Bridgebuilders

Introduction

A New Approach to Help Government Solve Our Biggest Problems

The thesis of this book is simple: governments at all levels can more effectively tackle society’s toughest challenges by collaborating with bridgebuilders who bring together different parts of government and tap into other sectors of society.

With every election, a new administration promises big policy ideas and a management revolution to implement them. Many voters, however, come away profoundly disappointed in the results. We think we know why. Historically, many of the management fixes have been based on what Kettl has termed a vending-machine model of government: You have a problem, you build an organization to deal with it, you put money in the slot, and you expect ...