Adding a Player

In my November 6^th blog, I missed a beat.  I had described four forces that will likely influence the next Administration’s management agenda:  the President-elect, the bureaucracy, the Congress, and the think tanks.  One that I’d missed:  the current President!

President Bush made that clear the week after that blog entry by releasing a new Executive Order, “Improving Government Program Performance.”

The new executive order says it is intended “to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the Federal Government and promote greater accountability. . .”  The Order:

·        Requires each agency head to create annual and long-term goals.  These goals are to have “objectively measurable outcomes” and measure progress towards those goals. Individuals must be held accountable for meeting those goals.  The Order also requires agency heads to justify their budget requests based on “objective performance information” and post “updated and accurate” program-level performance information on their agency’s websites.

·        Requires each agency head to appoint a “Performance Improvement Officer.”  This newly-designated officer is to be a senior executive who will be the focal point for the development of their agency’s strategic plan, annual performance plan, and annual performance report – all of which are required by the Government Performance and Results Act.  They are also responsible for assessing the goals and targets proposed by program managers, as well as assessing the measures being used by the programs.  In addition, they are responsible for assessing performance and advising on “performance measures in personnel performance appraisals.”

·        Creates a government-wide “Performance Improvement Council.” The deputy director for management of the Office of Management and Budget will chair a cross-agency council of performance improvement officers.  Collectively, they will develop criteria for evaluating program performance (which could be the existing Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), or some variation). They will also be able to share best practices as well as develop a website “that provides the public with information on who well each agency performs.”  Currently, OMB sponsors a website, expectmore.gov, that provides program-level performance assessments done using the PART.

This executive order embeds in the machinery of government a single point of accountability in each agency and government-wide for creating, tracking, and reporting performance and results — 14 years after the passage of the Results Act.   Over the years, this responsibility has been performed in different places in different agencies.  Some placed this responsibility with their chief financial officer.  Others placed it in their planning or budgeting units.  Some split the responsibilities across their agencies.  This Executive Order finally creates a single focal point of accountability.  It also creates a cross-agency network of these officials so they can share best practices, much like other cross-agency councils such as the Chief Financial Officers Council.

So, in the upcoming year, senior executives will be designated as their agency’s “performance improvement officer” and a cross-agency council of performance officers will convene and likely set an agenda for 2008 and 2009.   As a result, the next Administration will inherit a network of performance improvement executives – largely career public servants — who will be responsible for advocating improved performance and making results of agency programs publicly available.   The Executive Order does not enshrine this Administration’s management agenda or the PART.  Therefore, if the next Administration wants a different focus, it will have an administrative foundation upon which it could rapidly build and deploy a variety of new performance-oriented initiatives.

The Back Office

I attended a recent meeting of federal agency budget analysts and came away elated (okay, it doesn’t take much).  The budget community is now actively engaged in collaborating across agencies!  Now this is significant.  The financial, audit, and personnel communities have been actively collaborating for years, but this is a big step for the budget community.

Why is this important for any President?

An important lesson from the 1990s was that the back office functions (sometimes called the business support operations) have to be able to collaborate across agency boundaries if policy makers want mission functions to effectively collaborate.  So if the President wants cross-agency attention on big national challenges, he or she has to ensure someone is tending to cross-agency efforts behind the scenes.

The classic example was the effort to have Defense and Veterans health care systems to co-locate and jointly deliver services to active military and retired veterans in the same location.  A pilot hospital out West was trumpeted as a success story, but when visited, there was a taped line across the hallway – one side delivered health care to the military, the other side delivered health care to veterans.  When asked why, it became clear that the back office functions were not integrated and that co-mingling services might actually endanger the health of the patients.  Why?  Well, the pharmaceutical codes, physician certifications, and medical protocols were different.  They could not jointly deliver medical services until they first integrated the back office functions.  The lesson: you need to align back office functions if you want mission-oriented functions aligned.  The Defense Department recognizes this and has invested heavily in attempts to integrate its 5,000 different business functions via its Business Transformation Agency.

About six years ago, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched several efforts to begin to align selected back office functions across all federal agencies.  The driving motivation seemed to have been to reduce costs (initial estimates were $10 billion in savings), not necessarily increase collaboration.  A quick analysis had shown that multiple agencies were investing in the same systems for finance, personnel, etc.  The OMB mantra was “buy once, use many times.”  

