GovernmentExecutive.com

Commenter William R. Cunningham has some smart suggestions on how to rank agencies. He thinks they should be sorted into categories by function so agencies with similar functions can be measured against each other. He writes:

My hope was that someone would come up with a better set of combinations or permutations rather than viewing all federal departments and agencies as equivalent in their cultural dy namics. Just as the Princeton College Review got into the "FEEL" of various colleges the same needs doing for employees and potential employees. The cultures are vastly different. In some the only really interesting policy work goes out to contractors despite inherently governmental restrictions on that outsourcing.One example of cultural statistics might be how many "Whistleblower" complaints in an organizations history? How many successful?

It's an interesting idea. The Partnership for Public Service's Best Places to Work rankings do pit wildly different agencies against each other, and sort them by size and scores within different categories. I do still wonder if having a system that measures the causation of different scores would be helpful in achieving what Cunningham is looking for.