During the statewide COVID-19 shutdown, government managers had to shift rapidly from having their team in an office setting to leading a team remotely. Some employees may now be returning to their offices, but some continue to work in a virtual environment. Even face-to-face team meetings have a new challenge because of social distancing rules.
Managing remote teams
By Debra Hentz, Center for Government Innovation
“It had to get done quickly.”
“It was hard to explain it to others.”
“My team is inexperienced.”
“It was just easier to do it myself.”
“I wanted it done my way.”
These are some of the excuses I made in the past for why I was doing great work rather than leading my team to reach our goals. Then I realized that to become a better leader and build a high-performing team, I needed to admit that I was doing the work rather than leading the organization.
Financial planning and forecasting are essential activities of finance and leadership, and especially so in the age of COVID-19.
The Financial Intelligence Tool's (FIT) financial health indicators provide “retrospective” measures of financial health based on historic data. However, any government can use these measures to help plan for the future.
Benefits from integrating FIT's financial health ratios
Our Financial Intelligence Tool (FIT) has long offered a way for users to examine data on specific governments, government types, and specific revenue or expenditure streams. For the first time, FIT has a way to view all important information on a specific government type in one place, using new government-type profiles.
These new profile views for all government types show unique statewide data, including:
The Financial Intelligence Tool's (FIT) role-based functionality has expanded, giving local governments even more leverage over their data. Upon logging into FIT, a local government user has access to these new features:
Financial indicators have received a meaningful update in our Financial Intelligence Tool (FIT), making them even more useful by capitalizing on the power of FIT's statewide collection of financial data.
Comparison power
Each financial health indicator now shows both the mean and median for other governments of your type. A local government can view how its indicator compares to those of similar governments across the state.
Indicators refocused
Whether you are a new user, a casual explorer of data, or a government data power-user, SAO is here to ensure you feel confident using the Financial Intelligence Tool (FIT).
New users rejoice – Get FIT in 15-minutes or less!
The permitting counter was usually a busy place at a local city or county government, with contractors and homeowners stopping in to ask questions or buy permits. Most entities have probably changed their processes to reduce interpersonal contact since the pandemic started.
For some, it might be time to re-evaluate if your temporary solution is working for you and what other options you might have. Here is a current list of resources we have found that could help you.
Options and considerations
We have refreshed our Financial Intelligence Tool (FIT) with fiscal year 2019 data submitted by local governments! FIT makes it easy for you to understand the financial information of local governments in Washington.
Not only did we release the fiscal year 2019 data, but FIT now includes new enhancements based on input from our users. These changes make it an even better and more transparent experience for you. The infographic below lays out what is new with FIT.
Here is a safe bet: You have led more virtual meetings in the past few months than in the prior year. Maybe it has gone from one a month to one a week. Or from one a week to one a day. Or many each day. Virtual meetings are on the rise for everyone, so what can we do to make them better?
Remember the Basics
Even though it's virtual, it's still a meeting. So advice about better meetings still applies, and is even more important because virtual meetings can be more challenging. What are those basics?