Collaboration

Governments today face serious, seemingly intractable public management issues that go to the core of effective governance and leadership -- testing the very form, structure, and capacity required to meet these problems head-on.

So, who are we?  Customers?  Taxpayers? Citizens?  Or something else?  And how should government managers respond, given the differences implied by these various roles?  A recent academic article by Georgia State University professor John Clayton Thomas provides some useful context, as well as practical guidelines for public managers. He starts by saying it is not an “either/or” distinction, but rather “all of the above,” depending on context.

On occasions, the Government Accountability Office breaks the mold for its reports and looks for things that worked well and then tries to identify why, and then highlights those factors.  A new report examines four successful cross-agency collaborative initiatives that overcome program overlaps, and identifies four sets of promising practices that they use in order to be effective.

An earlier post provides excerpts from the seven mission-related cross-agency priority goals.  This post provides excerpts from the management-related cross-agency priority goals:

(UPDATED: 7-1-2014)

Released by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, “The Persistence of Innovation in Government: A Guide for Innovative Public Servants,” mines data from the 28-year history of the Harvard University’s Kennedy School’s Innovations in American Government Awards (HKS Awards). The report author, University of Toronto Professor Dr.

Large companies (and governments) cannot ignore the daily demands of running large enterprises that depend on hierarchy and routines, Kotter observes.  These structures and processes work well in stable, predictable environments and their evolution and refinements have contributed greatly to society in the past hundred years.

There are six “go to” topics in the IBM Center’s Resource Center for incoming new political appointees as well as for veteran career executives preparing for the new year ahead

Topic 1:  Helping New Leaders Succeed.  The IBM Center has updated its two most popular books for new leaders in government:

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: Collaboration

Fostering collaboration will be a key component of your job. The need for improved and enhanced collaboration within and between agencies in the federal government, with state and local governments, as well as with nonprofits and businesses, is now clearly needed. The federal government’s ineffective collaboration with other government organizations was clearly apparent and widely criticized during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

We stand at a pivotal moment in space exploration. There are plans to further extend our reach into the solar system, and NASA is leading the way.  An orbiting outpost, the International Space Station (ISS), is home to a crew of astronauts from across the world conducting research and learning how to live and work in space.

Increasingly, addressing public management challenges requires the use of collaborative networks across a range of agencies and non-governmental organizations. For example, the Obama Administration has designated a series of projects as “cross agency priority goals” and put networks in place to manage them. A lot of literature and practical experience show that a key element of success in any collaborative effort is the ability to create and sustain trust among stakeholders.