Tim Burke and Gigi Georges, December 2011

As the US grapples with fiscal crisis—facing spiraling deficits, dangerous levels of debt, and the worst economic recession in some 70 years—Americans understand that all levels of their government must take action. Calls are growing louder from across the political spectrum for the same spirit of cost-cutting and financial restraint within government that so many families have had to embrace. According to a Pew Research Center poll in early 2011, however, even while Americans increasingly recognize the need to halt increases in spending, many remain reluctant to embrace specific cuts. There is still not one area of domestic federal spending —whether education, veterans’ benefits, health care or public safety—that more Americans, when pressed, want to decrease more than they want to increase. More»

Archon Fung and Zachary Tumin, October 2011

In June 2010, 25 leaders of government and industry convened to Harvard University to assess the move to “Government 2.0” to date; to share insight to its limits and possibilities, as well as its enablers and obstacles; and to assess the road ahead. This is a report of that meeting, made possible by a grant from Microsoft. More»

Sandford Borins, February 2010

This paper begins by outlining a number of key narratological concepts, such as the distinction between narrative—the events represented—and one or more narrators' presentations of the events, implied author and implied reader, and structural analysis of narrative genres. It then applies these concepts to the three narrations of the 31 finalists of the 2008 and 2009 Innovations in American Government Awards. The paper concludes with suggestions for how public management scholars could incorporate narratological insights into their analysis, how innovation awards could ask applicants to develop more explicit narratives, and how innovators could make more effective use of narrative in communicating their achievements. More»

Herman B. Leonard and Arnold M. Howitt, September 2010

The horrific events of Black Saturday (February 7, 2009) in Victoria, Australia, constitute an extreme event. In January and February of 2009, Victoria experienced unprecedented climatic conditions of drought and heat that brought the state to a literally explosive fire condition, with tinder-dry fuels across the state needing only a combination of wind and an ignition source to touch off potentially devastating fires. Over the course of January and early February, firefighters responded to literally hundreds of fires. In the first week of February, historically high temperatures prevailed across the state, with new records set in many locations. Melbourne experienced temperatures for three consecutive days above 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit), further exacerbating already historically-threatening fire conditions. More»

Sarah Dix, Diego Miranda, and Charles H. Norchi, February 2010

Between January and September of 2007, a team composed of Dr. Sarah Dix, Mr. Diego Miranda, and Dr. Charles H. Norchi appraised the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) country office programs, procedures, and management as implemented from 2003 to 2007. During the 2003 to 2007 period, the country program cycle focused on promoting good governance, conflict prevention, community recovery, and fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Overall, the office managed more than $500 million for all programs, becoming among the three largest UNDP country operations in the world. This report examines the organizational dimensions of the UNDP office in the DRC, and analyzes its most important program innovations. More»

John D. Donahue, February 2006

In a phrase coined by Lord Bryce and popularized by Justice Louis Brandeis, America's separate states are seen as "laboratories of democracy," giving the United States 50 channels for generating fresh new approaches to public problems. The potential advantages are apparent. But how fully this potential is realized depends on how rapidly and reliably innovations developed in each "laboratory" diffuse to other states. As the literature on the diffusion of innovations is limited, the archives of the Innovations in American Government Awards offer a promising but mostly untapped data set for exploring the replication of valuable innovations. In this publication, Donahue identifies state-level award winners and traces the pace and pattern of their diffusion. More»

Steven J. Kelman, October 2006

During the past several years the most aggressive effort in the history of government has been made in the United Kingdom to use an innovative public management tool—the use of performance metrics and performance goals in the management of public sector organizations—both to improve the performance of public-sector organizations and also to recast some of the terms of democratic deliberation in the UK. As a pioneer in this innovation, the UK example may provide lessons for other governments as they seek to further implement this innovation. Professor Kelman's research, largely focusing on interviews with managers within UK government, seeks to discover how United Kingdom central government institutions have gone about trying to influence the performance of frontline organizations that must actually meet these targets. More»

Gilberto Garcia, July 2005

After analyzing 271 government programs qualified as innovative through having won a national government and local management award in Mexico, and submitting a questionnaire to the 79 persons responsible for some of the best practices in the municipal government in the years 2001, 2002, and 2003, this paper identifies and analyzes variables that have a bearing on the emergence and sustainability of the innovation process in Mexico's local governments. The results show paradoxes in the process of innovation of organizations needing to accomplish increasingly complex objectives through a lack of mechanisms to accrue intermediate and long-term technical expertise, as well as organizational learning. This paper also describes the differences in the process of innovation according to three contextual variables: organization capability, institutional development, and political and electoral competition. More»

