As the RBA Africa Summit 2014 approaches, we thought it would be fun to share this 165 page gem from 2006.

Read the full report here: 2006 RBA Conference Report

Conference Overview

The conference was held on the University of Maryland campus and was hosted by the University of Maryland Results Leadership Program and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

This report was created to capture the knowledge and insight of 155 participants in the 48 sessions convened at the 2006 Results Accountability Conference to address the convening question:

“What can we do now to accelerate measurable improvements for customers and communities?”

By the end of the conference 46 participants were able to say what they would do to accelerate measurable improvements for customers and communities. The actions encompassed:

  • Adopting a new attitude, to quote one participant, “to stop talking, and start acting”
  • Sharing knowledge; for example, many participants planned to conduct RBA trainings and turn the curve exercises
  • Using a new skill, such as the ability to develop performance measure tracking systems for their programs
  • Committing to “turn themselves” in order to turn curves for populations.

“(I will) continue to push in my organization and community the idea of “closing the loop” on RBA so that we’re not only able to articulate the results and indicators we care about and want to impact, but we also hold ourselves and colleagues accountable for program performance. Knowing that that’s the only way to move population level indicators – to turn ourselves.”

The session notes you will read are in the format they were posted by their session conveners for our learning community at the conference.

The conference utilized Open Space Technology, a radically simple way to convene large groups of people to work on a topic that is important to them. In the joint learning environment that was created at the University of Maryland, we hoped to produce the following meeting results:

  • People have the conversations they want, with the people they want, for the amount of time that they want.
  • Conversation conveners post the highlights of their conversations for everyone to read.
  • People take away insights, information, and network connections from both participating in conversations and reading about conversations.

We hope you find this report useful in your continued implementation of Results Accountability and look forward to further shared learning at a future convening.

The Conveners: Jolie Bain Pillsbury, Senior Fellow
Mark Friedman, Senior Fellow
Phil Lee, Director and Senior Fellow

Report Editors: Adam Luecking, Assistant Director
Charlie Feldman, Undergraduate Assistant