Federal Enterprise Architecture.  The first effort was targeted at aligning technology and transaction processes. This effort is called the Federal Enterprise Architecture.  Its ambitious goal is to create a framework for government services that shows their interrelationships in ways that drive common standards, inform investments in systems, and leverage electronic delivery of services. 

Lines of Business.  The second major effort to align back office functions is the Lines of Business initiative.  This effort is attempting to: (a) develop common standards and processes in nine specific functional areas such as human capital, financial management, budget, and (b) offer shared services around those functional areas where cross-agency service delivery makes sense.  There is an obvious interrelationship with the Federal Enterprise Architecture effort.

Each of the Lines of Business initiatives has developed its own governance structure comprised of staff from across the government and each has its own executive “portfolio manager” and an agency-level “managing partner.”  So for example, the portfolio manager for the Budget Formulation and Execution Line of Business is in OMB and the program manager is in the Department of Education’s budget office.  The Budget Line of Effort has created a collaborative community across the government where members share best practices, work together on data calls from OMB, and are beginning to define and develop common processes via an invitation-only wiki that has more than 5,000 members.

These various collaborative communities are making amazing progress in knitting together back office functions across the government. This not only can save money by reducing duplication, but it has an important role in increasing mission-related collaboration.   However, collaborative networks like these tend to be fragile – they are often based on interpersonal relationships and goodwill.  These are put at risk in any change of Administration.  So a challenge for the next President is to make sure these efforts do not inadvertently stall out.

A Technology Agenda

I recently attended a Web 2.0 for Business conference, which had a track focusing on government.  I’ve never been to one of these kinds of events.  There was a lot of excitement.  There were dozens of vendor booths with lots of trinkets.   Business cards were flying faster than confetti at a political convention.  Tall, young men with fedoras and serious looks wandered the floor (they must be important bloggers). 

The sessions on Web 2.0 in Government were packed.  And of course, this caused me to reflect:  what might be the threads of the next President’s technology agenda?  There are probably at least three different dimensions that will need to be developed, and each draws on a different subculture within the government.

Hardware, software, standards, staff.  The first covers the basics:  the technological capacity, the extent of interoperability, privacy and security, and ensuring access to users.  This is the core purview of agency chief information officers.  This includes:

• Transition to IPv6 and wireless 802.11n  (both far more techie than I understand)

• Cybersecurity and privacy issues
• Enterprise architectures
• Development of standards to ensure  interoperability, quality information, no cookies, 508 compliant
• Project justification and management of new systems
• The IT workforce

E-government.  The second covers the E-government agenda:  enabling customer-centric transactions on the internet and cross-agency efforts.  These tend to be in the purview of both chief information officers and/or agency chief technology officers and include initiatives such as:

• Web-based transactions, such as the 24 E-Gov projects

• The development of single-entry portals to government such as USA.gov
• The move toward the use of shared services, both internally (such as the financial management line of business) and externally (such as Services Canada).

 The third covers the growing area loosely called “Web 2.0 Government.”  This growth is being driven both by employees and citizens and is largely participatory in nature.  This seems to be the purview of younger line employees and advocates of cross-agency collaboration. 

Web 2.0.  The Web 2.0 phenomenon seems to be growing quickly in the broader web community and in corporations.  However, there seems to be a much slower adoption rate in government, at all levels.  In addition, it can be seen as a threat by traditional chief information officers because the Web 2.0 tools are user-driven and users often go outside their agencies’ technology systems to “grab” free services off the internet if the agency doesn’t provide that functionality itself.  This is happening in state and local governments, where employees are creating wikis in WordPress and posting training materials on YouTube because their own agency operations do not support Web 2.0 tools. In addition, citizens are beginning to create their own interactions with government using Web 2.0 tools, such as the blogger in California who designed an alternative downtown redevelopment proposal for his community using SecondLife.   These tools – which were the subject of several of the conference panels – include:

• blogs, wikis, and social network sites

• citizen-facing dialogue around policy and  regulatory development
• three-dimensional social networks such as Second Life and America’s Army.

Each of these three dimensions put innumerable opportunities on the table. Sorting out some of the options out in advance of the next Administration may be a helpful exercise in setting some early priorities.  What are some of the options and issues that you think should be put on the agenda?

