Results that Matter Team

The Results That Matter team brings together practitioners experienced in government and nonprofit performance management, community indicators, citizen engagement, community action, and international development. We all share a strong belief in results-based governance of communities and results-based management of community-serving organizations.

The New York-based consulting firm Epstein & Fass Associates is the team's organizational lead. Two important partners are the Los Angeles-based KH Consulting Group and the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center, based in Novosibirsk, Russia. Epstein & Fass and KH have been involved in applications of the Effective Community Governance Model in U.S. communities on the East and West Coasts. And Epstein & Fass is partnering with the Siberian Center to assist communities across Siberia in applying the model.

Epstein & Fass Associates

• Paul Epstein, Principal; Co-Author, Results That Matter
• Alina Simone, International Development Associate

Others on the team who have contributed to the book Results That Matter or the development of the Effective Community Governance Model include:

• Paul Coates, Ph.D.
  Associate; Co-Author, Results That Matter
• Lyle Wray, Ph.D.
  Associate; Co-Author, Results That Matter
• David Swain, DPA
  Associate; Contributor, Results That Matter
• Martha Marshall
  Associate; Co-Developer of the Governance Model

KH Consulting Group

• Gayla Kraetsch Hartsough, Ph.D., President
• Charlotte Maure, Resource Consultant

Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center

Epstein & Fass Associates

Epstein & Fass Associates helps clients design performance management strategies that fit their vision, goals, and community context. Since 1985, the firm has served local, state, federal, and nonprofit organizations and the United Nations. The firm has helped clients capture productivity savings, improve service outcomes, and build long-term capacity for continuous improvement. Epstein & Fass is a leader in results-based practice and research, helping clients implement advanced strategic practices such as balance scorecards and contributing to performance measurement research published by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, the Institute of Internal Auditors, and the American Society for Public Administration. With its role in developing the Effective Community Governance Model, Epstein & Fass has extended that leadership by giving citizens, organizations, and communities new ways to achieve results that matter.

Paul D. Epstein, Principal, Epstein & Fass, Co-author, Results That Matter

Paul Epstein has more than 25 years of experience in performance management, citizen engagement, and making public services more results-focused, accountable, and responsive to citizens. He was hired into New York Mayor John Lindsay's office as an MIT engineering graduate who could improve the productivity of public services, a subject that dominated his early career. But he was also inspired by the ways Mayor Lindsay connected people and city government, a theme he could finally build into his work in the 1990s through several Sloan Foundation-funded research and demonstration projects. A Sloan-funded team he co-directed with Lyle Wray used practice-based research to develop the Effective Community Governance Model that brings citizens into performance management so results achieved will be results that matter most to the community. The model has been well received in presentations by Mr. Epstein in the U.S. and Russia, and by his co-authors in the U.S. and Eastern Europe. Mr. Epstein is working on new applications of the model in Hartford, Connecticut, and Los Angeles County, and is involved in a grant process to develop community applications in the former Soviet Union. Mr. Epstein is a leader in the development of the Community Indicators Consortium to help civic organizations learn from each other in using indicators to improve their communities. His publications include numerous professional articles and three books: Using Performance Measurement in Local Government (1984 and 1988), Auditor Roles in Government Performance Measurement (lead author, 2004), and Results That Matter (lead author, November 2005, Jossey-Bass). In 2003 he received the Harry Hatry Distinguished Performance Measurement Practice Award for lifetime achievement from the American Society for Public Administration.
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Alina Simone, International Development Associate, Epstein & Fass

Alina Simone has 10 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. She has spent the past four years working with international NGOs in the U.S. and abroad and is currently developing international applications for the Effective Community Governance Model. For example, with Paul Epstein, she is helping the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center develop potential applications of the model for communities in former Soviet countries. She also conducted research for Results That Matter (November 2005, Jossey-Bass), which is based on the model. Ms. Simone was a recipient of a David L. Boren graduate fellowship to study political, economic and socio-cultural challenges to civil society development and NGO growth in Russia. Fieldwork for this project included site visits and interviews with more than 70 USAID funded programs and interviews with NGO leaders and government representatives in eleven regions of eastern Russia. In recent years, Ms. Simone has conducted fieldwork in southern Russia and Siberia, providing statistical analysis of poverty assessment data for the Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA), and has served as the program director of an alternative-to-the-peace corps program serving high schools and universities in remote regions of eastern Russia. Within the United States, she has worked in the field of low-income housing at both grassroots and policy levels, working directly with populations affected by poverty, as well as donors, government officials, and service providers pursuing poverty alleviation strategies. Ms. Simone holds a Masters in Public Administration with a concentration in international development from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.

