By Jonathan Walters

The general public typically regards “government innovation” as an oxymoron. And the conventional wisdom among public officials is that quite a large share of the blame for that can be laid right back at the feet of the public: Taxpayers — and the press — don’t understand that innovation involves risk and that risk can lead to mistakes.

So public officials, unwilling to risk the wrath of an unsophisticated electorate when mistakes are made, opt for protecting the status quo rather than trying to do things in any sort of bold new way. In other words, the public ultimately is getting the government that it deserves, think many public officials: plodding but predictable, packed with people who’d rather punch the clock than try to punch up performance.

It’s a convenient point of view. Yet each year around this time, we are reminded that government can innovate. That reminder comes in the form of the Innovations in American Government Awards, announced each fall. (By way of full disclosure, I have been covering the awards for 13 years and have been paid by the Ford Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government, which administers the awards, for research and writing related to the program).

With the announcement last week of this year’s winners, it’s worth considering the question of risk, and who is to blame for the public sector’s notorious inclination to avoid it.

Seldom do I agree with all the choices made by the Innovations program’s national selection committee when it comes to winners. And this year is no different. Some, I think, are quite good and quite innovative; others not so. But in every case, the recognized programs do represent an effort on the part of some person or group of people to do things differently.

In fact, in 13 years of covering the awards, what I’ve seen collected is not so much a group of good ideas as it is a gallery of gutsy people, people for whom doing the same things in the same inefficient or ineffectual way is just not acceptable.

I view them as guerrilla warriors. They come from the top of organizations, the middle and the bottom. I’m not going to dwell here on their dedication, drive, persistence and all that boilerplate “what-it-takes-to-be-an-innovator” stuff (boilerplate that I’m as guilty of using as anyone). What a lot of them really have is an innate curiosity and a real sense of fun, and they don’t particularly care if they make, or get into, trouble.

To them, getting fired for some minor or monumental screwup is vastly preferable to coming in every day and doing the same thing in the same way. And it would never even occur to them to blame the public for any agency’s plodding, predictable ways. That’d be too dull.

Besides, these people don’t worry about getting fired. They know something that their mousy counterparts don’t: People with an innate sense of curiosity and fun tend not to get fired, they tend to get promoted. Besides, if they are fired, they also know they’ll be rehired by someone else really quickly.

Governing staff correspondent Jonathan Walters is the author of Understanding Innovation: What Inspires It? What Makes It Successful? , published by the PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government, and Measuring Up: Governing’s Guide to Performance Measurement for Geniuses (and Other Public Managers).

Recently in View:

The Receding Shock: the danger of creeping complacency (posted December 11, 2001)

The King of the Mayors: will Rudy bump Fiorello? (posted December 4, 2001)

Gaming the Busted Budget: a dubious outcome of the new unity (posted November 27, 2001)

The Bad-News Machine: Michael Bloomberg’s biggest challenge (posted November 19, 2001)

Now It’s ‘Our’ Government: why the attacks didn’t — and did — matter (posted November 13, 2001)

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