One Year and Counting

A year from now, a president-elect will have already frantically launched his or her transition team for the 77-day transition period.   But before then, the die will have already been cast on his or her management approach, which, according to presidential scholar John Burke, can determine the success of his or her first year as president.

There will be at least four forces that will contribute to framing that management approach:

The President-Elect.  The candidates will start to put into place their transition teams by spring or summer of 2008, after each party has winnowed down their respective fields. Traditionally, these efforts have been very low profile because none of the candidates will want to give the impression to the public that they are so confident in winning that they are planning to launch a transition team before the election results are known.  However, history also tells us that any winning candidate who has not started at least six months before the election will be woefully behind come the day after Election Day.  Dr. Burke’s book on the transition process concludes that the best-run transition effort was conducted by Ronald Reagan.

The composition of the transition team, both in its planning stages as well as its implementation, will strongly influence the first six months of the new president’s term of office.  Also influencing the management agenda will be the new president’s campaign promises as well as the potential appointees who will be jockeying for position.

The Bureaucracy.  The Presidential Transition Act gives the General Services Administration a prominent role in the transition.  It provides temporary office space and equipment to the transition team, but GSA and the National Archives are also given joint responsibility for pulling together information on how the government works to provide to the incoming president-elect’s team.  In 2000, for example, they created a website with agency-by-agency information.  The Act also authorizes funding to provide training to new political appointees, such as how to work effectively with Congress, the media, and career executives.

The agencies traditionally prepare back-up books for the incoming administration.  The outgoing administration can also make the transition easier by having agencies update their strategic plans, etc. in advance.  It can also selectively recommend funding to be set aside for the incoming president’s team so it has the flexibility to move quickly.  For example, the Office of Management and Budget’s budgeting system is antiquated and funding would be needed to begin an upgrade.  If the request for funding is left to the new president, that funding would not be available for at least a year after taking office, with implementation occurring far later than that.

The Congress.  The Congress has a strong influence on the success of the new president’s management efforts.  Will it update and fund the provisions under the Presidential Transition Act?  Will it provide some discretionary funding for updating White House internal operations?  Will it streamline its requirements for the confirmation of new political appointees?  Will it adopt new laws that will be left for the new president implement?

External Think Tanks.  The Washington think tank world predominantly focuses on policy issues.  However, a sub-set of “good government” groups (including the IBM Center) often provide insights for the incoming administration on management issues. 

Past efforts have helped new administrations get a jump-start on management issues, as well.  For example, in 2000, the Council for Excellence in Government sponsored forums on electronic government that helped the incoming Administration frame its e-government initiatives.  In 2008, similar efforts may be launched around improvements to acquisition systems and human capital, as well as technology.  In addition, the good government groups will likely offer guidance and training materials on management issues as well as assisting new appointees understand the context of working effectively in Washington.  For example, the Council plans to update its “Prune Book” describing the context and needed qualifications for the 40-50 most difficult jobs in the government.  In another example, Brookings Institution in 2000 published a book, “The White House Staff,” by Brad Patterson that examines in detail the functions of each of the offices in the White House.  He is planning an update in 2008. 

What other things do you think should be added to a check list of things the candidates’ transition teams should be watching for in the coming year?

Performance Budgeting

Turkey has committed to budget its government based on the performance of its agencies and programs by 2010.  I learned that yesterday at a seminar being held for several senior Turkish Finance Ministry officials visiting Washington, DC to examine how the U.S. has been progressing in the use of performance budgeting since the federal government committed in 2001 to this initiative.

This seminar was an opportunity for me to reflect on the progress made, and the potential agenda the next president might face when he or she starts to develop their first budget to submit to Congress.

Performance budgeting, according to budget expert Phil Joyce, “. . . involves focusing government allocation processes at all levels on relationships between dollars and results.”  While a simple notion, it is difficult to actually do.  The federal government began reporting budget information, financial information, and performance information in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton.  The challenge is integrating those three streams of reporting.

President George W. Bush centered his government management improvement agenda on performance improvement through the integration of performance and budget information.  In the past seven years, his Administration’s efforts have resulted in far more transparency in budget, financial, and performance information:

The “unit of analysis” for assessing performance in government has shifted from how well agencies are performing to how well individual programs perform.  The Program Assessment Rating Tool was created by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and is used to assess each of nearly 1000 major federal programs.  Summaries of those assessments are posted publicly on the web.

