One year ago at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), I walked through the doors of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) with a simple conviction: Government should spend less time measuring activity and more time improving outcomes for children and families.

That sounds obvious. But in human services, process has a way of becoming the product. Forms multiply. Guidance documents accumulate. Review processes get longer. Requirements created for good reasons outlive those reasons by years, and sometimes decades.