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Feather O'Connor Houstoun

Feather O'Connor Houstoun

Contributor

Feather O'Connor Houstoun, who has held positions at every level of government, is a senior adviser to the Wyncote Foundation on public media and journalism and a former president of the William Penn Foundation. She was a member of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission from December 2011 to October 2016.

Houstoun served as Pennsylvania's secretary of public welfare during Gov. Tom Ridge's administration, New Jersey state treasurer under Gov. Tom Kean, chief financial officer of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, and in a number of senior positions with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

As efforts to evaluate housing programs illustrate, it's difficult to make precise comparisons. But it's worth the effort.
Civic innovation can improve the way government works, but it needs a long runway.
A project to fix the city's stormwater problems has blossomed into so much more.
Experiments in the Seattle area that involve an array of organizations have ambitious goals.
Pay-for-success programs seem to hold promise as a way to find the up-front investments for programs that save money in the long run.
In the end, it's usually better to define what a service should be before deciding who should deliver it.
What happened to the VA can happen to any government institution. New leadership is just the first step on the road to reform.
The story of Italy's effort to decentralize its governmental functions offers lessons for innovators everywhere.
The assertion that a program will save more money than it costs in the long term is a difficult one to demonstrate.
A journal launched by two Philadelphia social services entrepreneurs is going a long way toward spreading the word about what works and what doesn't.