Paul M. Coates, Ph.D., Co-author, Results That Matter

Paul Coates is Director of the Office of State and Local Government Programs and Associate Professor of public policy and administration in the Department of Political Science of Iowa State University. He received his Ph.D. from Iowa State University. Like Paul Epstein, much of Paul Coates's career has been focused on helping state and local officials improve public management, and he recently had the opportunity to make citizen engagement a key focus of his work. Along with Dr. Alfred Ho, Dr. Coates directed the Sloan Foundation-funded Citizen Initiated Performance Assessment (CIPA) project in nine Iowa cities from 2001 to 2004. CIPA involved citizens in the process of creating performance measures for city government. The office Dr. Coates currently heads at Iowa State provides training, applied research, and technical services to state and local government in Iowa. In addition to having spent more than 25 years with Iowa State University, he has also been Executive Director of the Iowa State Association of Counties, Director of Extension to Communities at Iowa State University, and an Associate State Planner with the Iowa Governor's Office of Planning and Programming. Dr. Coates also has experience providing assistance on performance measures at the national and at the international levels through various State Department and USAID projects in Eastern Europe.

Lyle D. Wray, Ph.D., Co-author, Results That Matter

Lyle Wray is Executive Director of the Capitol Region Council of Governments based in Hartford, Connecticut. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba, Canada. Like Paul Epstein and Paul Coates, much of Lyle Wray's early career focus was on measuring and improving public services, with citizen engagement later becoming central to his work. Dr. Wray started working with mental retardation services in Newfoundland and Labrador in the late 1970s, and then on outcome measurement in the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Dr. Wray also worked for Dakota County, Minnesota, first as Human Services Director, then for five years as the County Administrator, when he led the county to performance management, with monthly graphic performance reports of key results against budget and performance targets. While Dr. Wray was County Administrator, public deliberation became part of the budget process, through citizen focus groups and broader public meetings. Dr. Wray served as Executive Director of the Citizens League from 1992 to 2003, a more than 50-year-old civic organization that identifies important state and regional policy issues, and proposes and advocates for solutions developed through citizen research. During this period, he teamed with Paul Epstein and others to co-lead the Sloan Foundation funded research on citizen engagement and public performance measurement that formed the initial research basis for this book. Dr. Wray has also been Director of the Ventura County Civic Alliance, a regional civic organization in Ventura County, California. He has served as a consultant to many government and nonprofit organizations. He also has international experience in civil society development including presentations in Armenia at a CIS and UN joint conference on developing civil society, the Philippines on citizens as partners in performance measurement, decentralization and democratization in Korea for the UN, and presentations in Thailand on building civil society. Dr. Wray teaches graduate courses online and in classrooms in public service outcomes and performance measurement, e-government, web-based public services, and public service reform.

David Swain, DPA, Contributor, Results That Matter

David Swain is a retired community planner and advocate who remains actively involved in consulting work on the development and use of community indicators and of citizen-based community-improvement processes. Since 1975, he has been associated, both as citizen volunteer and as professional staff member, with the Jacksonville Community Council Inc. (JCCI), a citizen-based think tank and advocacy organization in Jacksonville, Florida. As JCCI's Associate Director, he developed, managed, and upgraded the organization's pioneering work on community indicators between 1986 and 2002. JCCI's use of community indicators evolved from issuing Quality of Life Reports — the first community quality of life indicators program in the country, which has now been issued annually since 1985 — to also using data from key indicators as part of an integrated process of community action and improvement that builds on both the indicators and JCCI's citizen policy study and advocacy committees. Dr. Swain is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in the community-indicators movement. Besides working with specific communities, he has been a leader and catalyst in the development of an intentional learning network of community indicators practitioners and researchers. Through conference presentations and publications, helping JCCI host foreign and domestic delegations, and visits to other communities in the U.S. and abroad, Dr. Swain has been active in sharing his knowledge and experience, as well as the cutting-edge work of JCCI, with communities in many countries. His articles have appeared in periodicals such as Planning, the National Civic Review, and the International Journal of Public Administration. He is currently helping edit a volume of community-indicators best practices also due out in fall 2005. Dr. Swain earned a Ph.D. in Public Administration, has taught political science and public administration in higher education, and has worked as a professional planner in Jacksonville city government.

