Expert answer:Grading the State – Comparative Analysis
Solved by verified expert:This assignment is designed for you to use your critical thinking skills analyzing and evaluating how different states address common governmental process and policy challenges. Utilize the Governing: Measuring Performance – The State Management Report Card for 2008 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. report from the Pew Charitable Trusts to conduct your critical analysis of the governing performance of three U.S. states.Open the Governing: Measuring Performance – The State Management Report Card for 2008 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. report from the Pew Center on the States. Choose three states to compare, in which you identify one state that received an overall A or A-, one state that received a B- or C+, and one state that received a D+ or D. Compare the following performance criteria for each state: money, people, infrastructure, and information. In your comparison, you must analyze what these state leaders do well and not so well in managing the money, people, infrastructure, and information in their states. Next, based on this analysis, create a list of recommended ‘best practices’ (programs, processes and policies) on how states can effectively and efficiently manage their money, people, infrastructure, and information.Use the following general outline as a guide to conduct your comparison:Introduction (half page): Overview: How does the Pew Report evaluate state governance performance?Which three states did you choose to contrast and compare and what was their overall grade?Thesis: Why are you comparing and contrasting these three states’ governing performance?Contrast and Comparison (one to two Pages): Using examples and details from the report and other scholarly sources compare three states, one high performer (A or A-), one middle performer (B- or C+), and one low performer (D+ or D) using the following four performance criteria: MoneyPeopleInfrastructureInformationRecommendations (one to two pages): Based on your comparative analysis and supporting details and examples from the report and other scholarly sources, recommend ‘best practices’ (processes and policies) that states can pursue to manage their money, people, infrastructure, and information.Explain why and how these best practices will enable states to effectively and efficiently manage these variables (money, people, infrastructure, and information). Use examples and details from the report and other scholarly sources.Conclusion (half page): Review your main points.Review your overall thesis.The paper must be six pages in length (not including cover page and reference page) and formatted according to APA style. Cite your resources in text and on the reference page.
gradingthestates2008pdf.pdf
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Measuring Performance
The State Management Report Card for 2008
Governing.com
March 2008
$4.50
A MANAGEMENT REPORT CARD
08
Grading
’
theStates
I
NFORMATION IS KING.
No single idea emerges more clearly
from year-long research done for the 2008
Government Performance Project. As always, this report focuses on four fundamental areas of government management: Information, People, Money and Infrastructure.
But this year, the elements that make up the information category—planning, goal-setting, measuring performance, disseminating data and evaluating progress—overlap with the other three
fields to a greater degree than ever before. Information elements, in short, are key to how a state
takes care of its infrastructure, plans for its financial future and deals with the dramatic changes affecting the state workforce.
Governors understand this. A growing number are now personally involved in improving the
way information is used to manage their states.
Ted Strickland, Ohio’s governor, began a “Turnaround Ohio” plan that includes flexible performance agreements with his agency heads.
Similarly, Maryland’s Governor Martin O’Malley
is building StateStat, a comprehensive means for
making decisions based on data, similar to his
CitiStat effort in Baltimore. He describes it as a
system “that actually sets goals and has the guts
to measure progress towards achieving those
goals. All of that with relentless follow-up.”
Of course, information alone doesn’t make a
well-managed state. With personnel turnover
rates on the rise and retirements looming, states
have to figure out ways to retain workers and
transfer accumulated knowledge to an ever-changing workforce. On the money front, structural balancing of budgets has been a real trick for states
that found themselves flush with cash last year,
only to see revenue streams wash away in the current declining economy. Infrastructure maintenance continues to be a bill that bedevils the
states. Even Minnesota, scene of last year’s deadly
bridge disaster, hasn’t quite come to terms with
what to do there. “We’re no different from other
states in the amount of maintenance we need to
do,” says one Minnesota state legislator. “But it
feels like nobody’s figured out how to find the
huge amounts of money necessary, without cutting back on more politically sensitive areas.”
All of this has led to a search for new solutions to old problems. The Massachusetts Department of Capital Asset Management, not
unlike many homeowners, has seen utility bills
grow. As a response, the agency arranged with
energy providers to reduce power usage on short
BY KATHERINE BARRETT & RICHARD GREENE
24 MARCH 2008 GOVERNING
LLOYD MILLER
THE MANDATE TO MEASURE
notice during peak-demand periods, in exchange for cash. “The more kilowatts you
shed,” says Deputy Commissioner Mark
Nelson, “the more you get paid.” There’s a
double benefit here. Not only does it save
dollars, it saves energy.
