You Have a Right to See How Your Government Is Performing

Creating a Public Performance Dashboard for Citizens

Campaign Briefing: Fiscal Discipline and Structural Oversight

2028 Presidential Campaign of Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

April 16, 2026

I. The Problem with Information You Cannot Find

The federal government publishes a remarkable amount of information about itself. Performance reports. Budget justifications. Inspector General findings. GAO audits. Agency strategic plans. If you know where to look — and you have significant time and expertise — you can piece together a reasonably detailed picture of how specific programs are performing.

Most Americans cannot do that. No American should have to.

The information exists. The problem is that it lives in dozens of separate databases, formatted differently, updated on different schedules, and designed primarily for compliance purposes rather than for public understanding. It is, in practice, inaccessible to the people who paid for what it describes.

This administration will build a single, public-facing performance dashboard that any citizen can use to see how their government is doing — in plain language, in real time, on the metrics that actually matter.

II. What the Dashboard Shows

The dashboard will cover every Cabinet-level department and major agency. For each, citizens will see four categories of information.

Mission performance: Is the agency meeting the goals it committed to in its strategic plan? Where is it ahead of target? Where is it behind? What is the trend over the last four quarters?

Service delivery: How long does it take, on average, to process an application, complete an inspection, issue a determination, or disburse a benefit? What is the error rate? What is the appeal rate, and what percentage of appeals succeed?

Financial accountability: What did the agency spend last quarter? How does that compare to what Congress appropriated? Where are there significant variances, and what explains them?

Workforce health: What are the vacancy rates in critical roles? How long does it take to fill them? What do employee satisfaction surveys show about morale and institutional confidence?

None of these are novel metrics. Many agencies track them internally. The innovation is making them visible, in one place, in language citizens can read without a graduate degree in public administration.

III. What the Dashboard Does Not Do

It does not spin. It does not present only favorable information. An agency that is meeting its targets will show that clearly. An agency that is falling short will show that just as clearly. The dashboard is not a communications tool for the administration. It is an accountability tool for the public.

There will be no agency control over what appears. The data will feed in automatically from existing government systems where possible, and from standardized reporting where not.

The methodology will be published. Citizens will be able to download the underlying data and conduct their own analysis.

IV. Why This Matters

The public's relationship with government is, in large part, a relationship with information. When people cannot see what government is doing, they fill the gap with assumption — and in a low-trust environment, those assumptions tend toward the negative. When people can see what government is doing, they can make accurate judgments: this program is working; that one needs attention; this agency has improved; that one has not.

Informed citizens make better decisions about their representatives. Representatives who know their constituents are watching make better decisions about their agencies. Transparency is not just a principle — it is a mechanism. When it works, the whole system works better.

I spent a career in environments where measurement was the difference between a patient who survived and one who didn't. You measured vitals, you tracked trends, you responded to what the numbers told you — not to what you hoped was true. Government is not a hospital. But the principle is the same. You cannot manage what you cannot see. And you cannot trust what you cannot verify.

Every American should be able to see how their government is performing. Not through spin. Through data. This administration will build the tool to make that possible.

Martin A. Ginsburg, RN

2028 Presidential Campaign of Martin A. Ginsburg, RN