F. Stevens Redburn

Dr. F. Stevens (Steve) Redburn is a distinguished lecturer, budget advisor, and authority on financial management, government performance, budgeting processes, and public policy with over 25 years of experience as a senior government official in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Prior to his government career, he directed the Center for Urban Studies at Youngstown State University in Ohio.

As a Senior Executive in the Executive Office of the President (OMB), Steve Redburn advised the President and his senior staff on all aspects of budget, policy, legislation, program design and performance, and regulations concerning major Federal agencies and programs. He provided options and analyses for policy, regulation, management, and spending in the areas of housing, housing finance, economic development, community development, and urban policy. From 2002 to 2006, he participated with many other OMB staff in developing and administering the PART program assessment tool as a basis for budgeting. In 2006, he received the lifetime government service award from NeighborWorks America. In 2020, he was presented with the Howard Career Achievement Award by the Association of Budgeting and Financial Management.

Following his retirement from federal government service in 2006, Dr. Redburn has held a variety of positions, both in the U.S. and internationally, as follows:

• From 2004 to the present, professorial lecturer in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, George Washington University, where he teaches the capstone graduate course on the federal budget, including policies for spending and revenues. (Has recently developed and has offered an on-line version of this course.)

• From 2014 to 2019, directed and participated in various fiscal studies for the Centers on the Public Service, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University. In that role, led research on reform of the federal government’s budget process, with other members of the National Budgeting Roundtable, supported by the Hewlett Foundation, conducted research with Paul Posner and others on European fiscal politics supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, and with Posner developed a multi-media on-line collection of resources on the federal budget process, Fiscal Guardians.

• April 2017 – 2019, consultancy to the World Bank, including three weeks in 2017 in the Ministry of Finance, Jakarta, Indonesia, designing spending reviews for health, education, and infrastructure and two weeks in 2019 conducting advanced training in spending reviews and budgeting, 2018 – 2019; prepared paper on “thematic program spending performance reviews” translated for use by the Government of Indonesia in the budget process, August 2019.

• April 2019 – expert advisor to the International Monetary Fund, participating in a four-day workshop in Ministry of Finance, Beijing China, on “performance budgeting” and “spending reviews” to describe U.S. processes and join IMF, U.K., and Canadian experts in offering advice to the Chinese government.

• September 2020 – June 2021 – study panel chair and co-author, National Marine Fisheries budget structure and allocation review, for the National Academy of Public Administration.

• October 2018 – September 2019 – study panel member and co-author, organizational assessment of the research & development function, U.S. Forest Service, for the National Academy of Public Administration. 

• November – December 2014, expert advisor for Particip/GIZ, preparing guidelines for macroeconomic and fiscal reporting for the Ministry of Finance, Government of Ghana, Accra.

• January to May 2013, visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College graduate public management program in Adelaide Australia. In 2010 and 2011, he was an adjunct professor of Carnegie Mellon University’s program in Adelaide, where he taught in the fall of 2010 and offered a course in performance management in June 2011. That month, he also spoke at the Australian National University in Canberra on the U.S. fiscal challenge.

• In 2010 and 2011, project director for the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., where he supervised preparation of the Commission’s December 2010, report, Getting Back in the Black, recommending comprehensive reform of the U.S. federal government budget process, and edited a series of papers on additional reform options in 2011.

• From 2008 to May 2014, scholar and study director for the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Directed a study of high rates of incarceration in the U.S. in 2013-2014 and co-edited the final report published in May 2014. Directed a study of budgeting for U.S. immigration enforcement in 2010-2011 and co-edited the study report, published in December 2011.

• In 2008-2009, directed a study of the fiscal future of the U.S. for National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), developing and assessing spending, revenue, and process reform options to put the U.S. on a sustainable budget path; the final study report, Choosing the Nation’s Fiscal Future, was published in November, 2009. 

• From January to August 2007, Senior Budget Advisor on the USAID Kosovo V project, where he assisted the Ministry of Finance and Economy on a range of issues and advised Kosovo’s budget director and staff on program budgeting and improved budget procedures, including development and use of performance information.

• In 2009 led a USAID team that evaluated the Kosovo VI project, Pristina, Kosovo. 

In 2002, Dr. Redburn was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He was elected to two terms on the Academy’s board of directors, 2013 – 2019, and served as Treasurer in 2015-16. In 2011 and 2012, he chaired NAPA’s standing panel on executive organization and management. In 2008, he authored a working paper for NAPA on budgeting practice for fragile states. In 2007-2008, he directed a National Academy of Public Administration study for the Department of Veterans Affairs on improved service and health care for returning war veterans that developed a general model for performance-driven change in public agencies. He is co-author with K. Newcomer of an Academy white paper on how to improve the performance of federal programs, which was prepared for the most recent Presidential transition and presented to the Obama OMB transition team. In December 2008, he briefed the Obama VA transition team on findings and recommendations of NAPA’s report on how to improve services for war veterans. In 2012 and again in 2016, he helped steer the joint NAPA-ASPA Memos to National Leaders project; in 2016, he co-authored three memos to the President and leaders of the next Congress presenting options to strengthen government performance and reform the federal budget process. He is a member of two working groups addressing Grand Challenges to Public Administration for NAPA, which produced recommended actions for the 2020 Presidential cycle.

As an international consultant, prior to his work in Kosovo, Ghana, and Indonesia, Dr. Redburn served in Russia as Advisor-in-Residence for the Office of Control, President of the Russian Federation, where he advised on structures and functions of oversight bodies in 1993. In 1994, he taught seminars in Yekaterinburg and Saratov on federal structure and intergovernmental finance. In 2006, at the request of the Government of Colombia, he chaired a NAPA panel and co-authored a paper outlining a performance accountability model and strategy for that country. In recent years he has worked internationally as a short-term consultant in Accra, Ghana for the German development agency, in Indonesia for the World Bank, and in Beijing as an expert for the International Monetary Fund.

Professor Redburn's CV