Martha W. Marshall, Co-developer of the Governance Model

Martha Marshall is a Virginia-based consultant with over 25 years of experience helping government and nonprofit organizations improve performance and manage for results. She was a member of the original Sloan Foundation-funded research team that developed the Effective Community Governance Model. Ms. Marshall has assisted over 50 cities, counties, and states across the U.S. She helps organizations improve outcomes and efficiency, redesign their budgeting process to invest in results, and strengthen their accountability systems. When she worked for the Office of Executive Management of Prince William County, Virginia, Ms. Marshall helped the county design and implement its nationally recognized Results-Oriented Government System that aligns strategic planning, budgeting, program planning, performance accountability, and evaluation. While this system was being developed, she engaged citizens extensively and deliberatively throughout the process to ensure it would focus on results that matter. Also, for five years she managed the county's citizen survey project. Ms. Marshall has conducted research and training with the Urban Institute, the International City/County Management Association, the Innovation Groups, and the National Civic League. Among many articles, guides, and training materials to her credit, she co-authored "21st Century Community Focus: Better Results by Linking Citizens, Government, and Performance Measurement" in Public Management (1999) and the facilitator's handbook for the University of Vermont's video series "Managing for Results: The Key to More Responsive Government." Ms. Marshall is also a frequent facilitator, lecturer, and trainer on performance measurement and balanced scorecard approaches to strategic management. She earned a Masters of Urban Affairs/Urban Management from Virginia Tech, and she has served as adjunct public administration faculty at George Mason University.

KH Consulting Group

Since its inception in 1986, the KH Consulting Group has served more than 200 clients in 25 states and on 5 continents, and brought a results focus to all its work, from organizational design, to financial restructuring, information systems, marketing, human resources, and business process reengineering. KH has leveraged its strengths in strategic planning and performance measurement, including the use of balance scorecards, to help community colleges and numerous local government agencies manage for results. In all these initiatives, KH has extensively reached out to gain the perspectives of the client's stakeholders—from internal users to residents and businesses affected by client policies and services—so clients will achieve results that matter for the communities they serve. The two key KH consultants currently working with Epstein & Fass on projects involving the Effective Community Governance Model are Gayla Kraetsch Hartsough and Charlotte Maure.

Gayla Kraetsch Hartsough, Ph.D., KH President

Gayla A. Kraetsch Hartsough has been the President of KH Consulting Group since 1986. She helped Paul Epstein introduce the Effective Community Governance Model to local government leaders in Los Angeles, resulting in a KH-Epstein & Fass project to use the model to evaluate pilot implementation of the County of Los Angeles's "lead department" approach to improving services for unincorporated communities. A few years earlier, Dr. Kraetsch Hartsough led an engagement that identified several strategies the county is now testing to make services more responsive to residents of unincorporated areas, including the lead department approach. Other Los Angeles County engagements she has led have involved strategic planning for Public Health, Public Works, Public Library, Internal Services, Regional Planning, the Community Development Commission, and the Office of the Treasurer-Tax Collector. She has also assisted city, state, and federal agencies; higher education and K-12 educational systems; nonprofit organizations; transportation systems; utilities; education enterprises; and health care providers. She has extensive expertise in public policy, strategic and master planning, service delivery, community needs assessments, stakeholder involvement, and the political realities of local government in California. Before founding KH Consulting Group, Dr. Kraetsch Hartsough was a Management Consultant for Towers Perrin and a Program Officer for the Academy for Educational Development. After completing her Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Award in higher education administration.

Charlotte Maure, KH Resource Consultant

Charlotte Maure has been a senior consultant on many of KH's strategic planning and performance management engagements, including the unincorporated area services project for the County of Los Angeles. She is working with Paul Epstein of Epstein & Fass to use the Effective Community Governance Model as a template to evaluate how the county is piloting the "lead department" approach to improve services to the unincorporated Florence-Firestone community in Los Angeles County. She is examining the results-orientation of improvement initiatives, and obtaining the perspectives of collaborators and stakeholders, including County staff from agencies serving on the Florence-Firestone Community Enhancement Team, and community leaders engaged by the team. This engagement is designed to help the county find practical options for improving governance and results in Florence-Firestone, and for finding ways to make the lead department approach more effective when it is used in other unincorporated areas. Ms. Maure has also implemented telecommunications, systems, and administrative projects responding to fundamental change in public sector environments that have become more cost-competitive and results-focused. Prior to working with KH, she was Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of General Services for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a department responsible for annual purchases of $325 million, a fleet of 1,200 vehicles, food and catering services, and design and construction of over 1 million square feet of office space. She has a Master of Public Administration in Intergovernmental Management from the University of Southern California.

Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center