Media Advisory

Twenty years ago, U.S. Department of Labor economists, training program leaders, and administrators from around the country participated in a conference to try to figure out a way to measure the performance of training programs for the disadvantaged. They were pioneers in developing one of the first performance-based management systems that was used with federal programs. With the passage of the Government Performance and Results Act in 1993, all federal agencies are now required to develop performance measures and standards to gauge whether they are achieving their goals.

This follow-up conference, co-hosted by the Ray Marshall Center of the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs, and the Sar Levitan Center at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, brings together many of this same group, today composed of scholars and leaders in training, and other interested parties to revisit the issue of how the performance of government programs is and should be measured. How should we define success? How do we judge whether or not a government program is meeting its objectives? Does welfare-to-work really work? What kind of measures are used and how can they be fine-tuned, to show if a welfare-to-work program really trains the unemployed for long-lasting employment? What factors should be measured? Can more systemic measures of outcomes be designed and implemented across programs? Continued investments in federal programs depend on the answers. The conference will provide a forum for the discussion of the big measurement picture, then and now. Participants will lay the groundwork for the future.

When: Friday, April 12, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
Where: Sherwood Room, Johns Hopkins University, Homewood Campus, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD