Governing for Outcomes
“If information was used to make policy changes, they came about as a result of yearly reviews. Implementation took months, or even years. By the time a contemplated change was in place, the conditions that prompted the shift might no longer be relevant” (Martin O’Malley, after becoming Mayor of Baltimore).
Budgeting for Outcomes (BFO) is a vital process for linking targeted government expenditures to desired annual outcomes. But if a mayor is elected to four-year terms, that means there are only four dedicated opportunities to review whether budget and performance goals are being met. Furthermore, in the history of BFO under Mayor Ray Nagin, the process has suffered from a lack of meaningful goals or metrics.
Mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu has experience with a successful BFO process as Louisiana’s Lieutenant Governor, and has vowed to create a more robust implementation in New Orleans.
As O’Malley discovered, the BFO process still requires regular weekly or bi-weekly reviews to keep expenditures and initiatives on track over the course of months. That was the great innovation introduced by stat-driven accountability processes, beginning with the NYPD ComStat process (adopted by the NOPD under Superintendent Pennington), and expanded to a citywide process by Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley.
This might simply be coined, “Governing for Outcomes,” to indicate the ongoing leadership that’s required to marshal the bureaucratic ship of government to achieve excellence in the pursuit of goals that the public views as high priorities.
Incidentally, O’Malley was recently recognized by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers for his innovation in the use of data and technology to drive the CitiStat performance management process.
