“Good Enough for Government Work” Just Isn’t Good Enough
For all of the talk about nonprofit accountability and professionalism, the sector’s largest segment, government, gets something of a free pass. We all gripe about government waste and sloth, with the depressing knowledge that nothing ever — ever — gets done about it. And then we turn to the sports page or the gossip column.
David S. Broder, the Washington Post’s venerable political columnist, chose Sunday to write about this very topic, focusing on management in state capitals since that is where "the government services that most directly affect our lives are delivered from."Broder was at a briefing on the 2008 Government Performance Project, a joint effort from the Pew Center on the States and Governing magazine in which journalists and scholars took detailed looks at all 50 states and graded them on how they manage employees, budgets, information systems, and infrastructure planning. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue and Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm spoke at the briefing and noted how tough it has been to generate excitement for such a necessary initiative:
Both governors acknowledged that it often has been difficult to stir up much enthusiasm in their legislatures for managerial initiatives. "They yawn," Perdue said, "and often it’s a struggle to keep them up to speed" on the changes he’s trying to make in the executive agencies. "But they like to campaign on the results."
Granholm agreed but said that her state’s Legislature has recently decided to create a joint, bipartisan committee on management.
As Perdue said, managing government "is not a sexy issue." But after months of listening to 17 or 18 presidential candidates offer rhetorical salve for the widespread distrust of government, it was refreshing to learn from this report and briefing what some practitioners are actually doing to improve its performance.
This is a worthy venture, though given legislators’ tepid response, I wonder what voters would think. When the rubber hits the road, are we sufficiently mature and sophisticated as a group to truly grasp why this is important, and to accept that efficient, effective management of these very slow-moving, inertia-laden nonprofit entities may require some tough choices? | 501(c)
Tags: David Broder, Pew Center on the States, Government Performance Project, Governing magazine, Sonny Perdue, Jennifer Granholm
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POSTED IN: Government, Management
2 opinions for “Good Enough for Government Work” Just Isn’t Good Enough
Nonprofiteer
Mar 12, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Government agencies are NOT part of the nonprofit sector. That’s why we’re called “the third sector”–because for-profits are the first and governments are the second. Management of government agencies is a specialized activity, not actually the same as the specialized behaviors necessary to operate a nonprofit. This is why universities have long offered Master’s of Public Administration and Master’s of Public Policy programs, whereas academic tracks in nonprofit management have only sprung up relatively recently, both within and without MBA programs. Dealing with the constraints of public budgets (and the politicians who control them) requires quite a different set of skills than dealing with the constraints of nonprofit budgets (and the donors and prospective donors who control them).
Government accountability is an important subject but it’s not actually OUR subject.
Tom Durso
Mar 12, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I stand corrected, Nonprofiteer, and thanks for the education.
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