THE NEW GOVERNANCE PROJECT
Project: THE NEW GOVERNANCE PROJECT
Sponsor: The Kellogg Foundation
IPS Staff: Lester Salamon and Mimi Bilzor
Purpose and Approach
This project was designed to develop an alternative concept of public service training for both gov-ernment and nonprofit professionals. At the heart of this approach has been an effort to take more ex-plicit account of the complex collaborative systems and diverse tools through which public problems are increasingly being addressed in this country and around the world. The project has also focused on the ethical and philosophical principles that are the foundation of public service.
Results
Results include a major book, The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance, published by Oxford University Press. Plans are now underway to produce a revised edition. More than two dozen schools are using the book in their public affairs and policy curricula. The project director delivered the keynote address on this topic at the 2004 Annual Conference of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration.
The Conference on Policy Tools and Government Performance, co-sponsored by the U.S. General Ac-counting Office and the Office of Management and Budget, brought together policy practitioners and analysts to explore the implications of the many new tools of public action for public problem-solving. As a follow-up to the conference, a working group was formed to seek ways to better inform congres-sional staff and agency leaders on the tools of government. This has resulted so far in the session, “Pol-icy Dilemmas in Federal Grants-in-Aid: The Challenges of Tool Design and Innovative Policy Res-ponses,” cosponsored with the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and the IBM Center for the Business of Government, which was held to help inform the preparation of a new guide-book, Grants Management in the 21st Century. This work also led to a review sponsored by the Envi-ronmental Protection Agency of the tools available to deliver environmental protection services.
Publications
NAPA (2007). Taking Environmental Protection to the Next Level: An Assessment of the U.S. Envi-ronmental Services Delivery System. Report for the U.S. EPA (panel included Lester Salamon).
Salamon, L.M. (2005). “Training Professional Citizens: Getting Beyond the Right Answer to the Wrong Question in Public Affairs Education,” Journal of Public Affairs Education, Vol. 11, No. 1.
Center for Civil Society Studies (2003). Policy Tools and Government Performance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Conference Report. Available at ccss.jhu.edu.
Salamon, L.M. (ed.) (2002). The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Summary available at ccss.jhu.edu. .
