New nonprofit aims to help state, local governments fix procurement, modernization issues

On Wednesday, a new consulting nonprofit called the Partners for Public Good launched with the aim of helping state and local governments fix issues with processes crucial to local service delivery, such as procurement, budgeting, staffing and technology.

Built upon the work of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab, with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, PPG will aim to use the lab’s “people-first approach” to provide consultation to smaller governments. Prior to launching this week, as an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit, the organization claims to have already created more than $1.7 billion in public value by working with more than 200 local jurisdictions.

That work was through the lab’s Procurement Excellence Network, which has connected thousands of public officials in all 50 states. As a spinoff of those efforts, PPG’s focus in the short-term will be implementing solutions to common government operational pain points, with the long-term goal of helping fix their systems’ underlying problems. It also plans to offer leadership training, peer learning, targeted pilot projects and long-term systems-change projects.

“There’s a reason that government performance is now on the national stage,” Kailey Burger Ayogu, PPG’s chief executive said in a news release. “Residents rightfully expect their tax dollars to translate into tangible improvements in their daily lives, and too often they are left waiting for government to deliver. At PPG, we believe that excellence in core operations — how government buys services for residents, hires talent to solve problems, and leverages technology to drive impact — is the answer to solving real problems and enabling communities to thrive.”

The organization, which will work directly with local officials, draws on a founding advisory board that convenes private- and public-sector leaders who have experience improving government operations. PPG’s organizers said they will attempt to help state and local governments improve their often outdated, lengthy and clunky procurement processes, which can drive delays and waste. To help governments improve their staffing issues, which have plagued state and local IT workforces for many years, PPG wants cut down hiring times, which for some state and local governments can exceed an average of 100 days.

The group aims to help state and local governments better steer their IT budgets away from maintaining old systems, and toward modernization efforts that can improve resident services. It also plans to help governments address budgeting inefficiencies and implementation failures so they can make better use of federal dollars.

The PPG team has claimed success with reforms in Seattle, helping emergency medical responders to respond to 90% of calls within 12 minutes. In Long Beach, California, the team says its work helped drop procurement cycle times by half, and double vendor participation in calls for submissions, expanding opportunities for small local businesses.

Like many involved in the group, Burger Ayogu, the group’s CEO, has experience working in and around government. She was a managing director at the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab and served as assistant commissioner at the NYC Administration for Children’s Services.

The advisory board includes Jeffrey Liebman, a public policy professor at Harvard Kennedy School who also serves as a founding director of the school’s Government Performance Lab. There’s also Xavier de Souza Briggs, an MIT professor, former White House official and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Sara Fenske Bahat, transition director for San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has also held leadership roles in nonprofits, academia, banking and New York City and New York State governments; and Kimberlyn Leary, a former senior White House policy adviser billed as a leading authority on leadership and organizational change in government.

Other similar efforts have cropped up in recent months designed to help governments redesign their stodgy processes. Most recently, the bipartisan Recoding America Fund, so-named for a book written by Obama-era technology leader Jennifer Pahlka, launched last month with the aim of building a “radically better” government.