Summary

The Harvard Kennedy School Forum on Achieving Results and Protecting Public Values in a System of Networked Governance is sponsored by the Smith Richardson Foundation to advance the national discourse on emergent ideas in public management. The Forum marshals the insights of HKS faculty who have produced significant scholarship on networked governance and generates the practical materials needed to prepare the next generation of public officials for governing in the 21st century.

The Growing Network of Nongovernmental Partners

As social and political challenges require increasingly complex solutions, government must rely on a growing network of nongovernmental partners—private firms, nonprofit organizations, faith-based and other community groups—for both solutions and service delivery. This transition from “direct services provider” to “network facilitator” demands that public officials at all levels be able to form effective working partnerships with local businesses, philanthropists, and voluntary organizations to improve the performance of agencies such as schools, police forces, and parks departments. The Forum seeks to close the gap between existing and required skill sets by codifying the concepts, ideas, and practices that future leaders will need to fully realize the potential of networked governance.

Research

The HKS Forum on Networked Governance will capture the scholarship of HKS faculty working in the field of networked governance in a single edited volume. Each chapter will feature a different faculty member’s examination of the same case study concerning the United States Coast Guard’s efforts to improve port security. This innovative model promises to yield engaging and practical lessons regarding the strengths and potentially challenging aspects of each scholar’s analytical framework for networked governance. And, it will lay the foundation for the project’s curriculum development effort.

Curriculum Development

The HKS Forum on Networked Governance has convened a group of esteemed faculty at Harvard Kennedy School, and an external advisory group of scholars and practitioners, to identify extant research and classroom exercises and those that still need to be developed to create a comprehensive curriculum on networked governance. This curriculum will train leaders to become responsible and skillful in the initiation, development, management, and evaluation of networked governance. Ultimately, the curriculum materials will form the basis for a suite of Executive Education programs (tentatively titled “Leading and Managing in the New Form of Networked Government”) and will be transferable to individual courses for degree candidates.