our focus has been on leadership, vision, inspiration, modeling the way, etc. But what we have really needed is to manage, to better execute.

Ironically, earlier that same day I had attended the monthly luncheon of AFFIRM. The program focused on the General Services Administration and the Networx transition. Over 40+ months into the transition to newer, more powerful, and cheaper telecommunications technologies, only 33 percent of all services have been disconnected from FTS 2001 and about half of all agencies still need to award a contract to a provider. Karl Krumbholz, who guides the Networx vehicle for GSA, contrasted this with America’s experiences in the World War II – when it took 44 months to defeat the Axis powers and win the war.

So tomorrow I start work on my companion volume to the Eggers- O’Leary volume. My working title: “How Can we Get Big Things Done in Government When We Can’t Even Get Small Things Done?”

A Management Agenda for the Obama Administration

Alan Balutis — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:05:22 +0000

This current Administration has gained a great deal of attention for its focus on technology. They are looking to build on and expand existing e-government initiatives, increase government’s openness and transparency, make use of so-called Web 2.0 collaborative tools, and explore cloud computing and other mechanisms to reduce existing infrastructure investments. Moreover, technology is being viewed as an enabler in dealing with major challenges in such policy areas as health, transportation, energy, the environment, and so. The importance of information technology (IT) is evidenced by the creation of the first Chief Information Officer(Vivek Kundra) for government and the first Chief Technology Officer (Aneesh Chopra) as well as the roll-out of such new websites as www.data.gov and a dashboard on major government IT projects. But these initiatives are best understood in the broader context of the Administration’s management agenda.

In the FY 2010 Analytical Perspectives volume, the new President outlines a management and performance agenda. That agenda is organized around the following themes:

1. Putting performance first: Replacing the Bush era Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART) with a new performance improvement and analysis framework;

2. Ensuring responsible spending of Recovery Act Funds;

3. Transforming the federal workforce by reforming the current hiring process and hiring several hundred thousand civilian employees during the next four years;

4. Managing across sectors (e.g., private and nonprofit) and collaborating across levels of government;

5. Reforming federal contracting and acquisition; and,

6. Transparency, technology and participating democracy.

Stay tuned to future issues of Fed Scoop for more on these themes.

Alan P. Balutis
Director and Distinguished Fellow
Business Solutions Group, Cisco Systems Inc

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If We Can Put a Man on the Moon …

A Management Agenda for the Obama Administration