• OMB has “cleaned up” the federal budget structure, eliminating dozens of small accounts that complicated rather than clarified where monies were spent.
• Agencies are being graded by OMB on the extent to which they integrate performance and budget information into how they manage – does it tie to their decisions?  Does it tie to how individual employees are rated on their performance?
• Agencies are also presenting performance information more consistently to Congress. But not without some skepticism. For example, the IRS recast its budget structure in 2002 from the traditional approach to one that reflected what results it was trying to achieve and Congress asked GAO to assess the new structure.
• OMB is sponsoring a “line of business” around the budget process that can lead to common standards and processes across agencies.

These and related efforts create a new foundation of performance information for the next President to build upon.  Much like President Clinton left a foundation of performance information as a result of his active implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act, President Bush’s Administration has “set up” opportunities for the next president.

What might those new opportunities look like?

First, with a full set of descriptive program assessments, it will be possible to “mix and match” programs that contribute to common outcomes – even if they are not in the same agencies.  Fighting forest fires crosses agency boundaries.  Fighting pandemic flu crosses agency boundaries.  Fighting poverty crosses agency boundaries.  It will allow a view of the government based on services and results, not just the traditional view of agencies and programs.

Second, having transparent performance information that is publicly available will allow — with today’s technology — “mash-ups” of information from different sources.  So someone could, for example, take OMB’s program assessment information and cross it with congressional committee jurisdiction of those programs so a congressional staffer could see which programs are related to which committee, and which services and results are produced.

Third, the “line of business” approach will begin to create a common language across agencies at the technical level.  Based on past experience, this is a necessary prerequisite to creating more collaborative relationships at the policy level between programs and agencies.  Agencies are more willing to work together if they have common administrative processes for handling money, services, and information.  This was a major lesson in getting the Defense and Veterans health care systems to collaborate.

And fourth, some academics, including Joyce, are floating the idea of giving citizens a more formal role in assessing performance and providing advice on budget and policy alternatives at the federal level.  A recent IBM Center report notes that this is a growing trend in other countries and at the local level in some communities in the U.S.  Alternatives for the federal level include:  including citizens in OMB’s program assessment review process and organizing representative forums around major policy choices.

While these would be major steps to take, they could create new leverage points for a President to address increasingly complex challenges.  Do you have other ideas on improving how budget and performance information could be improved?

Next President’s Human Capital Agenda

I attended a Performance Coalition forum yesterday that was a dialogue on human capital issues facing the next President.  Panelists extolled the importance of attracting and retaining talent needed to deliver on government’s promises to citizens.  But it served as an opportunity to reflect on what seems to be going on.

The most visible human capital issue in the current presidential campaign is the debate over the appropriate mix of public sector vs. private sector employees in delivering public services.  For example, Senator Hillary Clinton says she would reduce the number of private sector contractors; Rudy Giuliani says he would reduce the number of federal employees by not replacing all those that retire.

However, there is another layer of human capital issues that may not be front-burner for the campaigns but will likely be items that a new president – whoever wins – will have to address when he or she takes office because Congress is beginning to take the initiative in defining that agenda.  In addition, the Bush Administration has ongoing initiatives that will likely continue in any future administration.

Congress is currently actively considering about a half dozen issues that, if enacted in the coming year, would largely be left to the new president to implement.  These include:

• Expanding diversity in the career Senior Executive corps (H.R. 3774, S. 2148)
• Expanding the use of tele-work (S.1000)
• Legislatively establishing labor-management councils (H.R. 3892, S. 2197)
• Requiring agencies to “in-source” work that is currently being done by contractors (in Defense Authorization Bill)
• Create a Public Service Academy (H.R. 1671, S. 960)
• Restricting the implementation of Homeland Security and Defense pay-for-performance systems
• Requiring all employees to include a new element in their performance appraisals to reflect their agencies’ customer service standards (H.R. 404)

 In addition, the Bush Administration has put in place several initiatives that are likely to continue, largely around creating a results-oriented performance culture in the government.  In some cases they started under his predecessor and in other cases are statutory requirements enacted in recent years: 

• Creation of the position of Chief Human Capital Officer in each department.
• A pay-for-performance system for career Senior Executives.
• An agency-by-agency annual employee survey.
• Workforce plans in each of the major agencies that detail existing and needed employee capabilities and competencies.
• Common shared services and a common framework for back office human resource functions, such as payroll.
• OMB pilots on managing individual performance and creating high-performing organizations
• Creating a common assessment framework, the Human Capital Assessment and Accountability Framework, so agencies can assess their efforts against an agreed-upon standard.

