Public sector administrative organizations are responsible and responsive to disparately motivated client factions, all of which have differing agendas, power bases, and constituencies, that want to at least influence—if not control—policy choices. The factious nature of public sector clients is consequential to whether public sector administrative organizations choose to innovate or incrementally change. The simple, yet foremost, question, “Who are your clients?”, becomes an interminable investigation of the irresolvable with implications for the public administrator—most of which are bad. While resolution of this question is elusive, strategies for policy choices dependent on a resolution, as well as avoidance of bad outcomes, are not: rather than risk provoking the wrong faction, public administrators typically choose less disruptive incremental change even if innovation promises true transformative policy outcomes.
A case in point: the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA had the potential to transform insurance; instead, its champions chose to modify rather than transform our system of health insurance, doing nothing to control the excessive administrative costs of insurance companies. Rather, the ACA was designed to transfer risk from private individuals to the government without transforming (instead, only modifying) the Darwinian basis of our healthcare delivery system. Government innovation is generally unattainable, as the ACA highlights, because “the clients” are diverse and competitive. A bureaucracy has to harness the political power of diverse power centers in order to push through true innovation—that is a tall order. Factions that face disruption from innovation will undermine and weaken innovation, doing so is in their interests. Those who benefit will argue for innovation. We end up with a compromise better known as change not innovation.
Perhaps one agency still can innovate with little to no inhibition: the Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA). Most of our government sponsored innovation comes from defense. The key to which is the technical nature of most government innovation. When faced with existential threats, such as the Cold War, our government does have the capacity to allow the few nimble agencies in the government to engage in transformational projects such as the U-2 spy plane or the SR-71 spy plane. The recent exception to the technical versus policy imbalance in innovation is the implementation of a counterinsurgency program in Iraq during 2007 that was known as “The Surge.” Here, policy planners did transform combat operations. Policy planners implemented a strategy designed to achieve social stability rather than kill terrorists.
Most government innovation is nothing more than policies that promote status quo with minor to modest modifications—what we call change. The political landscape is still recognizable. Change, in the end, is political compromise.
Fascinating argument, Tim. Thank you for the post. Would like to hear your thoughts, perhaps over coffee at our next Spring Clemson event, on the role of lawmakers in deciding “Who are the clients?” A step further, what are the perceived motivations (or uses) for inclusion or exclusion of what may seem to be obvious key stakeholders? I always come back to the street-level bureaucrats that really hold much of the informal power here. They implement the policy down where it matters most.
(Yes, students… Shameless early plug for our yearly on-campus experience!)
Tim, you ask “Who are your clients”? I believe you could go a step further and ask, “Who are your loudest clients”? You are absolutely correct in saying that public sector administrators have a wide variety of client factions to deal with. As a public entity you serve the “public” which are individual citizens. Ideally all concerns, people and causes will generate the same amount of attention from the public administrators/servants. We know that for a wide variety of reasons this is not the case, we also know that public opinion (public dissatisfaction) are the ultimate forms of criticism and regulation for a public agency. I say loudest client, but I mean that to be, who’s better at advocating, marketing or promoting their cause/agenda, not literally being the loudest. This, I feel does play a role in how an agency will choose its “clients”, those that receive more attention. Because public opinion is the indicator of performance for a public agency, this is also why slow incremental change occurs as opposed to rapid change.
You use the ACA and DARPA as examples of public sector innovation, one that was unsuccessful and one that is successful. The ACA at its lowest level dealt with the individual wellbeing/comfort of the American citizen and had the potential to greatly impact our daily routine positively or negatively. Instances like this will most certainly generate more public attention than the very technical, specific world of defense innovation. The reason is obviously simple, because it affects more people. The average citizen will never see or know the direct effect of a particular piece of military technology. Because of this, defense innovation can occur with little resistance. I think bringing up the issue of competition was done well, because the ACA will involve more groups/factions in the private business sector than the area of defense technology. The more groups to be affected the more competition will arise, regardless of whether a group wanted to see health insurance reform or not. This competition will drive the groups to work harder for their benefit along with possibly trying to thwart the opponent’s efforts, further slowing any process of change. Political compromise is the end result of most government change, yes, however because our society is very much democratic in nature, we are inclined to see any dramatic change of policy as possibly one side trying to overpower the other. Which maybe a reason we accept the slow process that is government.
Using the term clients, I interpreted that to mean the individual person that a public agency serves. The very reason we have government agencies is to serve people at an individual level. But of course given the diversity of the public itself, how that is best done, is always up for debate. Especially when we discuss the morals and codes of conduct for public agencies we cannot forget that service to the individual person (client) was the purpose of that agency to begin with.