Innovation

The success of an administration can rise—and fall—based on its competence in managing the government. As history demonstrates, strong management can enable rapid and positive results, while management mistakes can derail important policy initiatives, erode public trust and undermine confidence in the government.

According to a 2015 survey by Pew Research Center, the public believes existing democratic institutions are failing. Just 20 percent say the federal government runs its programs well, and 59 percent say the government is in need of “very major reform”—up 22 points since 19971. With rates of trust in government at an all-time low, technology and innovation will be essential to achieve the next administration’s goals and to deliver services more effectively and effciently.

In January 2017, the next administration will begin the hard work of implementing the President’s priorities. Regardless of the specific policies, implementation in many cases will require working across agency boundaries. By taking an “enterprise government” approach – starting in the transition and continuing into the White House – the next administration can deliver on their promises more effectively.

In the mist of tightening budgets, many government agencies are being asked to deliver innovative solutions to operational and strategic problems. One way to address this dilemma is to participate in open innovation. This report addresses two key components of open innovation:

In this report, Professor Greenberg examines a dozen cities across the United States that have award-winning reputations for using innovation and technology to improve the services they provide to their residents. She explores a variety of success factors associated with effective service delivery at the local level, including:

In this report, Burstein and Black examine the recent trend toward the creation of innovation offices across the nation at all levels of government to understand the structural models now being used to stimulate innovation—both internally within an agency, and externally for the agency’s partners and communities. Based on research into a broad range of federal, state, and local innovation offices, the authors identify six different models for how an innovation office can operate:

The Center has published a variety of reports and related materials that provide ways for government to succeed in the face of constraints. Accordingly, we have brought key findings on this topic together in this compilation, found in the upper left-hand portion of the page, or as individual articles:

With this report, Professor Borins continues two decades of research analyzing winners of and applicants to the Harvard University Kennedy School’s Innovations in American Government Awards. This report presents a comparison of the applications received by the program in the 1990s (1990 to 1994) with those received in 2010.

Today, government is in the midst of significant changes that have both near-term consequences and lasting impact. Such changes become more complex in nature and more uncertain in effect. At the same time, the demands on government continue to grow while the collective resources available to meet such demands are increasingly constrained. Government leaders, managers, and stakeholders face major challenges, including: fiscal austerity, citizen expectations, the pace of technology and innovation, and a new role for governance.

The growing interest in “engaging the crowd” to identify or develop innovative solutions to public problems has been inspired by similar efforts in the commercial world.  There, crowdsourcing has been successfully used to design innovative consumer products or solve complex scientific problems, ranging from custom-designed T-shirts to mapping genetic DNA strands.