It's human nature; it's also a luxury that 21st-century public management will find very difficult to afford. New technologies are making it possible for almost any government entity to provide services and solve problems on a scale unimaginable even a decade ago, but the dream will come true only for those whose work force rises above the classic divisions and thinks of itself in a new and unified way. The workers have to see themselves as a part of an enterprise.
This means three important things. First, the individual agencies within a state or local government must learn to share and co-invent new technology, rather than compete over it. Second, separate jurisdictions need to commit their resources to cooperative problem- solving, rather than squander those scarce resources on duplication of effort. And third, governments at all levels must learn to speak to their citizen-customers the way any good private corporation does: with one voice, one set of rules and one standard of performance. In other words, they must function as enterprises--coherent units from one end of the system to the other.
Turning thousands of disparate governments and agencies into 21st- century enterprises is a task of almost unbelievable complexity. And yet there are signs of progress all over the country: states that are giving their agencies linked telecommunications for the first time; cities that are becoming IT service providers for the communities that surround them; counties whose Web sites are taking entire categories of customer service and transforming them from frustrating over-the- counter hassles into simple and secure electronic transactions.
Project Enterprise is all of these small victories, and the countless new challenges that the victories inevitably create. On the following pages, Governing offers a few of the success stories, along with some of the pitfalls.
