John O'Leary

William D. Eggers

The American people are frustrated with their government-dismayed by a series of high-profile failures (Iraq, Katrina, the financial meltdown) that seems to just keep getting longer. Yet the US has a proud history of great achievements: victory in World War II, the national highway system, welfare reform, the moon landing. The US need more successes like these to reclaim the government's legacy of competence. In If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, William Eggers and John O'Leary explain how to do it. The key? Understand-and avoid-the common pitfalls that trip up public-sector leaders during the journey from idea to results. The authors recount surprisingly entertaining stories of public policy initiatives that succeeded beyond all imagination, including the Marshall Plan, the 1996 welfare reform and London’s Congestion Charge. They also find lessons in failures, including Boston’s Big Dig and the Challenger disaster. If We Can Put a Man on the Moonshows how government really works with an optimistic and non-partisan look at the kinds of large government endeavors that have shaped US history and that are unfolding in the news right now. Ultimately, however, the authors show us that good ideas are just the beginning of a successful initiative. With proper design, commitment, implementation and re-evaluation, our leaders can once again accomplish big things. The authors identify pitfalls including: The Partial Map Trap: Fumbling handoffs throughout project execution The Tolstoy Syndrome: Seeing only the possibilities you want to see Design-Free Design: Designing policies for passage through the legislature, not for implementation The Overconfidence Trap: Creating unrealistic budgets and timelines The Complacency Trap: Failing to recognize that a program needs change At a time of unprecedented challenges, this book, with its abundant examples and hands-on advice, is the essential guide to making government work better. A must-read for every public official, this book will be of interest to anyone who cares about the future of democracy.

Getting Big Things Done in Government

If We Can Put a Man on the Moon--

Paul Macmillan

Government Alone Can’t Solve Society’s Biggest Problems World hunger. Climate change. Crumbling infrastructure. It’s clear that in today’s era of fiscal constraints and political gridlock, we can no longer turn to government alone to tackle these and other towering social problems. What’s required is a new, more collaborative and productive economic system. The Solution Revolution brings hope—revealing just such a burgeoning new economy where players from across the spectrum of business, government, philanthropy, and social enterprise converge to solve big problems and create public value. By erasing public-private sector boundaries, the solution economy is unlocking trillions of dollars in social benefit and commercial value. Where tough societal problems persist, new problem solvers are crowdfunding, ridesharing, app-developing, or impact-investing to design innovative new solutions for seemingly intractable problems. Providing low-cost health care, fighting poverty, creating renewable energy, and preventing obesity are just a few of the tough challenges that also represent tremendous opportunities for those at the vanguard of this movement. They create markets for social good and trade solutions instead of dollars to fill the gap between what government can provide and what citizens need. So what drives the solution economy? Who are these new players and how are their roles changing? How can we grow the movement? And how can we participate? Deloitte’s William D. Eggers and Paul Macmillan answer these questions and more, and they introduce us to the people and organizations driving the revolution—from edgy social enterprises growing at a clip of 15 percent a year, to megafoundations, to Fortune 500 companies delivering social good on the path to profit. Recyclebank, RelayRides, and LivingGoods are just a few of the innovative organizations you’ll read about in this book. Government cannot handle alone the huge challenges facing our global society—and it shouldn’t. We need a different economic paradigm that can flexibly draw on resources, combine efforts, and create value, while improving the lives of citizens. The Solution Revolution shows the way.

How Business, Government, and Social Enterprises Are Teaming Up to Solve Society's Toughest Problems

The Solution Revolution

A well-written, lively, optimistic book that calls for the transformation of technology in government from 'lipstick on a bulldog to total information awareness.' This book is proactive in nature (see what these governments are really doing), does not call for a wholesale and costly transformation, and employs a subtle shaming of those governments that have not yet joined the 21st century. William Eggers's argument, conservative in nature, states that the world of politics would quickly and markedly benefit from this digital transformation in terms of a fiscal payoff, but a more profound change would result as governments become more transparent, more democratic, and more efficient.

Using Technology to Improve Education, Cut Red Tape, Reduce Gridlock, and Enhance Democracy

Government 2.0

Deloitte Development LLC

Robert N. Campbell (III.)

Tiffany Dovey Fishman

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (Firm)

A Playbook for Transforming State Government

Letting Go of the Status Quo

Stephen Goldsmith

A fundamental, but mostly hidden, transformation is happening in the way public services are being delivered, and in the way local and national governments fulfill their policy goals. Government executives are redefining their core responsibilities away from managing workers and providing services directly to orchestrating networks of public, private, and nonprofit organizations to deliver the services that government once did itself. Authors Stephen Goldsmith and William D. Eggers call this new model “governing by network” and maintain that the new approach is a dramatically different type of endeavor that simply managing divisions of employees. Like any changes of such magnitude, it poses major challenges for those in charge. Faced by a web of relationships and partnerships that increasingly make up modern governance, public managers must grapple with skill-set issues (managing a contract to capture value); technology issues (incompatible information systems); communications issues (one partner in the network, for example, might possess more information than another); and cultural issues (how interplay among varied public, private, and nonprofit sector cultures can create unproductive dissonance). Governing by Network examines for the first time how managers on both sides of the aisle, public and private, are coping with the changes. Drawing from dozens of case studies, as well as established best practices, the authors tell us what works and what doesn’t. Here is a clear roadmap for actually governing the networked state for elected officials, business executives, and the broader public.

The New Shape of the Public Sector

Governing by Network

Identifying a current revolution in small government, a study examines the emergence of new, localized approaches to governance that include community policing, parental intervention, and creative neighborhood design. Tour.

Making Our Government Smaller, Better, and Closer to Home

Revolution at the Roots

Shalabh Kumar Singh

"Describes, using real-world examples, how a public sector organization can go from a culture of 'innovation by accident' to one in which a sustained organizational commitment to innovation is baked into the organization's DNA." - page 5.

William D. Eggers

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