"A landmark in the debate on the future of public policy."—The Washington Post.

By analyzing a turn-of-the-century model of urban reform that depicts this relationship between citizens and government, Schachter shows how reinvigorating an active public is essential to increasing agency efficiency and responsiveness. She offers two strategies for moving toward active citizenship: better citizenship education, including service learning, and public agencies' provision of better-focused information for their owners.

From David Osborne, the author of Reinventing Government--a biting analysis of the failure of America's public schools and a comprehensive plan for revitalizing American education. In Reinventing America's Schools, David Osborne, one of the world's foremost experts on public sector reform, offers a comprehensive analysis of the charter school movements and presents a theory that will do for American schools what his New York Times bestseller Reinventing Government did for public governance in 1992. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city got an unexpected opportunity to recreate their school system from scratch. The state's Recovery School District (RSD), created to turn around failing schools, gradually transformed all of its New Orleans schools into charter schools, and the results are shaking the very foundations of American education. Test scores, school performance scores, graduation and dropout rates, ACT scores, college-going rates, and independent studies all tell the same story: the city's RSD schools have tripled their effectiveness in eight years. Now other cities are following suit, with state governments reinventing failing schools in Newark, Camden, Memphis, Denver, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Oakland. In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice.

* Melds theoretical models with practical experience * Written by world-renowned experts on public administration * Guides future policy debates on helping to build effective and efficient states How does a government seeking to participate in and benefit from an integrated and interdependent world become more professional, technologically proficient, deregulated, and accountable? Reinventing Government for the Twenty-First Century tells you how. The authors identify the forces of globalization and the structural changes needed to increase state capacity and enhance global-scale participation. Professionals directly involved in assisting governments show public leaders and administrators how to improve the quality of their performance in government.

“A fascinating case for a more engaged government, transformed to meet the challenges and possibilities of the twenty-first century.” —President William J. Clinton A rallying cry for revolutionizing democracy in the digital age, Citizenville reveals how ordinary Americans can reshape their government for the better. Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, argues that today’s government is stuck in the last century while—in both the private sector and our personal lives—absolutely everything else has changed. Drawing on wide-ranging interviews with thinkers and politicians, Newsom shows how Americans can transform their government, taking matters into their own hands to dissolve political gridlock even as they produce tangible changes in the real world. Citizenville is a timely road map for restoring American prosperity and for reinventing citizenship in today’s networked age.

Will information technology help reinvent government? It might, but only if it is correctly managed. This book provides a new model for management of information age reform, based on international case-studies drawn from the US, UK, mainland Europe, and developing countries. It offers practical guidance and analytical insights and will be of value to practitioners, students, educators and researchers in both public administration and information systems.

Presenting more than 70 tools, The Reinventor's Fieldbook includes hundreds of practical "lessons learned," "do's and don'ts," "steps to take," and "pitfalls to avoid" in public management and governance. Based on dozens of case studies from five countries, it covers the waterfront of high-performance public organizations, including: customer choice and customer service standards, performance measurement, and performance budgeting; employee empowerment and labor-management partnerships; managed competition and asset privatization; partnerships with communities; culture change strategies; and administrative system reform.