A Guide for Making Innovation Offices Work

Submitted by on Wed, 10/22/2014 - 07:54

In this report, Burstein and Black examine the recent trend toward the creation of innovation offices across the nation at all levels of government to understand the structural models now being used to stimulate innovation—both internally within an agency, and externally for the agency’s partners and communities. Based on research into a broad range of federal, state, and local innovation offices, the authors identify six different models for how an innovation office can operate:

Inter-Organizational Networks: A Review of the Literature to Inform Practice

Submitted by on Mon, 09/22/2014 - 13:48

This report examines the literature on interorganizational networks that has evolved over the past decade, which has been written from the perspective of a wide range of academic disciplines, such as sociology, business management, public administration, and political science. 

Participatory Budgeting: Ten Actions to Engage Citizens via Social Media

Submitted by on Thu, 09/04/2014 - 13:35

It has since spread to 1,000 other cities worldwide and is gaining interest in U.S. cities as well.

Dr. Gordon’s report offers an overview of the state of participatory budgeting, and the potential value of integrating the use of social media into the participatory process design. Her report details three case studies of U.S. communities that have undertaken participatory budgeting initiatives.  While these cases are relatively small in scope, they provide insights into what potential users need to consider if they wanted to develop their own initiatives.

Strategies to Manage Well Given Scarce Resources

Submitted by on Thu, 07/24/2014 - 10:02

The Center has published a variety of reports and related materials that provide ways for government to succeed in the face of constraints. Accordingly, we have brought key findings on this topic together in this compilation, found in the upper left-hand portion of the page, or as individual articles:

Spring 2014 Edition

Submitted by on Tue, 05/27/2014 - 12:54

Best Practices for Succession Planning in Federal Government STEMM Positions

Submitted by on Tue, 05/27/2014 - 08:25

In fact, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology estimates that, given present trends, there will be one million fewer STEMM graduates over the next decade than the nation is expected to need.

Adapting the Incident Command Model for Knowledge-Based Crises: The Case of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Submitted by on Fri, 05/09/2014 - 15:25

The federal government has developed increasingly sophisticated approaches to addressing emergencies and crises. One successful management model is the incident command system (ICS), which was initially developed in the 1970s as a command-and-control approach for fighting forest fires, but has since been adapted to other policy domains. The Department of Homeland Security adopted the ICS model—which it renamed the National Incident Management System (NIMS)—and required its use at all levels of government in emergency and crisis situations.

The Persistence of Innovation in Government: A Guide for Innovative Public Servants

Submitted by on Wed, 04/02/2014 - 06:34

With this report, Professor Borins continues two decades of research analyzing winners of and applicants to the Harvard University Kennedy School’s Innovations in American Government Awards. This report presents a comparison of the applications received by the program in the 1990s (1990 to 1994) with those received in 2010.

Pages