IPMN Symposium on Performance Budgeting and the Politics of Reform

Various systems to integrate performance measurement into budgeting are applied in nations around the world. Governments at all levels have embarked on a journey into performance measurement and management. Performance budgeting, and the application of performance analysis in budgeting, is a topic of a considerable discourse in the public management community. This symposium provides dialogue and comment on efforts to integrate performance evaluation into the executive budget process at the federal government level in the United States of America under the administration of President George W. Bush. The experience of other nations also is addressed

Reform of Program Budgeting in the Department of Defense

In this article we conduct a process analysis to assess evidence to test the following hypothesis: that the complicated architecture and processes of national defense planning, programming, budgeting and execution and the defense acquisition decision system lead to unintended and negative consequences for defense acquisition and procurement. The purpose of this article is to identify key points of linkage weakness or failure between Department of Defense (DOD) financial management and acquisition decision systems. We first describe the PPB system and decision process. We then provide an analysis of recent changes to PPB. Next, we describe the Defense Acquisition System (DAS) in detail. This leads us to identification of systems linkages and areas of misalignment between PPBES and the DAS, drawing on interview data. Finally, we provide conclusions with respect to our hypothesis, analysis of consequent key problems and issues, and areas that require further research

Smart Practice Development Administration in Iraq and Other High Security Risk Nations: Lessons From Colonial Experience

Outcomes of armed conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq indicate that the U.S. has been unprepared to fully address the panoply of problems related to establishment of social and economic stability, security and governance in the aftermath of war. How the war against terrorism should be fought is an issue beyond the scope of this article. However, if U.S. policy makers are to succeed in obtaining stability, security and good governance in these nations and in other parts of the world where significant development assistance is provided to highly unstable nations, they should learn lessons from past U.S. colonial experience, and from the experience of other nations. Such context include U.S. colonial administration of the Philippines after the Spanish- American War, the administration of the British Empire in India, the occupations of Germany and Japan after World War II and European colonization of Africa. Lessons from these cases, good and bad, may be examined in attempt to identify elements of what we term “smart practice” neo-colonial administration. No claim is made here that the U.S. is operating as a colonial power in Iraq. Rather, our argument is that lessons may be learned from colonial experience that are applicable to Iraq and other high security risk nations where development and reconstruction is badly needed

Defense Acquisition and Budgeting: Investigating the Adequacy of Linkage Between Systems

In this article we assess evidence and test the hypothesis that the complicated architecture and processes of national defense planning, programming, budgeting and execution and the defense acquisition decision system produce system linkage weaknesses that lead to unintended and negative consequences for defense acquisition and procurement. The purpose of this article is to identify key points of linkage weakness and failure between DOD financial management and acquisition decision systems, and then suggest how reengineering and realignment might be approached to resolve some of these problems. We first describe the key components of the defense planning, program, budgeting and execution system (PPBES) decision process. We then provide an analysis of recent changes to PPBES. Next, we describe the defense acquisition system (DAS) in detail. Then, relying on independent assessment of system relationships and data gathered from interviews with system participants, we identify systems linkages and areas of misalignment between the PPBES and the DAS. Finally, we provide conclusions with respect to our hypothesis and analysis of consequent key problems and issues to be addressed by top level DOD leadership

A reanalysis of the luminosities of clusters of galaxies in the EMSS sample with 0.3 < z < 0.6

The X-ray luminosities of the Einstein Extended Medium Sensitivity Survey (EMSS) clusters of galaxies with redshifts 0.3<z<0.6 are remeasured using ROSAT PSPC data. It is found that the new luminosities are on average 1.18 +/- 0.08 times higher than previously measured but that this ratio depends strongly on the X-ray core radii we measure. For the clusters with small core radii, in general we confirm the EMSS luminosities, but for clusters with core radii >250 kpc (the constant value assumed in the EMSS), the new luminosities are 2.2 +/- 0.15 times the previous measurements. The X-ray luminosity function (XLF) at 0.3<z<0.6 is recalculated and is found to be consistent with the local XLF. The constraints on the updated properties of the 0.3<z<0.6 EMSS sample, including a comparison with the number of clusters predicted from local XLFs, indicate that the space density of luminous, massive clusters has either not evolved or has increased by a small factor ~2 since z=0.4. The implications of this result are discussed in terms of constraints on the cosmological parameter Omega_0.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Reaping the Advantages of Information and Modern Technology: Moving From Bureaucracy to Hyperarchy and Netcentricity

