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Government Leader home > March 2005 issue
March 2005; Vol. 1 No. 1
PRACTICAL MATTERS: The debut of Government Leader: A new dialogue
By Wyatt Kash
A dozen years ago this month—on
March 24 to be exact—the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee
recommended passing a bellwether
reform act aimed at raising
performance standards for
federal managers.
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| | Wyatt Kash, editorial director | |
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The reform effort emerged at a time when
opinion polls showed Americans believed as
much as 48 cents out of every federal tax dollar
was wasted and when pressure to improve
efficiency and tighten accountability
proved enormous.
But what made the Government Performance
and Results Act of 1993 distinct was
its emphasis. Rather than legislating inward-
focused remedies and requiring
another round of controls,
lawmakers recommended
looking outward, engaging
agencies to develop citizen-
centric strategies, establish
clear outcomes and
measure results.
If the premise seemed
right, the promise proved
hard to fulfill. A lack of serious commitment
from top government leaders, inadequate
systems and a thicket of issues beyond most
managers’ control converged, say many government
veterans, to forestall achieving the
vision of “performance management.”
Yet today, signs of progress toward that
vision can’t be ignored. In spite of the odds and
the obstacles, rank-and-file leaders within government
are achieving remarkable results,
using a combination of management disciplines
and a special brand of creativity that
flourishes within a world of constraints.
Perhaps the most telling sign of how far
things have come is the extent to which payfor-
performance initiatives are taking hold.
Those initiatives, barely imaginable a decade
ago, are causing tremors beneath the foundation
of government pay scales—and by extension,
decades of entrenched work behaviors
those pay scales inevitably reinforce.
The pay-for-performance story, beginning
on Page 24, is just one of the articles detailing
how government leaders are making
practical progress in the art of government
management in this—the inaugural—issue
of Government Leader.
Practical progress is what Government
Leader is all about.
As a new publication from the Washington
Post Co. subsidiary, PostNewsweek Tech Media,
which has been covering the world of government
business and technology systems for the
past two decades, we know there is no shortage
of publications available to government decision
makers. What promises to make Government
Leader a valuable read is our emphasis.
Rather than adding yet another voice to
the debate on policies or weighing in on the
scorecards of politics, we intend to focus on
how public workers are getting
extraordinary things
done in government.
We believe there is value
in exploring how everyday
leaders—charged with managing
the government’s
acquisition programs, its
finances, its technology initiatives
and its millions of workers—are facing
tough issues, overcoming challenges
and improving operations inside the world’s
largest enterprise.
It’s also our hope that through this exploration,
we can bring a fresh dialogue to the
broader subject of institutional leadership
and inspire the notion that great management
practices can be found and nurtured as
readily in government as they can in business.
It promises to be a lively and compelling
dialogue—one we hope you, our readers, will
find enriching and helpful in your endeavors
to lead in the service of government.
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