GOVERNMENT

DONALD F. KETTL, University of Pennsylvania Political Science Professor, February 28, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: What happened to “common sense” in civil service? It seems one problem is rules are created and followed to the letter without regard to common sense flexibility. I see managers finding ways to create flexibility in the system, such as by not permanently filling positions so the position may be “permanently temporarily” filled by technically unqualified candidates yet who are the best people at doing the jobs. Shouldn’t the system be designed somehow to allow for common sense flexibility?
KETTL: Ahhh…Common Sense. I once worked at a place where the first rule was that every sentence beginning, “wouldn’t it make sense that…” was ruled out of order.
But you’re right. The key is creating a system that makes sense. And the keystone is a system that focuses on strengthening government’s capability to maximize performance.

JONATHAN D. BRUEL, IBM Senior Fellow, September 20, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: I heard an economist in the Comptroller General’s office forecast that our country will have a shortage of about 60 million employees from what we should expect to maintain our economy. We are already beginning to see this shortfall in jobs held by teenagers (due to the less proportion of Americans being teenagers, who will soon be the future lower proportion of the entire workforce) and in health care professions (where shortages of people to fill the demand for jobs are evident). What are the forecasts for jobs in the public sector? What are the future employment needs within the public sector, and are we producing enough graduates in the public sector fields?
BRUEL: I don’t have the data to forecast the needs for jobs in the public sector, but the reality is that the challenges of today’s society are such that individual agencies and programs cannot succeed in delivering results on their own any longer. The fundamental performance improvement challenge in government is for leaders to achieve results by creating collaborative efforts that reach across agencies, across levels of government, and across the public, nonprofit, and private sectors.

DAVILD WEIL, author, March 15, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Is it also a problem that not only lots of government documents are delayed a while before they are made public, but when they are made public, it’s a huge amount of documents released all at once that make it difficult to find anything?
WEIL: You have hit on am important issue for transparency: freshness of data, Transparency policies are only effective if they provide information that users find relevant to current decisions. If information is out of date or provided in a way that users find it difficult to use, it won’t take long for users to view the policy as ineffective.
An example of this is the policy of drinking water disclosure. The idea is to provide the public with information about the quality of the water they drink. The reality is that the information is often a year old. So by the time that people receive their water quality report, it is telling them about conditions that may no longer exist.