Its not the WHAT, its the HOW

New from the Brookings - A Cascade of Failures: Why Government Fails, and How to Stop It by Paul C. Light.

Light asks four questions.

(1) where did government fail,
(2) why did government fail,
(3) who caused the failures, and
(4) what can be done to fix the underlying problems?

Light establishes a measurement mechanism and analyzes failures over the past thirty years. His observations are:

Most of the failures involved errors of omission, not commission.

Some failures were obviously more visible than others.

Vision with execution is the clear driver of success, just as its absence is an equation for failure.

Some of the stories contained elements of both success and failure.

The number of government failures has increased over time.

There are differences between the five presidents in office during the failures. Government had four failures during Reagan’s final two-and-a-half years (1.6 per year), five during George H. W. Bush’s four years (1.2 per year), 14 during Clinton’s eight years (1.8 per year), 25 during George W. Bush’s eight years (3.1 per year), and 16 during Obama’s first five-and-a-half years (2.9 per year).

The differences are just large enough to suggest that government may be somewhat more likely to fail during the last few years of a two-term presidency, perhaps because presidents start to lose focus, appointees begin to turn over, the other party becomes more assertive, and the media becomes more aggressive.

Government had just 10 failures during the Bush administration’s first term (2.5 per year), but 15 failures during the administration’s second (3.8 per year). In turn, government had just eight failures during the Obama administration’s first term (2.0 per year), but matched its entire first-term total in just eighteen months of the second (5.3 per year).

These failures involved both oversight and operations.

More of the post-2001 government failures occurred during steady demand (27) than during surging demand (14), perhaps confirming the unconventional notion that surges sharpen organizational acuity.

Light identifies five fairly anodyne root causes of government failure.

Bad Policy

Inadequately funded policies

Incompetent organizational structures

Incapable leadership

Corrupted culture

Likewise his recommendations are indisputably desirable.

Think about policy effectiveness from the start

Provide the funding, staff, and collateral capacity to succeed

Flatten the chain of command and cut the bloat

Select presidential appointees for their effectiveness, not connections

Sharpen the mission

As with private enterprises, the challenge is not so much in figuring out WHAT needs to be done but rather HOW to get it done.