A Brief History of Government Reform – John Kamensky

The Government Mechanic

John Kamensky is the featured guest in Season 2, Episode 2 where he describes government reform efforts over the last 35 years. Kamensky is currently a visiting lecturer in the School of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also an emeritus fellow at the IBM Center for the Business of Government, Washington, D.C. and a Senior Fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration. He started working on government reform at the 1974 Texas Constitutional Convention. He served in the Clinton-Gore Administration as a deputy director of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government in the Office of the Vice President, and as a special assistant to the Deputy Director for Management at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

Dr. Kahn describes John Kamensky as “very precise, very thoughtful, and committed to creating a government that gets results, measures performance, works in partnerships, and delivers outstanding government services to the American public.”

Their discussion begins with reinventing government and then Kamensky gives his observations about the legacy of reinvention such as agency strategic plans and annual reviews, the Government Performance and Results Act, the structure of the President’s Management Agenda, the idea of customer service, and the importance of cross-agency coordination. Dr. Kahn adds “cross-government coordination is a key issue in all my consulting work including juvenile justice reform. Reinvention called them Senior Policy Groups and that’s what I call them, too.”

Find Kamensky’s weekly summary of government news related to performance and measurement on his LinkedIn profile:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-m-kamensky-9981301/