Effective government becomes both model for emulation and teaching tool

By Jennifer Heldt

Special to the Gazette

Stephen Goldsmith faced a problem as old as democracy. He had been elected mayor of Indianapolis on a promise to privatize government, but once in office he discovered that that wasn't necessarily the best thing to do.

The new mayor dug his way out of the situation by setting up a bidding process that allowed government agencies to compete with private contractors. He found that government often could do the job more quickly and cheaply.

Goldsmith's creativity won the city an Innovations in American Government award, which came with $100,000 to help his plan become a national model for contract competition and a real life lesson for Harvard students and others studying government.

The Innovations program, administered by the Kennedy School of Government and sponsored by the Ford Foundation, has been fostering resourceful projects like Goldsmith's for 11 years. The 1997 winners will be announced in October.

"The goal is to recognize successful, creative solutions and encourage other governments to imitate them," said Alan Altshuler, the Ruth and Frank Stanton Professor in Urban Policy and Planning, and director of the Innovations program.

The cases also become valuable teaching tools, he said.

"Research tends to focus on cases of scandal and fiascoes; those are also the cases that tend to be the most available, so students are encouraged to second guess public officials who failed," Altshuler said. "Innovations highlights programs in which public servants succeeded. It challenges students to keep up with ingenious practices."

Of the more than 1,000 applications received each year, 25 finalists are chosen to give presentations and open their sites for visits by the National Committee on Innovations in Government. Ten of the finalists each win an award of $100,000. The rest receive $20,000. The Foundation has awarded $12 million to date.

To be considered, a program must be at least a year old, take a new approach or significantly improve an existing program, and have a proven record of effectiveness. Winners are chosen based on site visits and presentations made to the National Committee.

Recipients use the award money to promote their programs. The money may be spent on things such as conferences and publications. The Kennedy School works with winners to prepare case studies, reports, and teaching curricula.

"This program is ideal for the Kennedy School, which is committed to excellence in government," said executive director William Parent. "Most of our students will return to or go into government service and this challenges them to be more creative, more responsive, and more effective."

The School offers one-year masterÕs degrees in public administration for midcareer professionals, two-year masterÕs degrees in public policy and public administration, and a doctorate program. The School also offers training to senior government officials through the executive program, which is several weeks long.

Cases culled from the Innovations program now comprise the majority of those taught in the strategic management core curriculum. They offer specific solutions to problems but mostly are used to teach basic management principles such as empowering front-line workers, gaining support for new ideas within the bureaucracy and from the public, and sustaining innovative organizations.

The Indianapolis case found its way to a Kennedy School module on Privatization Analysis taught by Associate Professor of Public Policy John Donahue.

"It very quickly shows the complexity of trying to make policy on political sloganing," he said. "Goldsmith realized that his campaign slogans wouldn't work, but he was bound by the general thrust of his campaign."

Other case studies deal with a wide variety of issues from reducing pollution to increasing adoption to fighting crime.

"What makes these cases good for teaching is that students can see real problems people grappled with, and the grappling is where the learning happens," Donahue said. "They also underscore the need for creativity and innovation."

In addition to providing lessons for students, the cases provide lessons for other governments. About 85 percent of the award-winning projects have been successfully imitated.

Government officials learn about the innovative programs through media coverage of winners, the loose grapevine that connects government entities, and even from students who have passed through the Kennedy School.

Many programs, such as Indianapolis' public/private bidding process, have become models used nationwide. Officials usually adapt the innovative programs to meet their particular needs.

In Massachusetts, for instance, 24 school districts based their conflict resolution programs on a 1994 Innovations winner, Student Conflict Resolution Experts. The programs teach students how to resolve conflicts without violence. They differ from school to school based on a variety of factors such as the personalities of the teachers and the number of students.

A desire to be emulated drew former Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts to the awards contest. Her administration had developed a program that measures the results of OregonÕs efforts to meet specific 20-year goals for the state, but couldn't afford to handle all the requests coming in for information about the program.

"We had something that we thought was unique and that was a tool that could be used on any level of government," she said. "But we had a very small budget."

Roberts came to Cambridge in person to deliver the short presentation that helped Oregon win an Innovations award in 1994.

"It was a little nerve-wracking to take this comprehensive program and describe it in less than 10 minutes," she said.

But that experience helps her now that she is on the other side of the table.

Roberts joined the committee that selects program winners two years ago when she came to the Kennedy School to direct the Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government.

A study of the applications made over the years reveals emerging trends in governing such as community policing, Parent said.

New York City won an award last year for expanding its community policing program with a computer system known as Compstat. It allows police to track crime almost as quickly as it occurs. This allows police to identify trouble spots and target resources accordingly.

Another trend is for government agencies to recast themselves as service organizations focused on "customers" rather than captive audiences. As a result, some agencies are pushing voluntary cooperation to enforce regulations rather than relying on punishment.

A California program that won an award last year attacks sweatshops by working with manufacturers and retailers who buy from sewing contractors and subcontractors. The program seeks to make them aware of the conditions under which the clothes they buy are made. The department also publishes a list of manufacturers and retailers who insist on legal and ethical practices among their contractors and subcontractors -- and those who do not.

Since the program was started, many retailers and manufacturers have agreed to monitor conditions in garment factories, something that was difficult for the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division to do with its small corps of investigators.

The California program is also indicative of attempts to cope with reduced or controlled levels of government spending, another trend seen in the applications, Parent said.

"As Lord Rutherford said, 'We haven't got the money, so we have to think,Õ " Parent said. "Due to the cuts in funding, we have seen more partnerships between government and the private sector and between levels of government."

The Innovations award is an important tool to encourage governments to try new things, Roberts said.

"It helps government look at what it does well and share those ideas," she said. "It's one of the few programs that recognizes the best in government."