Reports

After analyzing two years of the Partnership for Public Service's 360 Leadership data, along with interviews and a focus group from federal women leaders, we compiled a list of best practices and offer suggestions for how individuals and organizations can support more inclusive leadership. To help make this information actionable, and because a focus of our entire LeadHERship series suggests that an important area of opportunity for improving inclusion and equity exists at the leader level, we conclude each section with some questions for leaders to ask themselves as they work to support their teams, and especially women.

Different agencies and levels of government have widely varying experience with using artificial intelligence in public service delivery. Whatever their level of experience, public sector organizations must put responsible AI principles at the center of their decision-making around AI. In this report the Partnership for Public Service and Microsoft offer recommendations of questions and considerations non-technical leaders should address at each stage of the process, from their first contemplation of AI to its routine use in service delivery.

In this brief, we examine how racial and ethnic identity intersect with gender to affect federal leaders’ workplace experience. Like other research, our analysis supports the need to not just focus on gender when seeking to understand this experience, but to also explore how other social identities—especially race—influence the social perception of women leaders in government

For this report, we interviewed dozens of customer experience leaders, as well as those who design and implement services at federal agencies. We also had conversations with customer experience experts from national research institutes and universities. Additionally, our work was informed by input from our quarterly customer experience roundtables and by leading commercial practices.

In response to evolving workplace values and expectations related to COVID-19 and the Great Resignation, the Partnership for Public Service—with support from ServiceNow—examined why civil servants leave their agencies or the federal government altogether and what makes them stay. Recognizing that retention strategies should not be one-size-fits-all, our study focused on an important and often overlooked factor of employee retention: generational values and expectations. More specifically, we explored the characteristics and work motivations of Gen X and Gen Z civil servants.

In this report, we sought to better understand women’s self-confidence in the federal workplace using our 360 assessment data, as well as qualitative data we collected during 13 research interviews and a focus group with women in federal leadership positions. Our data demonstrates that women tend to experience self-doubt and perceive their own performance and leadership skills less favorably than others perceive them. We also found some evidence that women are more reluctant than men to see themselves as confident leaders. We argue that addressing this issue will require structural change and collective action to shift how women are recognized in the workplace.

This report features case studies detailing how three agencies have successfully created a data infrastructure and used that data to drive lasting change on the three PMA priorities.

Our data shows that Americans do not feel hopeless about Congress, but rather are ambivalent. By informing the public of Congress' accomplishments, we have an opportunity to change the way people think about the institution and our democracy.

In this brief—our first exploration of the data from our 360 tool—we examine federal employees’ leadership experiences based on gender, specifically for men and women serving as leaders at all levels across government.

After two years of data collection, we analyzed federal leaders to better understand certain patterns in leadership experience. Specifically, we examined the differences and similarities between how women and men understand and experience their roles as public service leaders, and explored the intersections between race, ethnicity and gender in public service leadership.