Governor Martin O'Malley Testifies Before Senate Subcommittee on Government Efficiency
WASHINGTON, DC (July 24, 2008) – Governor Martin O’Malley delivered testimony today before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The subcommittee, chaired by Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, held a hearing on performance-based reform initiatives at the federal level and invited Governor O’Malley to testify about the use of performance-based data systems implemented on the City and State levels while he was Mayor of Baltimore and as Governor.
“Amid all the cynicism and against a current of popular thinking that said government should be made as weak as possible, we advanced our governing philosophy, based on the revolutionary idea that government could work,” Governor O’Malley told the subcommittee members. “We launched StateStat, and like its parent initiative in Baltimore, CitiStat, it can be summed up in a simple phrase: the rational application of human effort to the solving of human problems.”
The CitiStat model has been replicated in localities throughout the United States, and served as the foundation for the StateStat program, implemented statewide in 2007 by Governor O’Malley to bring accountability and efficiency to State government. The program is based on four basic tenets:
Accurate and timely intelligence, shared by all, - Rapid deployment of resources,
- Effective tactics and strategies, and
- Relentless follow-up and assessment.
Based on this data-driven approach to management, CitiStat applied basic principles of accountability to government, measuring both inputs and outputs to produce real, measurable goals and outcomes for the people of Baltimore. Applying those same principles to State government, StateStat was launched in 2007, along with BayStat, designed to assess, coordinate and target Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay restoration programs, and to inform citizens on the progress.
“In many ways, our backs were up against the wall when we took the reigns of State government some 16 months ago,” noted Governor O’Malley today. “We inherited a $1.7 billion structural deficit and had to operate under the backdrop of a national economic downturn with declining levels of assistance from our federal government. We also found that our state government, not unlike the City government, was not very geared to performance measurement and service delivery. Now, approximately a year and half into the StateStat process, performance is being tracked and progress monitored on a level never experienced in Maryland’s state government.”
Governor O’Malley testified that he believes this model could be applied on almost any scale. “I submit that the same philosophy we used in Baltimore and now in state government would work for the Federal government. The strategies we are applying in the State of Maryland can be relevant to governments anywhere and of any size,” he said. “I strongly believe that government performance management is a non-partisan issue. It is the responsibility of every public official to provide the most effective government service possible.”
