McKinsey Anthology on Redesigning Government

The McKinsey Center for Government just released an impressive anthology of 30 “political leaders and civil servants, economists and policy experts, generalists and specialists”  on how governments worldwide are addressing common problems using newly designed approaches.  The anthology, entitled “Government designed for new times” is structured along 4 themes:

• Transforming Government;
• Innovating Government Services;
• Building New Competencies;  and
• Understanding Government in New Times.

In an accompanying video, Diana Farrell, along with other McKinsey directors, explain the imperatives behind the anthology:

“There is so much that can be done improving government itself—the effectiveness of government, the operations of government. In many economies in the OECD, government is 40 percent of GDP if we include transfers and subsidies. Just improving the effectiveness, the productivity, of that part of the economy, itself can be a major contributor to growth and to prosperity.”

 

The authors and content include:

Transforming government

Tony Blair—Leading transformation in the 21st century

François-Daniel Migeon—Interview: Transforming government in France

Frank-Jürgen Weise—Behind the German jobs miracle

Tim Brown—Quick take: Designing a tech-enabled government

Michael Fullan—Transforming schools an entire system at a time

Todd Park—Interview: Unleashing government’s ‘innovation mojo’

Diana Farrell—Government designed for new times

Innovating government services

James Fishkin—What the people think when they’re really thinking

Nandan Nilekani—Interview: For every citizen, an identity

Matthew Taylor—Citizens: The untapped resource

Susan Zielinski—The new mobility

Peter Shergold—A social contract for government

Wim Elfrink—The smart-city solution

Karan Bhatia—Quick take: Building the world’s infrastructure

Salman Khan—Teaching for the new millennium

Xie Chengxiang—Interview: Home for the urban poor

Elena Berkowitz and Blaise Warren—Quick take: How Estonia became E-stonia

Building new competencies

Douglas Holtz-Eakin—Fiscal management fix: Simple math—and a very big stick

Coen Teulings—Why politicans prefer austerity to long-term fiscal reform

Lu Mai—The urbanization solution

Göran Persson—How to tame a budget crisis

Peter Ho—Coping with complexity

Mohamed Ibrahim—Better data, better policy making

Understanding government in new times

Daron Acemoglu—The servant state

Parag Khanna—The rise of hybrid governance

Neil deGrasse Tyson—Why exploration matters—and why the government should pay for it

Ray O. Johnson—Quick take: The research imperative

Hernando de Soto—Interview: Building a nation of owners

Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels—A middle way for governance