How can different levels of government and a variety of public agencies work together effectively? That's a challenge with implications for crime, health, and a host of other governmental activities.

In their column, Jonathan Breul and John Kamensky review an in-depth study of a complicated collaborative effort in traffic reduction from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The lessons they share will help practitioners navigate the mine-field of government-by-network.

In my article below, I look at the recent decision by Indiana to cancel a major contract with IBM.  The problem wasn't the shift from public to private, but rather a poorly executed effort to introduce significant technology enhancements.  The Indiana welfare system was dysfunctional prior to the outsourcing, and although the effort didn't yield the hoped-for results, the attempt to make bold improvements should be commended.

William D. Eggers and our own John O'Leary have just come out with a new book looking at how government handles large undertakings. "If We Can Put a Man on the Moon..." is a fascinating look at the journey from Idea to Results.  Their column argues that our biggest challenge today isn't the economy, or health care, or Afghanistan.  Rather, job number one should be fixing the process by which government tackles these big challenges.

Michigan is home to the nation's highest unemployment, and faces a gaping $2.8 billion budget hole.  Northwood University's Keith Pretty and Timothy Nash offer five policy reforms for changing the way Michigan operates, paving the way for better, faster, cheaper government in the Great Lakes State.

In Atlanta and Houston, mayoral races failed to produce a candidate with a majority, meaning both cities will have to conduct costly "runoff" elections between the top two finishers.

In his column, John O'Leary explores the costs of elections and explores ways to trim costs without diminishing voter input.

Public employee pensions can be huge budget busters, as a previous article explored.  In today's column, Bill Eggers explores ways to dig out from the pension mess.  There is no magic bullet, but if we don't start dealing with this issue the problem could spiral out of control.

In LA, the city has just signed a contract with Google to handle email for 30,000 city employees, a $7.25 million deal that is the largest of its kind. Across the country, Boston's Mayor Menino is under fire after an aide allegedly innappropriately deleted some emails.

The outsourcing of emails presents a curious question: Would an outsourcing enhance or diminish transparency? And is more transparent here a good thing, or is there a chilling effect on communication if public employees think every email will be in the paper some day?

If the data is buried in a computer, it doesn't do much good. Only when data is "mined" can actionable information emerge.

In their article, John Kamensky and Jonathan Breul share how one city of 600,000 residents learned that serving just 20 citizen cost one city department about $9 million a year. They also tell managers how to make the most of data buried inside of their computers.

The best public administration occurs when the public sector takes direction from political leaders, but doesn't allow politics to stand in the way of performance.  Steve Goldsmith's article makes the case that when it comes to the decision on whether or not to outsource or insource a government service, the only thing that should matter is the facts.
 
Ideology shouldn't drive operational decisions--or should it?  Your comments are welcome.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick recently announced plans to lay off up to 2,000 state workers, as the Bay State joins the growing list of states in deep financial distress.  Despite federal support through the stimulus bills, the state has a big hole in its budget.
 
Steve Poftak of the Pioneer Institute offers his views on some reforms that could help Massachusetts operate better, faster, cheaper. Your comments are welcome.

All public managers are aware of the Washington Monument ploy—where the agency faced with a deficit threatens to close an iconic or critical public activity for purposes of facing down the budget cutters.  Yet the less celebrated successes—the hard daily work of thinning staffs, finding better ways to provide services, adopting new technologies - is now occurring weekly in states.  This series (AZ, MN, MA) is a terrific way to highlight and create a better market place for those ideas.

Like many states, the North Star State is facing tough times.  The state's Department of Management and Budget says spending has been reduced in real terms by 7.6 percent, or $2.59 billion, in the current budget. But the state is still facing a looming multi-billion dollar deficit.

The Minnesota Free Market Institute offers some strong medicine for dealing with the imbalance, including a rethinking of aid to local governments. Not everyone will agree with their ideas, but it is clear that more changes will likely be needed.

A few years ago Harvard Kennedy School recognized the Department of Justice Global HTML project that simply by defining data protocols dramatically improved the ability of unrelated public agencies to share data.  In fact, through such conventions the ease of sharing data is so greatly enhanced that agencies have few excuses in defending proprietary approaches to their information.

In his column below, Zach Tumin reports on efforts by the National Information Exchange Model to broaden the domain of cross-boundary information sharing.  I invite you to share your data-sharing experiences with a comment in our blog.

Like many states, the Grand Canyon state is facing some tough choices.  An article below from the Goldwater Institute offers their ideas for some reforms that could make Arizona state government better, faster, and cheaper.
 
Not everyone will agree with the Goldwater Institute's suggestions, but as a state-level think tank they are close to the action, and their ideas are worth review. In these difficult times, alternatives to business as usual have to be considered.
 
Share your thoughts with us.

Reduced hours for public employees as a money-saving tool is all the rage. But is it effective?

We recently ran an article on Atlanta's experiment with a 4-day work week, and King's County Washington and Chicago are cutting down on work days as well. Rhode Island's attempt at cutbacks were stopped by a judge. Below, we have a column on Utah's 4-day work week.

Share your thoughts on the furlough trend in a comment.