Customer Reviews

The Reinventing Government Workbook: Package B: Introducing Employees to Reinvention, Set of 5 copies

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3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Many of the innovative approaches undertaken by the various agencies outlined in Osborne and Gaebler's work do provide some inspiration for needed changes in how government operates. Nevertheless, it is important to note that some of the ballyhooed "innovations" described in this arguably important work failed subsequent to the publication date. As such, readers sorely deserve an update. We could learn as much from how some of these innovations have failed as we did from how many of them succeeded.

This is a must read for any citizen who is tired of business as usual bureaucracy. However, published in 1992 and not updated, it merely gives us a snapshot of discontent and a few forward thinkers at the beginning of the last decade of the last century. You can not effectively chart the concepts in their book to the trends of today without indepth analysis. Are the politicians really taking notice and "reinventing government" or is it just the usual bait and switch shell game where Washington professes to be turning 180 degrees when in actuality their compass is stuck. With 27 years in the military I still see us doing the same old stupid stuff, with some inovation around the edges. What seems to drive government these days is lack of revenues which forces changes to lesser programs so they can retain the funding for the core "stupid" projects. I also think they underestimate the absolute apathy of a significant majority of Americans. Why change when nobody cares. I am not as optomistic as the authors.

This book is about "Reinventing Something" as you understand from its caption. I could not surprize much when I finished to read this very popular book because ;

1 The cases included in book to support theory were chosen selectively. I can show a lot of examples in contrary to the framework proposed in Osbornes book but none of negative examples were included. The book is very one-handed and does not project the facts correctly.

2 A distinction were not made in this book between public and private sector organizations and behaved as if both of them have the same principles and context. The relation of Public Management with democratic principles were ignored. Basically, this book is a "public" version of the book of Peters and Waterman - In Search of Excellence -.

3 The principles propesed in this book are accepted universal and thought as time and location-free. Cultural differences among countries were underestimated. Generalizations pervades the book.

4 This book is not based on a decent scientific research and so does not have an academic-quality.

Overall, if you want to read this book because of its popularity, you should read it with other strong resources in the field of public administration and management. Some reference materials are indicated below...

Mark Moore, Creating Public Value ; Norman Flynn, Public Sector Management ; Guy Peters, The Future of Governing

Very interesting approach which makes an endeavor to integrate government and business. The idea this books advocates is to steer rather then rowing. It emphasizes on building up of the community and empowering it so it becomes self-sufficient. I would say that Al Gore and Tony Blair are two very strong supporters of this new approach of running the government.

Firstly, let me say that I agree with most of the other readers when they write that this book was neither academic nor "reinventive". I will say that this was strictly an idea book, a motivator to the masses. So long as one doesn't expect emperical research, evenhanded arguements, or even updated conclusions, they are fine. When reading this book, don't expect, nor should you expect, to be handed ideas on a platter to run with. Rather, they present the optimum view of their vision. Whether it is right, wrong or impossible, they put forth thoughts that could spark change. The change that I am speaking of is not a grand sweeping motion that will forever alter the government, but rather pieces of an idea. Even if these particular ideas are not implemented, the chances of them sparking new ways of approach or implementation are greater.

In reading this book, I didn't take what the writers wrote verbatum, but I did begin to think about what I, as an individual, could do in my organization to make a difference. That is the target audience. These authors didn't write this book for the scholars or for the world of academia, but rather for the practical administrator in the field. Read this recomended book with above information in mind. If anything, it will be an interesting one.

Osborne and Gaebler's ideas have been around a long time; don't be misled into thinking this is something new. Particularly objectionable is their use of phrases such as "sluggish pace of bureaucracy" which is designed to feed into the reader's own stereotype. The book feeds upon the fear of the reader, and therefore does not offer much in the way of scholarly reading. One would do better to read some Herbert Simon or Charles Goodsell before embarking on this journey.

Reinventing Government presents many innovative and forward thinking ideas for the public sector, yet the authors fail to back up their writing with documentation of their research. The book is well written with an ease of understanding, and it is easily understood by the general American public. It is in this ease of understanding that the authors loss a certain edge necessary to being a well written piece of work.

The formating of the book allows the authors present a case study for a better government, such as a new way of budgeting, then presenting a specific example of where and how this worked for one specific form of government. Yet, the authors failed to document other examples which would have strengthened their case studies. The authors also failed to mention the drawbacks to such methods of government, leaving one to believe that if government were to implement all of the concepts in their book we would be living in a Utopia.

In all, a disappointing book in despreate need of someone to challenge the concepts and force the writers to provide a stronger piece of work.

A wide poniy of view, usefull to all the people in Governmente. It's rich in common sense, not only in entreprenural way of think and act...

I recently revisited this book and it has some solid ideas on transforming the way government is run. So much of the debate today is on how to use government, conservatives to benefit those who have, and liberals to benefit those who do not have. Both want to spend money, so big and small is a useless paradigm. So we need to again talk about how to make the government we have responsive. No small chore. And this book will not solve placing political hacks into leadership positions and destroying career professionals and their work as we have seen over the last several years. None of this can be done if we do not have competent professionals in leadership positions with the courage to take on how our government delivers its services.

This is an excellent book that covers all of the facts about our old and new government laws in comparison to current events that occur within our society. Regulations and guidelines are also described about the Private and Public Sector and how they differ. It is definately a great book.