In the fifth and final episode of Government Transformed 2.0, David Halpern rejoins Richard Johnstone and Nicholas Gruen to discuss the efficacy of evaluative processes in government, and how public servants can and should be empowered to make better evaluations of public policy.
Gruen explains the concept of the institutional imperative by way of Warren Buffett's ‘business imperative’, from which he admits he has borrowed the term.
“What [Buffett] says is that business managers find that they are driven to expand the business. His argument is that, as an investor and a business manager, his role is not to expand a business, but to use capital as productively as possible. And those two things are not the same in government.”
Gruen went on to say that the institutional imperative often risks becoming a “preoccupying force” in government, such that it crowds out “problem-solving [and] critical thinking about how a system can improve”.
Listen to hear Gruen and Halpern also discuss:
· The importance of independent evaluations of policy,
· The role of curiosity in driving innovation
· The potential for bottom-up meritocracy to improve government services.
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