Governance Analysis
This page will explain how we assessed county governance gaps using the U.S. GAO's Green Book as the standard.
You are here: Governance Gaps; Governance Gaps; -- Governance Analysis
After learning about Governance Gaps additional supporting details are available from the following web pages:
- Governance Gaps; Governance Gaps; --Heat Maps
- Governance Gaps; Governance Gaps; --Interesting Takeaways
Identification of Governance Gaps
The identification of Governance Gaps was a simple, but tedious process. It began with an observation of a county practice or behavior. The practice or behavior was then compared to the Green Book as a standard, which included 17 Principles and 196 Attributes. ACV noted a governance gap each time the practice or behavior applied to the attribute but was not fulfilled. In other words, the GAO's Green Book expected a certain practice or behavior to a situation, and the county did not fulfill that expectation.
No governance gap was identified for when the County's practice or behavior satisfied the attribute OR the attribute wasn't applicable to the observed practice or behavior.
This comparison of county practices and behaviors to performance gaps was not a one-to-one relationship, meaning only one governance gap could be found from one observation. Many times, multiple performance gaps could be identified from one observation.
Sources of Observations
The preferred source of observation was a written record (e.g., formal report, email) originating from a government employee, which were considered objective sources. News articles were not used for observation because of the inherent bias that occurs.
Some portions of Jamie's Examples relied on her personal account to the interface between her and a county employee.
Cross-referencing between Observations and Governance Gaps
The identification of governance gaps from observations of poor practices or behaviors was cross-referenced in both directions.
Cross-referencing from the Observation to the Attribute
A narrative description of the observation is provided so that some context for the observation and subsequent governance gaps is understood.
At the bottom of each example, there is a listing of Potential Governance Gaps, referencing the Green Book Principles and Attributes; The following is an example of how governance gaps are identified from observations.
Don't click any of the numbers in the image (above). It's a screenshot and none of the blue numbers are active hyperlinks. You may click on the number 1.04 below. That is an active hyperlink.
From the image example, clicking on a number, such as 1.04, will take you to a description of Green Book Principle 1.04. There you can read the attribute after reading the story to grasp the connection between poor governance in the example and good governance in the Green Book. a short narrative about some specific portion of the example will be presented at the bottom of the Attribute page to help visualize the connection.
Cross-referencing from the Attribute to the Observation
Please click on this hyperlink to Green Book Attribute 1.04.
From the Green Book Attribute page (e.g., 1.04), you can read the attribute and the top and then hyperlinks to the examples that point to this attribute at the bottom of the page.
