The Next Government of the United States

September 15, 2008
Kettl’s cogent and unbiased analysis of the failure of government institutions posits that current challenges, whether in health care or disaster response, have outgrown the capacity of monolithic government agencies, even while the size of government continues to swell. Kettl (The Transformation of Governance
) observes that “a bigger government with more shared responsibility has created a system in which no one is fully accountable for anything government does.” He presents a balanced and unpartisan analysis of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, examining human error and generations of poor decision making as well as the intricacies of federalism and the organizational complexity of government institutions. According to the author, there exists a disconnect between how policy is executed, who is responsible and how institutions should share responsibility. Adapting institutions to current problems (and not the other way around) is a necessary change in mindset, Kettle argues, and crucial to greater government accountability, the overarching challenge for future leaders.

November 15, 2008
Two events prompted Kettl, a public-policy academic and columnist for the civil servants must-read magazine Governing, to ponder how government malfunctions. The first was his mother-in-laws Medicare experience; the second was the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Though satisfied withhis mother-in-laws treatment, Kettl professes amazement that throughout the process she never once dealt with a federal employee, a situation thatprompts the authorto analyzehow Washington funds programs without genuinely controlling them, either administratively or fiscally. A crisissuch asKatrina simply magnifies thegovernments lack of responsibility: the opprobrium heaped on the FEMA director, while satisfying a primitive need for human sacrifice, ignored the multiplicity of bureaucracies that resulted in nobody being in control. What to do, then? As problem-solvers, Kettl dismisses the president (too busy) and Congress (institutionally reactive, not innovative);instead, Kettl proposes the creation of a cadre of civil-service superheroesempowered to attack chronic or acute problems. Kettls outlook may appeal to readers interested in the managerial problems of government.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)