The increasing chorus of calls for more accountability reaches beyond recent demands for firing officials at the IRS, VA, and GSA for various perceived misdeeds. Just what is accountability, and how can it be seen as a constructive, instead of a punitive, element of public management?[read more]

Health insurance exchanges have been the source of much debate, but largely among governors and statehouses trying to figure out how they plan to implement one. In practice, these exchanges are supposed to work like Orbitz but for health insurance. Not only will states have their own public exchange, private insurers are also setting up health exchanges.[read more]

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I hope that at some point academics will realise that 'altmetrics' are simply no more than metrics - ones that are already becoming business-as-usual in commercial and public sector spheres - and focus more on involving people in and sharing their research than on the marketing buzz.[read more]

As governments inevitably learn more about the importance of Big Data they may find that decisions made in the past - even those made by past governments or long retired bureaucrats - that were originally thought to be relatively straight forward may actually have had a number of unanticipated consequences.[read more]

Mike found that three police forces had the highest rate of increase in Facebook “likes” compared to the previous month: Hampshire, Greater Manchester and Strathclyde. I looked at the Facebook pages for these three forces and identified the five most popular posts from each in the month under review.[read more]

Harvard University has announced its Top 25 programs in this year’s Innovations in American Government Award competition. These government initiatives represent the dedicated efforts of city, state, federal, and tribal governments and address a host of policy issues including crime prevention, economic development, environmental and community revitalization, employment, education, and health care.[read more]