So when the next president takes office, there will be an on-going agenda of issues.  The challenge will be setting priorities among them, and adding his or her own issues to the mix.

Engaging Citizens in Government

How do citizens get involved in their government?  Some get involved when something happens to them personally – a zoning change in their neighborhood, a child is hit by a drunk driver, or the passport office doesn’t respond to an application for a new passport.  Others are passionate about certain issues – environment, immigration, or terrorism.  Some have expertise that can benefit the government – these kind of people volunteer for, or are recruited, to participate in advisory committees or on study commissions. 

But the average citizen is oftentimes not engaged beyond what they read or see on the news.  Is that good?  Can that be changed? What should the next President do?  Some observers, such as the Pew Charitable Trust, suggest that civic engagement is not only an important part of democratic citizenship but also integral to citizen trust in the legitimacy of their government, especially among young people.

The traditional “citizen engagement” methods of the federal government have been public hearings, comments on proposed rules, occasional surveys, and periodic grassroots conferences on specific topics.  The White House Conference on Aging is one example.  The use of advisory committees by individual agencies or programs is another.  The Environmental National Advisory Committee is one of more than 1,000 such committees.  Each of these methods is governed by laws and rules that often make it harder for people to be engaged.  The laws attempt to ensure an “open” and “unburdensome” process, but may have a different effect.  For example, the Paperwork Reduction Act attempts to reduce government burdens on citizens in filling out paperwork, but the compliance requirements of this law also have the effect of discouraging agencies to reach out to get citizen opinions.  The Federal Advisory Committee Act attempts to ensure balanced views and open forums to discuss public issues, but the bureaucratic pressures are to prevent their creation and to eliminate as many as possible.

Presidential candidates are saying they want to create more opportunities for citizens to be engaged in their government.  Democrat John Edwards announced that he wants to create “Citizen Congresses” where:  “every two years, he will ask 1 million citizens nationwide to participate in Citizen Congresses combining local town halls with the latest technology to create true national discussions, unfiltered by interest groups. Americans will discuss the challenges and trade-offs facing our country and offer advisory opinions to leaders.”

Barak Obama says he wants to “empower citizens” to help “crack down on government waste” by making government spending information more transparent.  Hillary Clinton and John McCain also advocate more transparency in budget and performance information.  But do citizens want more than just increased transparency, as Edwards seems to suggest?

Fifteen years ago, former presidential candidate Ross Perot foresaw citizens being more directly involved in their government via technology such as the Internet.  Today, the Internet’s increasing pervasiveness is creating and connecting social networks in ways that can allow more citizen involvement.  How this will evolve in the next four to eight years under the next President could create exciting new possibilities for the American democratic experience and how government is administered.

Encouraging Innovation

Many political analysts and think tanks are pointing to growing challenges facing the country that the next President will have to address – issues ranging from healthcare reform to climate change.  Presidential candidates are offering solutions or are promising innovation.

Just what is “innovation” anyway?  Can government do it?

In 2006, IBM sponsored a global survey of corporate and government executives on what they saw as critical challenges.  They thought the most important opportunities to being successful  was to embrace a systematic approach to innovation as a was of adapting in a rapidly changing world  The IBM report defined “innovation” as “new ideas or current thinking applied in fundamentally different ways resulting in a significant change.”  It characterized innovation as having three dimensions:

• Business model innovation is a fundamental change in the way an organization does business—the way it interacts with its customers, uses its resources, and views itself. While this is typically difficult in government, it does happen.  For example, the Veterans Health Administration in the 1990s shifted its emphasis in delivering healthcare from in-patient hospital care to out-patient clinic-based care.
• Operational innovation, where an organization improves its effectiveness and efficiency at tactical or core process/function level.  An example is the US Air Force Materiel Command’s designation of chief operating officers for key lines of business responsible for managing costs, not managing budgets. 
• Services or product innovation, where an organization delivers new programs or citizen-facing services.  For example, the city of Philadelphia is beginning to provide city-wide WIFI wireless internet access to its citizens.