The following reports on the 50 states are
full of such innovations, as well as recommendations for ways in which states can
learn from each other. All of these were
gathered over the course of the past year, as
the GPP engaged in its fourth effort to evaluate all 50 states’ managerial capacity.
The approach this year was similar to the
one we used in past efforts: Teams of journalists and academics do the heavy lifting of
research and analysis. Once again, the print
version of the GPP that runs exclusively in
Governing is augmented by online information at pewcenteronthestates.org/gpp.
That’s the place to go for more information
about the states, an in-depth explanation of
the grades, additional recommendations
we make and resources we suggest.
There have been some changes. This
year, for the first time, the GPP was created
under the auspices of the Pew Center on
the States, directed by Neal C. Johnson.
One of his goals for the GPP, he says, is “to
make sure that the grades are the beginning of the conversation—not the end.” As
such, a number of initiatives are currently
being planned to work with the states to
help them learn from one another and improve their management practices in years
to come.
We did something else a little bit differently. One staffer worked full-time for months
doing in-depth interviews with corrections departments. The idea was to use their experiences to help inform the broader management conclusions reached in the process.
“Corrections departments may not be entirely representative of a state’s management
expertise,” Johnson points out, “but they contributed enormously to our sense of the
states, particularly in the areas of human resources and information.”
It’s only natural that many will look to
the GPP exclusively for the grades. But it’s
important to understand that the purpose of
the grades is to focus attention on the sub-
stantive issues of state government management. Additionally, one of the underlying maxims of the GPP has long been that
it’s as important to see where things work
poorly as where they work well.
A few years ago, Bill Gates noted that
some schools had done away with grades
and were giving students as many chances
as they needed to get the right answer.
Gates wasn’t buying that. “Your school may
have done away with winners and losers,”
he said, “but life has not.”
Even so, we feel obliged to repeat, as we
have in each iteration of the GPP, the following critical caveat: Although the efforts
of many men and women were involved in
trying to get every grade—and every explanation of that grade—right, it’s inevitable
that there will be honest disagreement.
While these instances can be painful, the
work has continued with the sure knowledge that efforts that are totally risk-free
tend to accomplish nothing.
Information
Moving Targets
THE PEW CENTER ON THE STATES’
Government Performance Project
The Pew Center on the States (PCS)
identifies and advances policy solutions
to critical issues facing the states, in part
through the work of its Government
Performance Project. For almost a
decade, Pew, Governing magazine and a
group of academics have collaborated on
this project to assess the quality of management in state government. PCS has
provided the resources for both in-depth
reporting and academic research to
measure state performance in core areas.
PCS is an operating division of the Pew
Charitable Trusts.
The mission of the Government Performance Project is to improve service to
the public by strengthening government
policy and performance. The project systematically evaluates how well states
manage employees, budgets and finance, and information—as well as ensuring that roads, bridges and state
buildings are well planned and in good
repair. A focus on these critical areas
helps ensure that states’ policy decisions
26 MARCH 2008 GOVERNING
and practices actually deliver their intended outcomes. The information, in
turn, helps state policy makers understand the steps they can take and the policy changes they can make to strengthen
government performance.
Through research and analysis, such
as this 2008 State Management Report
Card, PCS provides continuing management assessments and tools to solve problems and improve performance. This
year, in addition to the information contained in these pages, the Project offers on
its Web site detailed briefing reports on
each state. These reports feature key recommendations to policy makers on how
to manage better, as well as links to best
practices in implementing those recommendations. The Project is exploring new
partnerships with policy makers and private-sector leaders to pursue innovative
solutions in support of these shared goals.
For more information visit
pewcenteronthestates.org/gpp.
Just a few years ago, states
would boast about their latest, cutting-edge piece of
technology.
Not anymore. Today, it’s
not the tools. It’s results.
One of those is transparency. In an era
when “trust in government” is at low ebb,
states are working to open up communications with their constituents. Last year in
Colorado, the offices of the governor, state
treasurer and controller published a transparent report on state revenues and expenditures. It gave everyone, and particularly individual taxpayers, a better understanding of
the budget. “That’s important, in the same
way it’s important for investors in a company
to know how the company is performing,”
says Cary Kennedy, the state treasurer. “We
need to understand how the state is performing without the spin.”