This article focuses on the inherent contradiction between the basic building block of most non-market productive relationships – hierarchy – and the vision inspired by the architecture of modern information technology, especially the World Wide Web, of a more egalitarian culture in public organizations. Evans and Wurster (1997) have argued that, in the future, all knowledge-based productive relationships will be designed around fluid, team-based collaborative communities, either within organizations (deconstructed value chains), or collaborative alliances like the “amorphous and permeable corporate boundaries characteristic of companies in the Silicon Valley” (deconstructed supply chains). They assert that, in these relationships everyone will communicate richly with everyone else on the basis of shared standards and that, like the Internet itself, these relationships will eliminate the need to channel information, thereby eliminating the tradeoff between information bandwidth and connectivity. “The possibility (or the threat) of random access and information symmetry,” they conclude, “will destroy all hierarchies, whether of logic or power.” We believe that we ignore the views such visionaries as Evans and Wurster at our peril. The World Wide Web, together with the canon that two heads are better than one, has created something immensely interesting and potentially transformative. The genius of the World Wide Web is, as Evans and Wurster explain, that it is (a) distributed (so that anyone can contribute to it), and (b) standardized (so that everyone else can comprehend the contributions). Random access and information symmetry jeopardize the power of gatekeepers of all sorts: political leaders, managers, functional staff specialists, and even experts to determine what information counts as evidence and what beliefs are sufficiently warranted to count as knowledge. In other words, they threaten nearly everyone with a vested interest in existing institutional arrangements. One does not expect folks to surrender position or power without a struggle. Furthermore, homo sapiens’ need for leaders is evidently instinctive, deeply rooted in our simian brains. The need for hierarchy buttresses the status quo, even where the powerful are neither wise nor unselfish

Public policy and management issues in budgeting for defense

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/0743017920840552

Density Matrix Functional Calculations for Matter in Strong Magnetic Fields: I. Atomic Properties

We report on a numerical study of the density matrix functional introduced by Lieb, Solovej and Yngvason for the investigation of heavy atoms in high magnetic fields. This functional describes {\em exactly} the quantum mechanical ground state of atoms and ions in the limit when the nuclear charge $Z$ and the electron number $N$ tend to infinity with $N/Z$ fixed, and the magnetic field $B$ tends to infinity in such a way that $B/Z^{4/3}\to\infty$. We have calculated electronic density profiles and ground state energies for values of the parameters that prevail on neutron star surfaces and compared them with results obtained by other methods. For iron at $B=10^{12}$ G the ground state energy differs by less than 2 \% from the Hartree-Fock value. We have also studied the maximal negative ionization of heavy atoms in this model at various field strengths. In contrast to Thomas-Fermi type theories atoms can bind excess negative charge in the density matrix model. For iron at $B=10^{12}$ G the maximal excess charge in this model corresponds to about one electron.Comment: Revtex, 13 pages with 6 eps figures include

Summer CO2 evasion from streams and rivers in the Kolyma River basin, north-east Siberia

Inland water systems are generally supersaturated in carbon dioxide (CO2) and are increasingly recognized as playing an important role in the global carbon cycle. The Arctic may be particularly important in this respect, given the abundance of inland waters and carbon contained in Arctic soils; however, a lack of trace gas measurements from small streams in the Arctic currently limits this understanding.We investigated the spatial variability of CO2 evasion during the summer low-flow period from streams and rivers in the northern portion of the Kolyma River basin in north-eastern Siberia. To this end, partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) and gas exchange velocities (k) were measured at a diverse set of streams and rivers to calculate CO2 evasion fluxes. We combined these CO2 evasion estimates with satellite remote sensing and geographic information system techniques to calculate total areal CO2 emissions. Our results show that small streams are substantial sources of atmospheric CO2 owing to high pCO2 and k, despite being a small portion of total inland water surface area. In contrast, large rivers were generally near equilibrium with atmospheric CO2. Extrapolating our findings across the Panteleikha-Ambolikha sub-watersheds demonstrated that small streams play a major role in CO2 evasion, accounting for 86% of the total summer CO2 emissions from inland waters within these two sub-watersheds. Further expansion of these regional CO2 emission estimates across time and space will be critical to accurately quantify and understand the role of Arctic streams and rivers in the global carbon budget