Archive
There's no time like hard times to take a close look at duplicative programs.
Without strong executive leadership and teamwork, cross-agency acceptance of a smart growth agenda is a long shot.
It takes all kinds and types of approaches to close the achievement gap, writes Feather O'Connor Houstoun.
If the public sector has lost its appeal to new generations, writes Feather O'Connor Houstoun, then surely its reinvention should be approached with an opportunistic mindset.
A paradigm shift provides a valuable lesson for public management.
All the measurements and accountability sessions in the world can miss the boat, writes Feather O'Connor Houstoun, if they don't inspire the redesign of broken systems.
High-level data analysis is helping police spot crimes -- sometimes before they happen.
Small cities are eyeing stimulus money to bring high-speed Internet to all.
The financial genius overestimates the risk of default on insured muni bonds.
The cul-de-sac, that symbol of suburban bliss, seems to be going out of favor.
Managers face two major challenges: how to protect their constituent's values and, of course, how to succeed in their policy goals.
Just by going to the polls, it is still possible for the general taxpayer to win out over well organized special interests.
The executive branch has a huge responsibility to assure that third-party providers are held accountable.
Spearheaded by the mayor, Seattle has successfully reduced government carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuel consumption. These achievements, writes Stephen Goldsmith, are the result of a provocative leader.
Infrastructure repair and maintenance typically do not make headlines, which makes the job of seeking investment extremely difficult. Fortunately, there are some promising approaches.
What is the government role when private schools produce education for the public?
Malfeasance finds its way to the press, and the salutary daily acts simply don't.
Local, state and federal governments all deliver ever-increasing high-quality government services through third-party providers. To be certain, forming and managing these sophisticated, complex alliances is not easy.
When implementing a "stat" program, writes Stephen Goldsmith, new officials would be well advised to focus on truly big issues with the goal of turning "performance" into public value.
The municipal bond market is dealing with uncertain times -- not of its own making.
Best practices are all well and good. We make a case for a center to study the worst.
Can the president-elect's choice to lead HUD teach a tough bureaucracy how to say yes?
The feds want to run utility corridors right through state and local turf -- without asking permission.
Innovations are not organizational creations, writes H. George Frederickson, although they may be helped or hindered by organizations.
Bringing measures of performance to bear on matters of accountability is clearly a good idea. So, asks H. George Frederickson, how can we make modern applications of accountability viable?
The application of market-like competition to the public sector has had mixed results, writes H. George Frederickson.
There is a rapidly declining relationship between public management and jurisdiction. The fix is collaboration.
How do you keep public employees optimistic and productive when budget surgery brings staff reductions? There are ways, writes Frank Fairbanks.
Public administration finds itself in a vortex of two particularly pernicious trends: a political assault on local knowledge and professional competence.
Citizens know that there is a connection between public services and taxes, writes Frank Fairbanks, but the connection is not clear or direct.
When city resources are tight, Frank Fairbanks writes, sometimes all you need is community participation to make progress.
Downtown universities, writes Frank Fairbanks, create quality jobs, improve the quality of life in the broader central city, provide new cultural venues and create a positive street environment.
When crime blights a community, the police are just part of the solution. The key to turning things around is to engage the community itself.
Slashing spending offers opportunities for positive change. But a government's workers need to be part of the process, and they need to know they are being treated fairly.
What can we do to enhance the public's ability to understand what government is doing and why? Invite them into the budget process, writes Frank Fairbanks.
When the Pentagon targets a base near you, it could translate into serious economic opportunities.
To protect the children they serve, child welfare caseworkers need high-tech connections between field and office.
In less than two decades, the number of Americans 65 and older will more than double in at least 20 states.
Breaking down the larger customer population into subgroups that share similar characteristics allows organizations to service the unique needs of each group more efficiently and effectively, writes William D. Eggers.
Public retirement systems are vastly underfunded, and the fix is quite simple: Costs must either be reduced to solve the problem or deferred to postpone the problem.
Management matters: The manner in which Medicaid is administered significantly affects its performance.
Even those organizations doing some of the most creative work in government haven't necessarily created a culture of innovation, writes William D. Eggers. So how does government innovate more consistently?
The training grounds for our future public servants, William Eggers writes, are producing lots of future consultants, lobbyists and nonprofit executives.
Experts don't come up with the best ideas. A large group of people is better at solving complex problems than an expert, no matter how brilliant.
Knowledge is power: State and local officials are handicapped by their lack of good financial data.
Government innovators need to encourage a culture of innovation in which failure is not a four-letter word.
Good ideas alone take you only so far. The policy world, after all, is littered with big ideas, badly executed.
As services are increasingly outsourced to non-profits, John D. Donahue writes, government's role becomes even more important.
States are more agile than the federal government in their ability to experiment with new solutions and to overcome partisan hurdles.
The risk to the public regarding privatizing public assets seems limited. It's investors who may be in for a few nasty surprises.
As private-sector hiring slows, government has better odds of getting the top talent it so urgently needs.
Unlike the private sector, the public sector is accountable to multiple stakeholders with different priorities. John D. Donahue provides guidance on managing these competing demands.
The gravitation toward a third way is mostly sound. Yet a cautionary note is in order.
Without public managers, chief executives are helpless.
There are some worrisome signs that the near future could be even rockier than the recent past. There are also some serious causes for hope.
Reforming health care in the U.K. took clear thinking, determination and hard work.
Government outsources tasks that it shouldn't, and fails to outsource tasks that it should.
The transformation of America's public sector to date is limited and, worse, distorted. Second-order, silly, or questionable reforms have outpaced the fundamentals.
