New government report card coming in late 2007

A group of academics, private entrepreneurs and government officials are developing a new report card for government, to measure factors such as the ability of the federal workforce, the strength of its leaders and the level of respect it garners from the public.

Funded and initiated by the Partnership for Public Service, a Washington nonprofit organization, the annual State of the Public Service report card first will be released at the end of 2007.

In late June, the group -- including Patricia Bradshaw, deputy undersecretary of Defense for civilian personnel policy; Chad Bungard, deputy staff director for the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization; John Donahue, a Harvard public policy professor; Steven Kerr, chief learning officer of Goldman Sachs; and David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office -- developed six specific areas in which to grade the government.

The categories are: the workforce's talent, the workforce's level of engagement, leadership, public support, agency performance in delivering services and the effectiveness of government systems.

Just how the group will measure success in these areas remains up for debate. The Partnership for Public Service and U.S. News and World Report already release a biannual "Best Places to Work" in government ranking, but that is only based on employee satisfaction. To measure leadership, for example, the new report card might examine employee turnover, said Bob Lavigna, vice president for research at the partnership.

"This is really a groundbreaking project," Lavigna said. "Because of that, we're going to be doing a lot of work over the next several months to identify indicators that make sense -- indicators we have data for or can develop data for."

Robert Tobias, a professor of public management at American University and group member, said it's a challenging project that's worth the effort.

"That's what we'll be struggling with: How do you define and measure effective measures?" Tobias said. "Every time when I open [my] course, the day before I go to Amazon and [search for] the number of books with 'leadership' in the title. It's up to 80,000 now. So there are a lot of ways of measuring effective leadership."

The Partnership for Public Service, which emphasized its collaboration with the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget on this project, hopes to use the report card in part to pressure the next presidential administration to keep human capital in government on its priority list.

"In '09, there is going to be a new administration," Lavigna said. "We hope to make sure that metrics continue to be an important part of how we evaluate and manage the federal government. We hope to work with the new administration as we have with the current administration."

Agencies will need to be on board in order for the report card to make an impact.

"Indicators in and of themselves are interesting," Lavigna said, "but unless it drives change, they are not going to be fully effective."