Are most of us resigned to the fact that government will not change? Poor or no service will remain endemic and paying a little extra to get things done is a cost of service that we have accepted and accounted for?
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge of the Economist authored The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State recently. According to them, "The age of big government is over; the age of smart government has begun." And more emphatically, "The race to get government right is not just a race of efficiency. It is a race to see which political values will triumph in the twenty-first century—the liberal values of democracy and liberty or the authoritarian values of command and control. The stakes could not be higher."
[I loved their 1996 book, The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus, which I hope to them merits a second edition.]
Countries need to reinvent the state and technology has a role to play. For more on this, the World Economic Forum's Future of Government Smart Toolbox, available in a number of downloadable options, will be helpful reading:
"The government toolbox presented in this report is called “smart”, alluding to the mix of soft and hard power elements that enhance government performance. The operational question the authors attempt to answer is how technology can help governments get better at dealing with eight core government priorities: anti-corruption, political representation, stovepiping/bureaucracies, delivery of services, trust, leadership, security and innovation." (from the preface).
There is an embarrassment of riches both domestic and international on how to reinvent the state and improve government. A super cadre of bureaucrats will not be enough in and by itself, which correctly pointed out, are "ad hoc attempts to slow down institutional decay...Governance is more opaque, less reliant on merit and professionalism and more dependent on favouritism and whims of the party leadership than before." And besides, when its become so difficult to appoint heads of state-owned enterprises, can we really expect super bureaucrats to ameliorate the situation?
Is anybody listening? Is it too much to expect good government from those we elect? Must people in organisations continue to suffer from the toxic effects of bad leadership and mismanagement while reforms and the desire to have our state-owned enterprises and regulatory bodies managed better than they are at the moment languish?
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge of the Economist authored The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State recently. According to them, "The age of big government is over; the age of smart government has begun." And more emphatically, "The race to get government right is not just a race of efficiency. It is a race to see which political values will triumph in the twenty-first century—the liberal values of democracy and liberty or the authoritarian values of command and control. The stakes could not be higher."
[I loved their 1996 book, The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus, which I hope to them merits a second edition.]
Countries need to reinvent the state and technology has a role to play. For more on this, the World Economic Forum's Future of Government Smart Toolbox, available in a number of downloadable options, will be helpful reading:
"The government toolbox presented in this report is called “smart”, alluding to the mix of soft and hard power elements that enhance government performance. The operational question the authors attempt to answer is how technology can help governments get better at dealing with eight core government priorities: anti-corruption, political representation, stovepiping/bureaucracies, delivery of services, trust, leadership, security and innovation." (from the preface).
There is an embarrassment of riches both domestic and international on how to reinvent the state and improve government. A super cadre of bureaucrats will not be enough in and by itself, which correctly pointed out, are "ad hoc attempts to slow down institutional decay...Governance is more opaque, less reliant on merit and professionalism and more dependent on favouritism and whims of the party leadership than before." And besides, when its become so difficult to appoint heads of state-owned enterprises, can we really expect super bureaucrats to ameliorate the situation?
Is anybody listening? Is it too much to expect good government from those we elect? Must people in organisations continue to suffer from the toxic effects of bad leadership and mismanagement while reforms and the desire to have our state-owned enterprises and regulatory bodies managed better than they are at the moment languish?
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