For the People: Can We Fix Public Service

John D. Donahue and Joseph S. Nye (Brookings Institution Press, 2003)

Review by Hyong Yi

 

No one would not argue that pub-lic servants play a significant role in the shape and quality of the governments that exist within the United States. If the quality of governance is to improve within the nation, the best way to accomplish this is to improve the quality of the ser-vants serving the public. It is this simple, but powerful vision which resulted in For the People , the last in a series of six books in the Visions Project launched in 1996 by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. For the People examines the teaching of public servants and ad-ministration of government policies that drive the best and brightest to or away from public service.

 

The book is organized into three parts, with 13 chapters written by dif-ferent contributors, mostly faculty members at Harvard. Part one deals with identifying what’s wrong with public service. The second provides a vision for the future. The final part provides a road map to get from where we are to where we need to be. The In-troduction provides the environmental context for this book, examining the role of public servants from the time of John Adams. With such provocative topics as leadership, public manage-ment training in the 21st century, and the changing skills needed by the mod-ern public manager, the reader can ex-pect a book that challenges the con-ventional wisdom regarding the role of public servants and the fundamental changes governments need to make to prepare for the future.

Disappointment

With such a lofty and ambitious goal of transforming the public ser-vice, the actual result cannot help but be somewhat of a disappointment. Af-ter an introductory chapter to the book, Chapter 2 defines the challenge ac-knowledging that as times change, public leadership must also evolve and expand to encompass new skills and roles. However, the review of wage disparities in Chapter 3 is unable to maintain the momentum with its con-clusion of the obvious—the private sector pays better and we must be aware of this if we wish to attract the best qualified to public service. The remain-der of Part I provides some interesting in-sights into the movement of workers across the public/private divide and moti-vational forces, but ultimately by defin-ing the problems of public service in con-ventional ways and covering a wide gamut of topics, it must resort to the broadest generalities to hold water.

 

The vision for the future has the added burden of overcoming the tradi-tionally-defined problem. However, beyond discussing the traditional re-forms, such as eliminating the classifi-cation system, more training, and em-powerment, Part II also address some not-so-conventional topics which are intriguing such as governing networks and markets and the moral manager, which seems timely given what has occurred in the Enrons and Worldcoms of the private sector.

 

Well-Worn Path

If we have the starting point in Part I and the destination in Part II, Part III is the road map to get us there. Argu-ably, the authors of these chapters have the greatest challenge in articulat-ing a process to improve public service whereby the problems in Part I are solved and the vision in Part II is realized. However, they also have greatest opportunity to be visionaries in truly presenting a new solution for a new millennium. Here is the greatest disappointment. While the discussion about leadership, education and training, pay for performance, and comparative personnel policy are all interesting, the road map suggested is not a new road; many people, commissions, and blue ribbon panels have already beaten a well-worn path.

 

For the People starts with a great deal of promise and momentum, but by the time of the final chapter most of that energy is spent. The expectation of a visionary book that challenges conventional wisdom recommending fundamental changes to the business of government is unrealized. The intriguing notions, such as networks and leadership, are mixed with and ultimately lost in more conventional thoughts. While I expected and to a large degree hoped for a revolutionary book that serves as a clarion call to teachers and practitioners of public service in the 21st century, For the People is an evolutionary book that takes a traditionally-defined problem and solutions and takes them to the next logical step for the 21st century. I’m left wondering as I write these final words whether the failure is with the book or me, as a reader. Revolution may be too much to expect from any single book, even one written by some of our best minds, in a profession whose roots go back to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the idea that liberty is more important that efficiency.