Innovation

So, what happens next? The next president will face a very different set of management challenges from the ones that confronted the current president when he took office. Can we begin to predict and start preparing to respond to these challenges? That is the task that Dr. Kettl took on, through our encouragement, using his insightful essay in Part I of this report to promote discussion during a two-day forum that the IBM Center for The Business of Government convened this past summer.

Global Movement Management (GMM) is a comprehensive and achievable framework for securing the key flows - people, goods, conveyances, money, and information - in the global economy against disruptive threats and building resiliency into the system. This framework can help overcome the key impediments to efforts to promote security in the global movement system, and motivate key stakeholders to work together to integrate security and resilience into the system.

This report describes the tenure of Sean O’Keefe as administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The report describes how O’Keefe faced three difficult challenges during his three years at NASA. His first challenge was to solve the space station’s financial mess. His second challenge was to manage the aftermath of the Columbia shuttle disaster. His third challenge was to steward the President’s 2004 vision for the further exploration of space.

This report describes how the federal grant system has come under increased stress in recent years. In an effort to modernize the grant system, the report analyzes three recent reform initiatives in the area of grant management: performance partnerships, Grants.gov., and extensive waiver authority. The report explores the potential of each to mitigate some of the challenges facing grants management and design. The report concludes with a series of recommendations to improve federal grants management. Financial Management

This report contends that as social policy continues to evolve, governments now may need to look beyond the traditional structures of social security and taxation. Today, there are varying levels of interaction between those organizations in European nations.

This report examines the efforts by three federal organizations--the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Transportation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration--to change the behavior of those within the organization to move in greater concert toward the achievement of organizational goals. The three initiatives--One VA, ONE DOT, and One NASA--were each unique and faced distinct challenges. The report examines what it means for a federal organization to become "one," the hurdles each agency faced, and which strategies appear to work well.

This report presents examples of how government agencies are succeeding at selling both everyday items and high-end goods via online auctions. It provides a comprehensive review of online auction sales by discussing the theory and practice of auctions. Five case studies of how online auctioning is now being employed are presented: eBay and the Public Sector; the Department of Defense and Liquidity Services, Inc.; Bid4Assets--Taking Tax Sales off the Courthouse Steps; Property Bureau--Transforming the Police Auction; and the Demolition of Three Rivers Stadium.

This report examines the experiences of five federal agencies which are currently running focused initiatives to apply the tools, principles and perspectives of organizational learning. As a program assessment, this study addresses the successes and failures of organizational learning based on these five case studies, and presents these findings to the community at-large. Human Capital Management

To meet the need for highly skilled professionals and administrators whose talents are in great demand in the public and private sectors, Congress has given special authority to certain federal agencies to hire such people under streamlined procedures and at salaries that are very high by federal standards. This report inventories and describes the various applications of these authorities in different agencies. The study analyzes the uses to which these authorities have been put and assesses their value to the agencies.

This report examines the effects of Michigan's newly adopted brownfield legislation that promotes the redevelopment of contaminated industrial sites in urban centers. The study measures the success of Michigan’s innovative brownfield program, and identifies best practices among municipalities conducting redevelopment efforts. The results provide insight on environmental policy reform to Congress, the EPA, and other state and local governments considering similar policy reforms.green