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John D. Donahue

Contributor

John D. Donahue is a GOVERNING contributor. He is the Raymond Vernon Lecturer in Public Policy, and faculty chair of the Harvard Kennedy School Case Program and the SLATE teaching initiative. His teaching, writing, and research mostly deal with public sector reform and with the distribution of public responsibilities across levels of government and sectors of the economy, including extensive work with the Harvard Kennedy School-Harvard Business School joint degree program. He has written or edited ten books, including "Disunited States" (1997), "The Privatization Decision" (1989, with four translations 1990-92) and "The Warping of Government Work" (2008). He served in the first Clinton administration as an Assistant Secretary, and then as Counselor to the Secretary of Labor.  A native of Indiana, he holds a BA from Indiana University and an MPP and Ph.D from Harvard.

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.
Public-sector innovation is a special sort of challenge.
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.