THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT From the Publisher This is certainly the most ambitious issue of Governing we have published in the nearly dozen years we’ve been in business. This first installment of the Government Performance Project is the culmination of a two-year effort to measure how well all 50 states are performing in five key management areas. It is designed to motivate, not to embarrass, to be used as a baseline for measuring improvement, not yet another weapon to attack political opponents. It is a list of ratings, not rankings. We decided early on to avoid trying to figure out which state ranked 15th or 23rd or 44th, because the distinctions from one to the other can be too fine. If there are going to be rankings, let others concoct them. What we have produced is a set of snapshot grades of how states are managing their finances, their employees, their information technologies and their infrastructure, and how well they are managing for results. The project was undertaken in collaboration with the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, ranked by the annual U.S. News & World Report survey as the best public administration school in the country. The effort is being funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Philadelphia-based philanthropy that has made the improved performance of government one of its priorities. While Pew provided the funding and general direction for this ambitious effort, the foundation never made any attempt to influence the outcome. Maxwell provided—through expertise, hard work, and some trial and error—a methodology for examining public performance in each of the management areas. Governing provided the journalism. Our two project editors—the husband-wife team of Richard Greene and Katherine Barrett—participated in every phase of the project, but their greatest contribution came in the form of old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting. Advisory teams of experts in the five management areas rated, assembled by Maxwell, helped shape a survey, which was first tested in four states and then sent to all of them. The single published page devoted to each state in this issue represents only a tiny fraction of what was gathered in the voluminous surveys filled out by every state except one (California was the lone holdout, although one state agency filled out its section and sent it in anyway), as well as nearly 1,000 interviews. From the project’s conception to the day this issue ran off the presses, it has been more than two years. Next year, we will be back with a report concentrating on the largest cities. Planning is now underway for further reports, on the counties and the states again. There is a federal dimension to this program as well. This month, Government Executive magazine is publishing a similar performance report on 15 federal agencies. Our thanks to Paul Light, our program officer at Pew, for his vision; to Pat Ingraham, the project director at Maxwell, and Assistant Professor Phil Joyce for their wisdom, patience and focus; to Barrett and Greene for their enthusiasm, drive and talent; and finally to those of you who suffered through the survey work and incessant phone calls. We hope the final result of this effort will be a meaningful contribution to improving public management in the states and localities. That is the purpose. Peter A. Harkness Main introduction page | Governing home page Copyright © 1999, Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Governing and City & State are registered trademarks of Congressional Quarterly, Inc.