For a short time, it accounted for about 30 percent of federal Innovations winners. John D. Donahue explores this burst of inventiveness.
The way D.C.'s chief technology officer managed his organization points the way to the tools needed for energy efficient development.
Managing development to meet the needs of the present without compromising the future is no longer a luxury.
Usually, what we really want is an outcome, but all we can actually measure is an output, writes Robert D. Behn.
The stimulus package promises billions for energy-efficiency projects. State and local governments must be ready to move quickly, and they will need to embrace new levels of accountability and transparency.
Electronic databases make some things easier. At the same time, writes Robert Behn, they have made some things impossible.
Unless someone can somehow determine how exactly an innovation is producing the benefit, this innovation is impossible to replicate.
Struck by how many "stat" programs fail to appreciate some of the core principles of the strategy, Robert D. Behn identifies the five big errors he routinely encounters in such programs.
Unlike business executives, who need only think about how to achieve their organization's goals, public leaders have the added responsibility of discerning the "right" goals.
Organizations hope for teamwork, but reward individual behavior. They hope for cooperation, but reward competition. What folly!
You don't have to be an emergency management specialist to manage FEMA. After all, you will quickly face a variety of emergencies.
The challenge of replication is "going to scale." Sure, you can do it in the small. But can you do it in the large?
It's not that someone was asleep at the switch on mortgage lending. It's that everyone was.
There are way too many of them, they take too long and don't accomplish much. Can meetings be fixed?
The all-too-human tendency is to be nice to people. For good or bad, ranking restrains this behavior.
The case for standards in financial reporting is clear, writes Robert D. Behn. We need to know that government is using our tax dollars properly.
A practical recipe for how a leader translates his or her action into accomplishments.
Admitting mistakes is a risk. But willingness to admit mistakes builds trust.
Curiosity can be defined as a need, thirst, or desire for knowledge. It's also an attribute found in high performing organizations.
Infrastructure is a vital concept. If only we could call it something else.
More than help leaders figure out the next step, Babak Armajani has a formula helping them see the bigger picture.
There are plenty of costly mistakes to make when you try to balance a budget through personnel freezes, cuts or early retirements.
States and localities should use the current fiscal trauma to adjust and amend the ways they raise money.
Cities need to attract both the "creative class" and blue-collar manufacturing to survive in the 21st century.
The emerging topic for state CIOs is how to reconfigure desktops and computing practices to save energy.
Why don't we fix old roads and bridges? Because it's more fun to make new ones.
The feds don't spend much time hashing out mutual problems with states and localities. It's time they started.
Public pension funds are being drawn like bears after honey to these risky, unregulated but high-reward investments.
When the collection of revenue is too convenient, it can lead to consequences that may or may not be intended.
When a state tries to merge data centers from all its agencies, it's in for a bumpy ride -- and a very long one.
President Bush promised governors a close relationship and didn't deliver. Can states trust the reassuring words of his successor?
A CIO looks to the public to take city data and turn them into quick, nimble and useful software programs.
We need to stimulate state and local economies. We also need to keep close watch on what we're stimulating.
It's one thing to attract young people to government jobs. It's another to keep them there.
The head of Philadelphia's business improvement district set out to bring European-style lighting to Philly's arts district,
Cities on the cutting edge of the new economy are taking steps to retain their stock of industrial land.
How to ensure that retiree health coverage is ample, available and affordable.
CIOs pushed to become cabinet-level appointees -- but it doesn't always work out.
Streetcars, popular again in a growing number of cities, have the potential to be a vital part of urban transportation systems.
An odd route to budgeting flexibility comes from banking unfilled job slots.
A fire department taps into microblogging to keep itself on top of situations.
No one would confuse Manhattan with a library reading room. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg's thinking did produce a noise code that is now a national model.
Federalism isn't irrelevant to the 2008 presidential campaign. It's just that no candidate is framing ways for the feds to deal with the big issues.
Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone has enacted transformative changes in the management of Somerville, Massachusetts, and has done so by championing the importance of cost and efficiency data for all city services to improve accountability and performance.
Elected officials are often drawn to goals that can be realized within a single election cycle. Committing to a long-term agenda is always challenging, but it is especially critical in the current environment. Last year, Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman exhibited his leadership and commitment to long-term solutions when he launched Invest Saint Paul.
Indirect leadership is perhaps the most difficult to harness. But it can be done. Atlanta's mayor, Shirley Franklin, effectively used an indirect leadership strategy when she was determined to improve the services of the city's judicial system and eliminate wasteful practices in the organization.
A particularly dynamic mayor often embodies the personality or tone of a city. How much influence a mayor has is critically dependent upon timing and context, though. When a mayor with a strong personality takes over a troubled city with latent assets, the stage is set for a mayor like David Cicilline to produce dramatic reforms.
In nearly every state across the country, families are being forced from their homes, and the American dream of homeownership is turning into a nightmare. Well before the current crisis, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino made preserving and creating affordable housing a priority.
Transforming cities into competitive hubs for economic growth is a top priority for our nation's mayors. Yet, the traditional "firm chasing" and incentivizing efforts frequently fall short. This week, I welcome guest authors Ed Glaeser of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Robert Litan of the Kauffman Foundation to address this issue.
Achievements of recent winners of Harvard's Innovations in American Government Award were recognized, in part, because they are readily transferable to other jurisdictions.
Over the coming months, I will spotlight some of the best and brightest ideas generated by our nation's mayors, county executives and other government leaders. We will examine the critical qualities, including leadership, tenacity and creativity, that enabled these leaders to transform government services.
Northern Virginia may be on the road to an elaborate but ultimately
workable solution to financing a subway to its international airport.