Steven Kelman, May 2004

The need for government organizations to change how they work is a major theme among practitioners and observers of government, discussed informally and repeated constantly at conferences for practitioners. The need for organizational change is also a preoccupying theme in the business world. But the impetus for change in government is somewhat different. In the private sector, the assumption is that the organization's current performance is good, but that shifts in the organization's environment demands changes in what the organization produces or how it produces it. In government, by contrast, the impetus for organizational change is typically that current performance isn't what it should be. Government isn't working as well as it should, and organizational change is needed to improve performance. More»

William Eggers, May 2003

Through the example of the General Service Administration, Eggers presents an analysis of how technology-enabled transformation entails breaking old habits, learning to do business in new ways, and adopting a radically different approach to serving your customers. Since nearly all the incentives in government work against all of these things, strong leadership is indispensable to achieving fundamental change in government. More»

Anil Gupta, October 2003

This paper presents an analysis of small grassroots innovations in India including the Honey Bee Network, underlying how small innovations can make a big difference. When the Honey Bee Network was started about 14 years ago, most innovators in three fields of technology, primary education, and common property institutions were poorly networked among themselves, though they were networked reasonably well within their communities. High degrees of fortitude, stubbornness, and to an extent, tendency to go alone were quite common and pronounced traits among the innovators. They were difficult to influence and even more difficult to convince of the need to network with others of their kind. It is against this context that the evolution of the Honey Bee Network and its influence on public policy, institutions, and structures is evaluated. More»

Elaine Kamarck, November 2003

For some countries government reform and innovation involves the reform of an old bureaucracy in the context of a newly democratic state. For other countries, this entails an all out fight against corruption. For still other countries, the challenge is to modernize large, outmoded bureaucracies and bring them into the information age. While countries have come to government reform for very different reasons, government reform and innovation is a global phenomenon. This paper provides a review of government innovations undertaken in the last 20 years in many countries around the world including the United States. More»

Peter Frumkin, April 2002

This paper explores the differences in operational and cultural characteristics of for-profit and nonprofit organizations, highlighting why many believe business firms have certain important advantages over nonprofits when it comes to competing for large human service contracts. The second section analyzes why public managers may need to structure service contracts in a way that not only maximizes short-term results, but that also affirms the importance of preserving a mixed organizational ecology. In a third and concluding section, some thoughts are offered on policy remedies that might supplement a more nuanced managerial approach to service contracting with nonprofit and for-profit providers. More»

Peter Frumkin and Mark T. Kim, October 2002

This article draws on a large longitudinal data set of nonprofit organizations in order to shed light on the consequences of government funding on nonprofit administrative efficiency and gain a more grounded understanding of the link between public funding and nonprofit efficiency. The piece first surveys literature on the nature of public funding and its impact on the administrative efficiency of nonprofits. It then presents the data and analyzes the impact of public funding on a group of nonprofit organizations over an 11-year period. The piece concludes with an exploration of the implications of the findings for future research on public-nonprofit relations. More»

James N. Levitt, December 2002

Observers throughout the course of U.S. history, including such prominent commentators as Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic volume Democracy in America, have dismissed Americans' willingness to appreciate or conserve nature. In fact, Americans have a long and distinguished record of realizing landmark conservation innovations that are novel on a worldwide basis; politically significant; measurably effective; transferable to separate organizations, jurisdictions, and nations; and, particularly significant in the field of conservation, enduring. This paper reviews conservation innovations in the U.S., starting with the observation that among the many important conservation innovations that Americans have achieved, only a distinct subset of them has had an enduring impact and so can be considered landmark innovations. More»

Jonathan Walters, December 2001

Public sector innovation may be considered an oxymoron, but for 15 years the Ford Foundation and Harvard Kennedy School have been identifying innovative public sector programs at the state, local, federal, and tribal government levels through the Innovations in American Government Awards Program, funded by Ford and administered by the Kennedy School. What the initiatives identified through the program tell us is that despite government's well-deserved reputation for being unfriendly to new ideas and change, government has actually proved to be remarkably—even resiliently—innovative. But where does innovation come from? What drives people to innovate? And in a political world where program survival is often a matter of having the right political patrons, what characteristics make for sustainable, replicable, results-based innovation? More»

Bryan C. Hassel and Lucy Steiner, June 2000

The authors of the paper examine two intriguing programs: Success for All and the Accelerated Schools Program, each of which has been adopted by more than 1,000 schools nationwide. They argue that given the relative success of these programs at scaling up, focusing some attention on the strategies that their promoters have used in taking them to scale might prove informative and useful for subsequent efforts to scale up good practice. More»