A year-long effort from various stakeholders in the region culminated in creating the COG Institute for Regional Excellence. These included partnerships between the George Washington University's Center for Excellence in Public Leadership, the COG Chief Administrative Officers Committee, personnel directors from COG member jurisdictions, and the COG Board of Directors.
COG had developed a strategic plan focusing on leadership training as an important element of regional development. Thus, COG and George Washington University staff worked together to create a year-long Regional Executive Development Program credentialing participants as Certified Public Managers® upon their successful completion of the program.
The first cohort completed the program in August 2002. Download a fact sheet on program graduates since inception.
The Regional Executive Development Program assists local government managers in the metropolitan Washington area in dealing with the challenges of providing services and meeting the needs of residents in a growing metropolitan area.
It is targeted at mid- to senior-level managers in metropolitan Washington area local governments.
It aims to develop leadership, enhance management skills, increase exposure to innovation in local government, and develop an understanding of regional issues and approaches.
Regional Executive Development Program (REDP)
The IRE offers the Regional Executive Development Program, a year long program leading to a Certified Public Manager's® designation. This program is accredited by the National Certified Public Manager's® Consortium. As part of its requirement, the REDP must offer courses in line with the required CPM® Core Competencies.
The CPM program requires 300 contact hours, 200 must be in the following core competency areas:
- Personal and Organizational Integrity Increasing awareness, building skills and modeling behaviors related to identifying potential ethical problems and conflicts of interest; appropriate workplace behavior; and legal and policy compliance.
- Managing Work Meeting organizational goals through effective planning, prioritizing, organizing and aligning human, financial, material and information resources. Empowering others by delegating clear job expectations; providing meaningful feedback and coaching; creating a motivational environment and measuring performance. Monitoring workloads and documenting performance. Dealing effectively with performance problems.
- Leading People Inspiring others to positive action through a clear vision; promotes a diverse workforce. Encouraging and facilitating cooperation, pride, trust and group identity; fostering commitment and team spirit. Articulating a vision, ideas and facts in a clear and organized way; effectively managing emotions and impulses.
- Developing Self Demonstrating commitment to continuous learning, self-awareness and individual performance planning through feedback, study and analysis.
- Systemic Integration Approaching planning, decision-making and implementation from an enterprise perspective; understanding internal and external relationships that impact the organization.
- Public Service Focus Delivering superior services to the public and internal and external recipients; including customer/client identification, expectations, needs and developing and implementing paradigms, processes and procedures that exude positive spirit and climate; demonstrating agency and personal commitment to quality service.
- Change Leadership Acting as a change agent; initiating and supporting change within the organization by implementing strategies to help others adapt to changes in the work environment, including personal reactions to change; emphasizing and fostering creativity and innovation; being proactive.
Download the program brochure for a more detailed description.