Overview | About the Series | Event Dates & Topics | 2010-11 Sessions
Reducing Cost and Increasing Operational Efficiency: Techniques Used by Federal Agencies to Improve Effectiveness
October 28, 2010
For most government agencies, budgets remain tight even as their mandates continue to grow. As a result, many administrators are looking for innovative ways to perform all of the critically important financial functions, but for far less than before.
The panelists and speakers for this Dialogue included some of government's leading management and financial officers, who discussed how they're using people, process and technology to reduce costs and improve their organization's effectiveness. This session provided attendees the opportunity to share ideas, debate and explore the issues at hand.
Topics included:
- The challenge of improving government financial management systems
- Effective implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act
- Performance Management Reporting
- Coping with budget cuts and greater responsibility
Moderator
S. Anthony McCann
Georgetown University
Former Staff Director, House Appropriations Subcommittee, U.S. House of Representatives
Former CFO and CIO, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Former Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Panelists
Sheila Conley
Deputy Assistant Secretary and Deputy Chief Financial Officer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Eric Fanning
Deputy Under Secretary and Deputy Chief Management Officer, U.S. Department of the Navy
Patrick Kennedy
Under Secretary for Management, U.S. Department of State
T. Michael Kerr
Assistant Secretary, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management, U.S. Department of Labor
Maya MacGuineas
President, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, New America Foundation
Location
National Press Club - First Amendment Lounge
5:30 - 8:00 p.m.
Podcast 1 – Patrick Kennedy, under secretary for management at the U.S. Department of State, speaks about the effect that the 5 percent budget cut the administration proposed for all federal organizations last fall might have on the State Department.
Listen to the audio podcast | Read the transcript
Podcast 2 – Michael Kerr, assistant secretary for administration and management at the U.S. Labor Department, talks about how his organization has embraced the concept of “performance management.”
Listen to the audio podcast | Read the transcript
Podcast 3 – Eric Fanning, deputy under secretary for the U.S. Department of the Navy, discusses how Defense Secretary Robert Gates is challenging the military to aggressively shrink, and rethink, some of its core missions.
Listen to the audio podcast | Read the transcript
Turning Insights into Action: How Agencies Are Using Analytics to Improve Service
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Unlike corporations, federal agencies lack a profit-and-loss statement to measure performance. Instead, government is measured on outcomes. But historically, agencies have either lacked the tools—or been slow to adopt those that did exist—to predict the cost and benefits of proposed initiatives, such as whether a new EPA enforcement strategy would reduce pollution. Today there is a broad array of analytical tools designed to help agencies do everything from cutting costs to detecting fraud, improving hiring practices and even making educated assumptions about the impact of proposed initiatives. Since 2008 the U.S. Department of Defense has used software to inspect financial transactions, and says this practice helped it identify more than $300 million in potential improper payments within the first year alone.
To be sure, a number of challenges remain before analytics is universally embraced. Like private corporations, many agencies must find ways to identify and scrub the “dirty” data within their systems. What’s more, the flood of data streaming through agencies is increasingly exponentially, and roughly 80 percent of all new data is unstructured content such as images, video and audio that by nature are harder to analyze. And the increasing availability—and analysis—of digital data raises a host of privacy issues as well.
Public service agencies are using analytics as a critical tool to transform information about now into insight about what’s next. This knowledge can have a profound effect on how government provides services—with broad implications for the public. Panelists engaged attendees in a conversation on analytics, what's working in their agencies and what challenges they face.
Moderator
Shelley Metzenbaum
Associate Director for Performance and Personnel Management
U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President
Panelists
Peter Grace
Director/Performance Improvement Officer, Office of Strategic Planning and Management
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Ron Raborg
Deputy Commissioner, Office of Quality Performance
U.S. Social Security Administration
J.D. Sicilia
Director for Strategic Management and Performance, Office of the Secretary of Defense
U.S. Department of Defense
James Smith
Senior Scientist, Threat Reduction Directorate; Group Leader, Risk Analysis & Decision Support
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
John Hardigree
Global Public Service Lead
Accenture Analytics
Location
National Press Club – Holeman Lounge
5:30 - 8:00 p.m.
Podcast 1 – Using Analytics to Set Measurable Goals and Improve Outcomes
Shelley Metzenbaum, associate director for performance and personnel management at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, discusses how the use of analytics is helping federal organizations to spot problems early—and equally important, to identify solutions that aren't always obvious.
Listen to the audio podcast | Read the transcript
Podcast 2 – Prioritization and Problem Identification
Peter Grace, director of strategic planning and management at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, talks about how he uses the analytics produced by HUDStat – a dashboard that collects measurable results on 22 program goals – to identify problems at HUD.
Listen to the audio podcast | Read the transcript
Podcast 3 – Using Data to Drive Strategy
J.D. Sicilia, director for strategic management and performance at the U.S. Department of Defense, discusses how the Pentagon is using analytics to identify best practices and problems alike.
Listen to the audio podcast | Read the transcript
Podcast 4 – Improving Business Processes through Analytics
Ron Raborg, deputy commissioner for the U.S. Social Security Administration discusses how his organization uses analytics to streamline the process of hearing—and resolving—disability claims. Thanks to analytics, the Social Security Administration has reduced its backlog of unresolved claims.
Listen to the audio podcast | Read the transcript
Podcast 5 – Assisting the Policymaker to Make a Decision
James Smith, a senior scientist and group leader for risk analysis and decision support at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, talks about how he uses analytics to help policymakers assess the different possibilities and risks before they make a decision.
Listen to the audio podcast | Read the transcript
Podcast 6 – A Consortium Approach to Analytics
John Hardigree, Global Public Service lead for Accenture Analytics, discusses how Accenture is using analytics to help a consortium of cities address financial and service-oriented challenges.
Listen to the audio podcast | Read the transcript
Podcast 7 – Q&A Response: “How has your use of analytics, or do you anticipate your use of analytics, will help your agency in dealing with Congress, like the Appropriations Committee?”
Ron Raborg, deputy commissioner of the U.S. Social Security Administration, and Peter Grace, director of strategic planning and management for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, talk about their use of analytics to spot—and then respond to—demographic shifts around the country.
Listen to the audio podcast | Read the transcript
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