Our "entrepreneurial journalism award" goes to a whole slew of Virginia newspapers, including the Daily Press, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Virginian-Pilot and seventeen others.
   Journalists at those papers set about finding out how easy it is to get government documents that are legally available to the public. So they went out to 134 local governments to get the stuff. They said they were just interested citizens and didn't identify themselves as having anything to do with a newspaper. (Some may think that's journalistically unsound, but we applaud this kind of approach for this type of investigation.)
   The results were troubling. KEEP READING

We're sick of trying to convince people how much management matters. And we'll bet a lot of you are too. But if the topic comes up again, we've got the killer anecdote for you -- the one that should end the conversation pretty quickly.
   First a few facts. Hospital-acquired infections cost an estimated $28 billion annually and are responsible for more than 50,000 deaths. Addressing this problem could conceivably be one of the biggest targets in medicine's ongoing struggle to save lives and money simultaneously. KEEP READING

"The police auditor is a new form of citizen oversight of the police in the United States," writes Professor Samuel Walker of the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He makes a persuasive case, pointing to police auditors in Los Angeles County and Philadelphia.
   Ironically, in Walker's own backyard, Omaha officials decided to fire the city's public safety auditor, Tristan Bonn. According to the Omaha World-Herald, she was fired "shortly after she released a report critical of traffic stops made by police officers. [Mayor Mike] Fahey said Bonn released the report without his approval and conducted herself unprofessionally." KEEP READING

Here's a public official to watch: Alex Sink, the newly elected chief financial officer of Florida. She's got a lot on her plate, including helping to figure out what to do about the state's contracting practices.
   Based on the little we've seen so far, our money is on her to do a fine job. KEEP READING

The old joke is that you can make loads of money as a consultant by telling centralized organizations to decentralize and by telling decentralized organizations to centralize.
   But it seems pretty clear that however the pile of power is divided, there's a lot to be gained in centralizing information, if nothing else. As Ronald Reagan said, "Trust, but verify." KEEP READING

Congratulations to Montana for getting its act together in replacing a failed tax computer system, called POINTS, with one that actually works. The new one is dubbed IRIS.
   The old system cost the state about $39 million over the years. Moving to the new one cost another $27 million. Though Montana has been hobbled with the old technology for too long, at least it's now on the right path.
   Which leaves this question: Aren't there good ways to figure out when a state or city is pouring good money after bad on an IT system?
KEEP READING

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MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS is back. Some of America's top experts -- including some new contributors -- share their perspectives on getting the most out of government. The online-only column, a collaboration between Governing.com and Harvard University's Government Innovators Network, is updated every Wednesday. Today's topic: learning from the procurement mistakes of the feds.

A series of Governing articles, researched and written with the financial support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, examines performance measurement and management with a special emphasis on citizen involvement. Click here

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