Tag: Guerrilla Government

Independent Demonstration Projects: A Teaching Case on Innovation

~ David S. Reed ~ Leave a comment

Independent Demonstration Projects is a strategy to innovate in government without first getting support from officials. My new teaching case in Journal of Public Affairs Education explains the strategy and illustrates it with a real-life case of making Virginia’s records of who owns business entities available to the public.
The case is at https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2023.2188150.
If you hit a paywall, you can use this free link for friends of Center for Public Administrators https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YDJE8ZZKS9MM2XTSQFKX/full?target=10.1080/15236803.2023.2188150

My review of The Ethics of Dissent just published

~ David S. Reed ~ Leave a comment

My review of The Ethics of Dissent by Rosemary O’Leary shows that this classic about guerrilla government is not just for ethics courses.

(If you hit a paywall, use this free link for friends of Center for Public Administrators https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TEXWXUR9UYAWMVET5XGH/full?target=10.1080/15236803.2023.2182170 )

UPDATE: The friends link has been used up, so if you hit a paywall you can send me your email address and I’ll send you a pdf.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15236803.2023.2182170

Teaching the Role of Public Sector Workers in Democratic Checks and Balances

~ David S. Reed ~ Leave a comment

Public sector workers are part of the web of checks and balances in democracy. Public administration schools are already teaching the ethics of whether and when public sector workers should act as checks and balances, but very little about how to fulfill this role. Case studies and several streams of public administration research provide a basis for teaching future public sector workers how to be effective as democratic checks and balances.

Our new working paper about this is on SocArXiv at https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/hy32x/

Independent Demonstration Projects: A Teaching Case on Government Innovation

~ David S. Reed ~ 2 Comments

I have developed a teaching case about Independent Demonstration Projects, which is a successful strategy to implement innovations in government without prior approval of agency officials. The case is currently pending peer review for publication. I would be pleased to send a copy of the draft case materials to any faculty member who wants to examine it for possible use in their teaching. I can be reached at David.Reed@PubAdmin.org

Our paper gets cited: Increasing Citizen Engagement and Access to Information

~ David S. Reed ~ Leave a comment

David Reed’s paper, Technology: Increasing Citizen Engagement and Access to Information, has been downloaded from SocArXiv over 600 times, and has been cited in two works listed in Google Scholar. The paper’s recommendations are:

  1. Welcome the Civic Hackers
  2. Eat Your Own Dog Food
  3. Don’t Panic about Guerrilla Government

The paper is at https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/hws4f/

Resources for teaching: Non-Hierarchical Ethical Conduct by Public Sector Workers

~ David S. Reed ~ Leave a comment

David Reed will be a panelist for the ASPA DSJ webinar on Promoting Ethical Conduct in Organizations, on September 22, 2020. The annotated list of resources that he will be sharing at the webinar is at Non-Hierarchical Ethical Conduct^J for ASPA DSJ webinar

Beyond Guerrilla Government: Intrapreneurs, Cuff Systems, Side Projects and Hacks

~ Guest Poster ~ Leave a comment

Click for PDF, doi:10.13140/RG.2.1.1067.2803

Public administrators often pursue their public interest aspirations and personal aspirations by taking initiative independent of their supervisors. Rosemary O’Leary (2006) called this “guerrilla government”, and provided real-life examples ranging from whistleblowers to “a state department of transportation employee who repaired a train gate where children were playing against the wishes of his superior.” (O’Leary 2010, 12)

O’Leary examined such behavior as a predicament for supervisors—should they “nurture, tolerate, or terminate” their guerrilla employees? (2010, 8) But independent initiative is not only a predicament for supervisors, it is a vital part of the public administrator’s toolkit. Whistleblowing is one form of independent initiative, but Continue reading “Beyond Guerrilla Government: Intrapreneurs, Cuff Systems, Side Projects and Hacks” →