New IBM Report on Six Trends Improving Federal Government Performance

New IBM Report on Six Trends Improving Federal Government Performance

The IBM (NYSE: IBM) Center for The Business of Government today released a report on “Six Trends Transforming Government.” Based on more than eight years of research and 150 reports that have come out of the Center since 1998, the report distills six trends that have the potential to transform government to become more results-oriented, performance-based, customer focused, and collaborative in nature.

The report’s three authors, Jonathan Breul, senior fellow for the Center, along with co-authors Mark Abramson, executive director of the Center and John Kamensky, senior fellow for the Center, point to the “power of the unexpected” as a key lesson of the 21st Century. “Over the past several years we have learned that we need to be better prepared for unanticipated events. In response to this we need to increase focus on creating new partnerships and networks,” they write in “Six Trends.”

Donald Kettl, Stanley I. Sheer Endowed Term Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, also observes how government changes are being driven by a series of new imperatives in the United States. “These imperatives,” he writes, “emerge from America’s struggle to deal with deep challenges facing the nation. At the core is a fundamental problem: The current conduct of American government is a poor match for the problems it must solve.”

Fortunately, there is a set of trends IBM executives have observed that seems to be responding to these imperatives and is leading to improved government performance. These trends make it more likely that government will be able to successfully respond to the ever-increasing and complex challenges it faces today and will continue to face in the future.

Read the complete Press Release