• Mission, vision and objectives
• Budget
• Organizational structure
• Staffing
• Management innovations (if any)
• Accomplishments (results)
• Challenges and/or lessons learned.
• Relationship to other organizations (either with other parts of government and/or with non-profit organizations)

The assignment is intended to give you an opportunity to talk to a public official about a program. You should be able to do a lot of research about the program prior to your interview. You want to use your time with the official to gain their perspectives about the program and its administration, the issues and challenges they face, any innovations they have underway, or specific things you might be interested in, such as their use of the web to do business, human resources issues (e.g. for state agencies, how will civil service reform impact the program), etc.. Check their website for mission, budget, organization chart, etc. If you can’t find it, you may need to ask for it. Their secretary might be able to send it to you before the meeting, but don’t ask folks to do work that is unnecessary if it is already publicly available.

You need to find the right person to interview. You want to find the program manager; it may or may not be the head of the organization. However, you might want to interview the head of the organization. Whoever you contact should be able to tell you whether they are the right person. If they are not, ask them who you should talk with.

2. Do you homework. Gather as much information about the organization before you design the questions and before you show up for the interview.
3. You need to make sure your questions are clear, simple and on point. Ask only one question at a time. For example, ask about strengths of the organization, and then ask about weaknesses. Do not ask about strengths and weaknesses in the same question. You might only get one part of the answer.
4. Be clear about your intention. What is your purpose? You need to be able to describe it to the manager or his/her secretary in one1 minute. Most likely you will make the appointment through the secretary. You will probably need to schedule 20-30 minutes. You may find that it is useful to fax or email them the questions before the interview; this reduces the fear and shows you are above-board. Note: do not ask any "surprise" questions—you are not doing a Geraldo gotcha interview.
5. Once you are clear about your intention, you will prepare a few open-ended questions. Open-ended means you are not preparing a survey where you check off their answers in a box. The advantage of open-ended question is that they get to describe things/tell you their views in their own words.
6. The questions should be things they can answer without going to look up information.
7. The interview is confidential. They need to know that you will not be identifying them in the paper or anywhere else.

1. Ice breaker: how long have you been in this position?
2. How did the program get started?
3. What challenges did the program face initially and how did they overcome them?
4. What are the greatest challenges facing the program now, or will face in the next 3-5 years?
5. How are they addressing those challenges?
6. What are the strengths of the organization?
7. What is he/she most proud of about the organization?
8. Have they undergone any changes in the last year? If so, what changes and how did they go about making the change?
9. What knowledge and skills should someone have if they want to work here or be a manager in this organization?
10. What is the most important thing the public should know about this program?
11. In what ways, if at all, do they engage citizens, customers, clients and legislators in planning the work of their organization? I
12. What can I, as an MPA student, do to prepare for a leadership position in their organization?

1. Thank them for taking the time from their busy schedule to meet with you.
2. Explain the 1-minute version of why you are there and the purpose of the interview.
3. Explain to them that you will be taking notes (tape-recording is probably going too far for this assignment), so you can more accurately summarize what they say for their paper. Remind them again, this is confidential and no identifying information will be used in the paper.
4. Ask them if they have any questions before you start. Answer their questions if they do. .
5. Ask each question and listen carefully for their response. Sit with quiet time while they formulate their answer. Write while they speak but maintain eye contact—yes, this is a challenge. As you take notes, you may find that it helps to jot down key words. You will flesh it out after the interview is over.
6. Ask clarifying questions as needed. You might, from time to time, reflect their answers: "Let me be sure I understand" and then give a brief summary. Don’t do this for all questions—it gets tedious. Do ask for clarification if you don’t understand a term or jargon being used. Folks tend to talk in their organizational shorthand and you may not understand it.
7. Pay attention. Do not let your mind wander. If it does and you realize you did not write something down, ask them to repeat it so you write it down correctly.
8. Pay attention to the time. You may have to ask fewer questions than planned if you run out of time, so prioritize your questions. If the interview is going well and you are running out of time, you can say you have more questions than there is time—and whether they will be willing to give you an extra 5 or 10 minutes. If not, pick your most important question to close.
9. Be respectful and mindful that you are not there to engage them in a debate about the program. You are there to accurately understand their description of the situation. And no, you are not there to point out differences in your perspective or suggest they should be doing anything other what they are doing. This is all about the discipline of seeking to understand. Think more of Moyers than O’Reilly here.
10. At the end, thank them and appreciate the fact they were willing to spend time with you and provide you with important and useful information.
11. Send a thank you note afterward.

After the Interview:

1. As soon as you leave the interview, find a quiet spot and go over your notes. Your memory will help you fill in the blanks and help you correct your writing, so it is clear. Look at the words you cannot understand and re-write them. Add information that you can recall that enables you to make sense of the "key words" you jotted down.
2. Trust me on this—leave at least ½ hour after the interview to go over your notes. You will forget a lot if you go on to your next thing or try to wait until you can type it into your computer later that night.
3. Type up the notes that night. Leave a couple of hours for this task. You want to organize the notes thematically rather than linearly. Some information may be given at different points in the interview but not when you asked the question.
4. Again, trust me. It takes much longer to type up the notes than it does to conduct the interview. I am relatively fast at this and my rule of thumb is that it takes 5 hours to do an in-depth write-up of a one-hour interview.
5. It is possible to call back to ask for clarification but only do this if it is 1) a major point and 2) if you have the rapport with the person and you know they won’t be grumpy about it.