In Washington State, Governor Christine Gregoire held a series of town hall
meetings on the budget to communicate results to citizens and follow up on the budgetary priorities she had previously established with much citizen input. “We want
to give concrete information about whether
a difference has been made or hasn’t,” Gregoire says. “We have struggled with this—
50-STATE
AVERAGE
GRADE
-B-
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
Information
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
A
A-
B+
B
cess or failures of programs. Even Florida’s
much-praised Office of Program Policy
Analysis and Government Accountability
had just gotten started. Now, departments
that take a close look at how well things are
working are present in four out of five
states. The value of such efforts is clear. In
Montana, to take one small example, auditors pinpointed security weaknesses by
buying back discarded state computers to
see what data remained on the hard drives.
Twelve of 18 drives still had retrievable information on them.
The push to produce results-oriented information, rather than data on the amount of
work done, has continued to evolve. Pennsylvania, a state that once argued that outcome-based information was unnecessary, is
now among those moving to measure results.
One of the biggest obstacles to progress
in managing for performance is the disconnect between the production of performance information and its use in the
budgeting process, particularly by legislators. Michigan and Georgia, for example,
produce a great deal of excellent performance information, but officials report that
the data seem more a burden than a tool to
many legislators. In Alaska, says Jo Ellen
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
course, but still a far cry from the ability to
share information in a database. New
Hampshire has such weak data-sharing systems that it doesn’t know how much it
spends each month—kind of like an average
Joe who’s lost his checkbook. At the opposite
end of the spectrum, there’s Wyoming. Its
transportation department has linked geographic information systems to financial
systems and now knows with exact specificity how money is being spent, down to the
cost of the salt used between each mile
marker on the state’s snowy roads.
It’s not always a question of sharing
data. Often, it’s a matter of creating useful
information—particularly about performance—from scratch. On that front, there’s
been a lot of progress.
For starters, strategic planning has become a routine, accepted part of governing.
It is the norm for states to have either strategic plans or collections of agency plans.
This was true in only half of the states in
1999. In 2008, just nine states were weak
in both statewide and agency planning.
Performance auditing and evaluation
also are pervasive. A decade ago, it was rare
for a state to have an agency or department responsible for delving into the suc-
D
how do you translate this in a way that really
resonates with the taxpayer?”
States also are making it significantly
easier for citizens to do business with agencies online. The ability to do transactions on
state Web sites is no longer new. The focus
is now on preserving the sanity of the people who try to use them. The GPP evaluation found that the majority of states are
doing a measurably better job with Web site
transactions than was the case three years
ago. No state actually lost ground.
Alabama, for example, has its Camellia
system, which supports the state’s social
services. It’s a one-stop shop where citizens
go and fill in the answers to 25 questions.
The answers then are used to find which of
29 state services they are eligible for.
In Michigan, business leaders have benefited from upgrades to, and a rethinking of,
the online process for getting permits and
forms. For an air-quality permit, for instance,
it took up to six months—18 months in some
cases. With the new system, that permit
process is now down to a matter of days.
When all is said and done, a state’s skill
with information is found at the intersection of three distinct operations: the willingness to share data, the capacity to generate good information, and the ability to
get those who should use the data to do so.
Sharing data is the easiest of the three.
But, while the managerial spirit to share is
strong, the technological flesh can be weak.
In Maryland’s Division of Corrections, for example, an “archaic and obsolete” data system
hampers the ability to pull together and publish data for use in performance reporting.
This is a crucial piece of the StateStat effort,
since the corrections department is the
repository for most law enforcement information. Right now, police, courts, parole
and other public-safety agencies don’t have
the ability to share data with each other.
Shannon Avery, executive director for the department’s planning and policy office, says a
lack of data and an inability to generate reports easily is a constant frustration for the
StateStat team. Upgrading this system is a
top priority of the governor, Avery says, noting that there had been some legal problems
but that the project is now back on track
with a slightly longer timeline.
Maryland is far from alone in paying a
price for the inability to share data digitally.
Some state employees in Rhode Island are
still operating with typewriters—electric, of
GOVERNING MARCH 2008 27
D
D+
CC
C+
BB
B+
AA
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
A
A-
B+
B
not making it past the first year or so. Arizona loses 42 percent of new employees
during the probationary period; Virginia
and South Carolina, 32 percent.
So, what are states doing to hang on to
new, young hires, many of whom march
out the door and into the private sector?
