From the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network

U.S. state governments are often referred to as laboratories of democracy. Within the federal framework, states have a great degree of flexibility in adopting different policy and management initiatives, which creates space for experimentation and innovation; however, the overall picture suggests more uniformity than innovation. Within a short period of time, states adopted very similar models of reform that created new procedures of agency performance reporting. As a result, there is now more performance data than ever before. But this does not mean the data are being used. While there was strong political support to adopt performance management reforms, elected officials proved less committed to pursuing the more significant changes needed for successful implementation. This note reviews factors that can make performance management more successful, using examples from states that continued forward and took the next steps.