The SAS Government Leadership Summit is now behind us and I couldn’t be more pleased with the content delivered by the great line-up of panelists and speakers. We knew that uncovering inefficiencies, fighting fraud and improper payments, and the importance of analytics would be recurring themes. But an unexpected thread ran throughout the day that convinced me that we are at a critical juncture in the evolution of federal government culture.

Repeatedly, people at the summit talked about how they wished government workers were allowed to take more risks, even be “rewarded for failure.” There were discussions on how to incentivize government workers to challenge the status quo, and how to encourage novel approaches in performance plans. Speakers discussed the need to formalize and encourage grassroots ideas from all levels of the agency, implement and reward good ideas, and give proper feedback on ones that don’t make the cut. Open, transparent dialogue is critical.

There were also frank discussions on the harm caused by the “use it or lose it” budget approach and ideas were kicked around on how to move away from that. The panel on the recent MeriTalk study Taxing Times: The Federal Efficiency Opportunity was the catalyst for many of these intriguing topics.

Over and over, federal workers were credited for their passion and desire to be efficient, improve agency effectiveness and change the culture of federal government.

Technology, specifically analytics, can support that change. Our keynote, Danny Werfel, Controller of the Office of Federal Financial Management within the Office of Management and Budget, hailed the some of the government’s fraud fighting efforts as an example of government trying something new and, while not always perfect, learning valuable lessons and starting down a road that will lead to immense savings.

A few other key takeaways from the day:

• When undertaking analytics-supported fraud fighting efforts, start with a small, manageable data set to learn best practices and achieve early successes.
• Employ a portfolio of technology approaches to fight fraud, updated frequently, to keep up with the quickly evolving techniques of fraudsters.
• The next great insights will come from integrating data from across agencies so that, for instance, financial, performance and risk analyses can be combined to make better program decisions.
• There are more than 600 human resources data systems in the federal government. IT consolidation is an area ripe for savings.
• Federal government should move towards a data-driven culture, where agencies know what data are important, targets and outcomes are focused and communicated, workers know their impact on the organization and have the analytical skill required to make that impact, and agency leaders are data’s greatest advocates.
• Bryan Harris, VSTI CTO, has some fascinating ideas about scoring and analyzing data to decide what can be thrown out, archived or kept easily accessible. He related this to how our relationship to search has evolved from Google to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and how the next stage will change business forever. My mind is still trying to get around it.

Despite the bleak news that seemingly assails us daily; I’m very excited to be working with the federal government right now. We had a capacity audience, which tells me feds are looking for new ways to do their jobs. The discussions indicate we could experience even more fundamental changes.

P.S. A special shout out to the Newseum conference facilities. Slick and modern, great food and service, and a spectacular view from the 7th floor terrace.