Some solutions are emerging. Georgia
used to line up its compensation and benefit package with other states. Now, it’s focusing on the private sector instead and
shifting its compensation and benefit package accordingly. “We’re working against
the mentality of, ‘You work for us for 30
years and then you get this great pension
and retiree medical,’” says Steve Stevenson,
commissioner of the merit system of the
personnel administration. “That’s not really
what the emerging workforce is looking for.
They’re looking for bigger base pay and
pay for performance.”
Academics who have studied young
workers pinpoint another issue: a desire for
more responsibility and the ability to make
a real difference in a job. With appropriate
employee training, state agencies could fill
middle-management positions with
younger workers eager for challenges.
That’s the idea behind New York’s Tech-
B-
C+
C
D
D+
CC
C+
BB
B+
AA
28 MARCH 2008 GOVERNING
C-
Vendors who sell to Wisconsin could be forgiven for thinking the state doesn’t have
enough money to pay its bills.
But the delays they experience
in getting paid have nothing to do with the
state’s cash flow. Wisconsin simply doesn’t
have enough staff to process the bills.
Personnel shortages are a problem, not
just in Wisconsin but in a majority of states.
In the past few years, much attention has
been focused on the imminent retirement of
huge waves of older state employees. That
hasn’t happened yet—so far, many of those
eligible to retire have elected to stay on the
job. Nonetheless, in states such as Georgia,
Indiana and Louisiana, total turnover last
year ranged between 18 and 23 percent.
Some state officials argue that high
turnover is now a fact of life that states should
plan for. Anticipation of high turnover
“should get rolled into agency workforce
plans,” says James Honchar, deputy secretary for human resources in Pennsylvania’s
revenue department. “But managers are reluctant to believe turnover is the way it is.”
50-STATE
AVERAGE
GRADE
D+
D
Building a Base
-C+
B
And yet, many men and women are
heading for the doors. There are lots of reasons for the phenomenon. Low compensation, untrained supervisors and lack of
recognition are among the issues.
But turnover is a significant expense for
states. It results in more use of costly overtime, less efficient delivery of services and an
absolute loss of the dollars spent on hiring
and training. “It costs money every time you
have to go out and hire, do psych evaluations
and background evaluations,” says Nancy
Swecker, director of administration for West
Virginia’s corrections department. The department calculates the price tag at $20,000
for each new corrections officer.
The pain of turnover is exacerbated by a
relatively new trend that is cutting across
many states: losing new employees while
they’re in their probationary period—generally between the six- and 18-month mark. In
2004, 11.6 percent of new hires quit during
this period. In 2007, that number zipped up
to 13.2 percent. During the same time period,
the percentage of new hires that were fired
stayed flat at a little over 8 percent.
The numbers in the worst-hit states are
alarming. Mississippi leads the list with
nearly one out of every two new employees
B+
People
A-
People
A
Hanrahan, a management analyst with the
state’s Office of Management and Budget,
“Our performance measures are on the
Web but not linked to one another nor to the
budget dollars.” And in Alabama, a state
whose agencies have advanced dramatically
in their generation of results information,
one corrections official reports bleakly, “I am
afraid the legislators don’t care too much
about that information.”
Nobody expects a legislative turnaround
to happen soon or without snags. But it will
come. Consider this: Thirty years ago, many
state government experts wondered
whether the states would ever accept uniform accounting for their books—the body
of standards now known as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
When New York began to experiment with
this newfangled bookkeeping, it uncovered
a $2 billion deficit. “The books were so
loose and kept in such an undisciplined
manner,” said Ned Regan, who was New
York’s comptroller at the time, “that governors and legislators could not be held responsible for their actions.”
Today, all states comply with GAAP.
nology Academy, which was established to
deal with shortages of higher-level IT professionals. It tries to attract rising stars and
then fast-tracks them for management.
Leadership training can take many simpler forms as well, such as job shadowing,
which allows people to work closely with
someone one level up. It also may include
mentoring or having trainees attend outside conferences, receive education
stipends and even design and implement a
real-world project.
Technological tools can be useful for
training in departments where staff is
placed in rural areas or spread throughout
a large state. A number of states are using
e-training and videoconferencing to make
training available, effective and efficient—
despite geography.
Georgia is using these technologies for
at least 10,000 of its customer-service employees, teaching them how to be friendly
and helpful, as well as how to identify ways
to speed up processes. The curriculum includes cameos by an unexpected duo: comedian Jeff Foxworthy and Governor
Sonny Perdue. The 20-hour module of
video-workbook sessions doesn’t cost
agencies very much, and the state is now
measuring the results …
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