Ingraham (community and public affairs, Binghamton U.) brings together nine essays on how government managers and elected officials use management and systems to improve performance. It uses data from the Government Performance Project when it was at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse U., which teamed academics with journalists from Governing magazine, who considered local and all state governments in the US from 1996 to 2003. It emphasizes lessons learned from the project rather than the methods used and how models of analysis may be of use for governments not in the study. It also focuses on the ways that state and local governments have approached systems--financial, human resource, information technology, and capital and infrastructure management, and managing for results--how different configurations look, and how governments have or haven't made use of management systems as a tool in long-term performance. Contributors work in the fields of information science and technology, public administration, political science, public affairs, government, and management mostly in the US. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)