My recent feature on the London School of Economics American Politics and Policy Blog

My research has been featured on the London School of the Economics' American Politics and Policy blog.  This blog post has a stripped down version of my recent JPART article on trust in the DHS.  This is a simple introduction.  For more information, you can check out the full article.

One of the dangers of numbers

One (fair) complaint about evidence-based public management -- when it relies on quantitative assessments of performance, social problems, etc. -- is that numbers sometimes create a sense of definiteness and finality.  The news out of Colorado related to the recent flood provides a good example.

An example of the complexity of EBPM that hits close to home

My high school alma mater is caught up in an EBPM controversy.  The most recent ratings came out and my old district was one of the few large school districts to fail to meet the state standards.  They are shooting back that the metrics used to evaluate districts are flawed.  Read the report and decide for yourself.

I will keep an eye on this as an excellent example of the politics of EBPM -- and one that hits close to (literally) home.

Budget cuts are pro-HIV... apparently

It was really only a matter of time.  The coverage of the sequester-based cuts has been strange.  Of course, there was a major uproar over the threat of longer waits at airports.  The major cuts were held back from the more obvious (and more public) areas.   This fed the narrative that the cuts did not really have much of an impact -- which implied that government was so bloated that a major cut would not be disruptive.  More than one budget hawk let out a major guffaw of "told you so."

Now the stories are starting to come out about the long-term effects.  After the break is a link to a story about major cuts in medical research.

Hurricane forecasting and other difficult jobs

It should surprise no one that forecasting the number of hurricanes in a season is a difficult task.  The report (after the break) illustrates the challenges and the costs associated with inevitable forecasting errors.  I will also discuss the implications of this for EBPM.