THE GRAVEYARD OF GOOD IDEAS

About a year ago, we wrote a B&G report titled “Is Speedy Government Good Government?” in which we made the case that the pressure for states and localities to solve problems overnight can often lead to failed efforts. “Jumping into new initiatives. without the time for adequate preparation, may be great for elected officials anxious to make quick headlines,” we wrote. “But glitter often tarnishes as time passes and efforts go through a rational progression of brainstorming, bringing in stakeholders, finding revenue streams, building a talent base, and forging through a political process that can sometimes favor inertia over momentum.”

That column seemed to strike a responsive chord among many of our readers, one of whom, Barry VanLare, a former employee with the National Governors Association and an active National Academy of Public Administration fellow, commented on a related issue that we think is worthy of note.  "While inadequately staffed and hasty implementation can, and often does, lead to failure,” he wrote, “there is also a problem with the frequency of change. All too often potentially successful initiatives are abandoned well before they can reasonably be expected to produce results."

In our experience that’s absolutely true and it’s a pity. Over the years, we’ve seen many efforts that seem to have great promise fall by the wayside before they have the opportunity to prove their value. We’ve seen this happen repeatedly in the realm of education when new programs are started that might realistically take four or five years to show progress. But then new leaders come in, and want to try something new (but not necessarily better, or maybe not as good).

Even the best programs often take time to have any impact, even when they’ve been carefully thought out beforehand. New staff may be needed and existing personnel have to be trained (and sometimes there’s no money to do so, but that’s a different story). Progress rarely can accrue on the back of a good idea until the people charged with implementation are up to speed.

What’s more, sometimes terrific new programs have a whole host of little flaws that need fixing before they begin to show their worth. Getting to visible solutions often requires an iterative process, with tweaks and changes necessary before results show improvement.

Delay in gathering, analyzing and disseminating data can also lead people to believe that state or local governments aren’t making things better for them. When an evaluation or performance measurement data comes out a year after a new program begins, it’s generally based on the most recent data available, which frequently comes from before the effort was even started. Administrators are likely to understand that this is just a timing issue, but when the local press picks up on the report, it’s all too easy to ignore the existence of the initiative and that, in turn, can make residents clamor for yet more change.

Lurching from one initiative to another, without sufficient evidence of whether the first one worked or didn’t, isn’t a productive approach. Yet impatient residents who are increasingly losing trust in government, can push their leaders to forfeit the advances that might have been made, if they’d only had the time.

#StateandLocalGovernmentManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceManagement #StateandLocalPerformanceMeasurement #StateandLocalProgramEvaluation #StateandLocalGovernmentData #StateLocalPolicyImplementation #GovernmentProgramGraveyard #CityGovernmentManagement #CityGovernmentPerformance #StateandLocalHumanResources #HastyProgramImplementation #LaggingData #TrustinGovernment #StateandLocalWorkforce #StateandLocalProgramFailure #BarrettandGreeneInc #DedicatedtoStateandLocalGovernment