b'Viewpointsproblems need to be disaggregated into small batchesHouse staff members, by the vice president to the cabinet, and performed by small cross functional autonomousgovernors and mayors, and the bi-weekly calls between our teams, working in relatively short cycles in a state ofoffice and the 22 departments responsible for spending the flow, with fast feedback from customers. money. Additional networks using public interest groups The Law of the Customer: Denning suggests that thelike the National Governors Association and the National epic shift in power in the marketplace from seller toOrganization of State Auditors, Controllers and Treasurers buyer (creates) a need for firms to radically acceleratecreated an action orientation that allowed the Recovery their ability to make decisions and change directions inAct to meet its objectives of creating and saving jobs, light of unexpected events.helping those most hurt by the great recession, developing infrastructure, and making sure that states were not forced to The Law of the Network: This is the lynch pin. Heraise taxes or cut services.suggests that a vertical hierarchy is no match for an interactive network. We will see support from otherNow, the question before us is, How do we take the lessons scholars for this point of view. learned, as described above, and apply them to helping Anne-Marie Slaughter brings networks to the public realmgovernments around the world become more agile?in her book, The Chessboard and the WebStrategies of Connection in a Networked World. Just as DenningToward Agile Governmentcontrasts vertical beuraucracies with agile organizations,The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) Slaughter contrasts the traditional approach to diplomacy is in the process of considering the creation of an Agile the chessboardwith the web. She espouses the networkGovernment Center. The Center would:mind set the ability to convert three dimensional human relationships into two dimensional maps of connections, andIdentify Draft Agile Government Principles in concert to see the relationships between people and institutions. with many stakeholders.Research these principles to determine a final setGeneral Stanley McCrystal reinforces Slaughters points withfor publication.his actions as head of the Joint Special Operations Forces, which confronted al Qaeda in Iraq and later the Taliban in Afganistan. McCrystal knew that al Qaeda operated as a series of networks and he determined to change his own organization from a heirarchy into a network. He describes his successful transformation in The Team of Teams. McCrystal created small groups with divergent skills each of which was bound together by trust and a shared sense of purpose, which allowed them to act as a seamless unit exercising joint cognition in changing circumstances.While neither Slaughter or McCrystal used the term agile to describe their prescriptions for success, they are very consistent with Dennings findings and my own experience in implementing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Our mission was clearsave the economy from further collapse. President Obama and Vice President Biden provided the top cover for our eight person Recovery Improvement Office. In a very short period of time, we were able get a set of interconnected networks at work rapidly, meeting the objectives of the Act in distributing more than $800 billion quickly with virtually no allegations of waste, fraud, or abuse.Central to this effort was the continuous communication by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to other White 84 www.businessofgovernment.org The Business of Government'