Government is typically not seen as fostering an innovative culture, but during the Clinton Administration, his reinventing government initiative promoted the use of reinvention labs.  These labs were seen as places to test new ways of doing work, in exchange for flexibility from agency administrative rules.  While hundreds of labs were created and both a GAO report and outside observers felt they were good platforms for innovation, the approach was discontinued at the end of the Clinton Administration.

Should the next President develop a governmentwide innovation campaign?  Shoiuld he or she encourage specific approaches?  Should it be kept centralized, or should it encourage “a thousand flowers to bloom?”

Video Blog: Managing a Transition

Here’s a first attempt at a video blog entry! A bit cheesy, but we’re learning.

In all seriousness, though, the Presidential Transition Act of 2000 was intended to “to improve upon the transfer of important knowledge and information from one administration to the next.” The Act’s provisions will likely benefit the 2008 President-Elect:

Provide orientation training to new political appointees

Compile a transition directory to provide key agency and administrative data

Study ways to streamline the presidential appointment process

Provide $1 million to implement the bill’s provisions.

The General Service Administration, which is responsible for the administrative details of any transition (office space, computers, etc.) hosted a firs-ever transition website which it, and the National Archives, used to provide an overview of each agency (strategic plan, organization chart, etc.) and an overview of key laws that appointees new to government needed to be aware of (ethics laws, contract laws, sunshine laws, etc.).

The incoming Bush Administration made good use of the orientation training sessions, ensuring a common understanding across its appointees of key elements – working with the media, with Congress, with career executives, with inspectors generals, etc.

In addition, the Brookings Institution helped orchestrate a large-scale project to support the winner of the 2000 election. Of course there was no way to know that the transition period was going to be truncated, but the project has left an electronic legacy for the next team, as well.

Are there other tools that would be helpful to an incoming President that might not have been envisioned back in 2000? Should the Act be updated?

National Service – TIME Magazine’s Proposal

Good government isn’t just about having lower error rates in welfare payments, or delivering the mail on time. It also has a strong element of citizen trust, and a healthy democracy. Typically, this isn’t the fodder for a presidential political campaign. But surprisingly, others seem to think otherwise.

A special issue of TIME magazine, in conjunction with CNN, focuses on the role of national public service in a cover story entitled “A Time to Serve.” Journalist Richard Stengel, in TIME’s August 30th issue, writes that while “confidence in democracy and our government is near an all-time low, volunteerism and civic participation since the ‘70s are near all-time highs.” He says young people are think government is broken but that they can personally make a difference through community service. However, he concludes “That is not a recipe for keeping a republic.” He also cites a recent study by Harvard professor Robert Putnam that shows that “the more diverse a community is, the less people care about and engage with that community. Diversity, in fact, seems to breed distrust and disengagement.” And since it is projected that the U.S. will be a majority non-white nation in about 40 years, Stengel sees this as a bipartisan challenge to act now to actively engage citizens in civic life. Stengel proposes a 10-point plan:

1. Create a national-service baby bond. The federal government would invest $5,000 for every new-born for higher education, accessible by the young adult under the condition that he or she commit to one year of national or military service.

2. Make national service a cabinet-level department. He thinks the Corporation for National and Community Service isn’t symbolically prominent enough.

3. Expand existing national-service programs like Americorps and the National Senior Volunteer Corps, and create four new volunteer corps:

4. Create an education corps.

5. Institute a summer of service for teens between middle school and high school as a “rite of passage.”

6. Build a health corps to assist eligible, but non-participating low-income families access available public insurance programs and serve in other non-medical support staff roles.

7. Launch a “green” corps to serve as a modern-day “Civilian Conservation Corps.”

8. Recruite a rapid-response reserve corps to respond quickly to disasters and emergencies under the guidance of FEMA.

9. Start a national-service academy that would serve as a public sector version of West Point to provide an education to those willing to commit to a public service career, and “thereby create a new generation of civic leaders.”

10. Create a baby-boomer education bond , allowing retired baby-boomer volunteers to designate a scholarship of $1,000 for every 500 hours of community service they complete, to be deposited into the savings account of a student they designate.

While some of these proposals are costly – the baby bond proposal would cost $20 billion a year – Stengel believes the long-term benefits would outweigh the costs. In any case, these are proposals that could reshape how government works since it implies a significantly greater citizen involvement in defining and delivering public (if not governmental) services. These proposals also add a new dimension to the “good government” agenda.