A revolution is stirring in America. People are angry at governments that spend more but deliver less, frustrated with bureaucracies that give them no control, and tired of politicians who raise taxes and cut services but fail to solve the problems we face. Reinventing Government is both a call to arms in the revolt against bureaucratic malaise and a guide to those who want to build something better. It shows that there is a third way: that the options are not simply liberal or conservative, but that our systems of governance can be fundamentally reframed; that a caring government can still function as efficiently and productively as the best-run businesses.Authors Osborne and Gaebler describe school districts that have used choice, empowerment, and competition to quadruple their students' performance; sanitation departments that have cut their costs in half and now beat the private sector in head-to-head competition; military commands that have slashed red tape, decentralized authority, and doubled the effectiveness of their troops. They describe a fundamental reinvention of government already underway—in part beneath the bright lights of Capitol Hill, but more often in the states and cities and school districts of America, where the real work of government goes on.From Phoenix to St. Paul, Washington, D.C. to Washington state, entrepreneurial public managers have discarded budget systems that encourage managers to waste money, scrapped civil service systems developed for the nineteenth century, and jettisoned bureaucracies built for the 1930s. They have replaced these industrial-age systems with more decentralized, more entrepreneurial, more responsive organizations designed for the rapidly changing, information-rich world of the 1990s.Osborne and Gaebler isolate and describe ten principles around which entrepreneurial public organizations are built. They:1) steer more than they row2) empower communities rather than simply deliver services3) encourage competition rather than monopoly4) are driven by their missions, not their rules5) fund outcomes rather than inputs6) meet the needs of the customer, not the bureaucracy7) concentrate on earning, not just spending8) invest in prevention rather than cure9) decentralize authority10) solve problems by leveraging the marketplace, rather than simple creating public programs. Reinventing Government is not a partisan book. It focuses not on what government should do, but on how government should work. As such, it has been embraced by both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.

Reinventing Government: How The Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming The Public Sector

Business & Money

David Osborne

Ted Gaebler

Economics

Addison-Wesley

The future of American politics is already visible. To see it, one must look beyond Washington to America's "laboratories of democracy," the states. Today's governors are hammering out a wide range of new approaches to the economic and social problems created by the transition to a post-industrial economy. In the process, they are constructing a new political paradigm: a post-Great Society, post-Reagan politics molded to the realities of the 1980s and 1990s. The bottom-up innovation is reminiscent of the Progressive Era, when America's governors-responding to the birth of an industrial economy-laid the groundwork for the New Deal. Laboratories of Democracy looks at six governors who sponsored innovative programs in the 1980s: Mario Cuomo of New York, Bill Clinton of Arkansas, Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, James Blanchard of Michigan, and Richard Thornburg of Pennsylvania. Osborne explores their experimental economic and social programs, from technology development to welfare reform. He argues that the new roles played by state governments foreshadow a new role for the federal government-just as the Progressive Era foreshadowed the New Deal.

Laboratories of democracy

Management & Leadership

Harvard Business School Press

This text looks at six governors who sponsored programs in the 1980s concerning American politics. The author explores their experimental economic and social programs, from technology development to welfare reform.

David Osborne's 1992 bestseller, Reinventing Government, was a landmark book that identified ten principles characteristic of innovative, entrepreneurial, 21st century public organizations and governance. This essential sequel goes one step further, outlining five strategies that have the power to transform public systems and organizations into such organizations, thereby achieving dramatic increases in effectiveness, efficiency, adaptability, and capacity to innovate. In an age of disillusionment with public service, Banishing Bureaucracy offers inspiring stories of organizations that really work and provides specific recipes for effective change. Here is a road map by which reinventors can actually make "reinvention" work. 
 From Publishers Weekly Osborne, a consultant to local, state and foreign governments, virtually started a national movement with his 1992 bestseller, Reinventing Government (coauthored with Ted Gaebler). Expanding on that handbook's prescriptions for decentralizing authority, benchmarking performance and competitive public-versus-private bidding on government services, he and Plastrik, a Michigan public-sector consultant, have produced an immensely useful manual for transforming unresponsive government bureaucracies-local, state or national-into entrepreneurial systems open to innovation and change. They amplify their five core strategies-clarifying purpose; creating incentives through markets and competition; improving accountability via customer involvement; redistributing power through the hierarchy; nurturing a new culture-with a wealth of case material ranging from Indianapolis's saving of more than $100 million over seven years to Margaret Thatcher's overhaul of Britain's education, health care, unions and public agencies to kindred programs in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. More ambitiously, the authors set forth a heady vision of community empowerment, whereby citizens organize as residents, neighborhood associations, nonprofits and business groups to run schools, housing developments and planning functions. 
 From Library Journal In this volume, Osborne, coauthor of Reinventing Government (Addison-Wesley, 1992), and Plastrik, a Michigan political strategist, assess the "reinvention" movement and recommend five strategies to institutionalize the process. Using examples from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, they recommend clarifying organizational purposes, creating consequences for organizational performance, becoming customer-driven, empowering workers and communities, and developing an "entrepreneurial culture." The authors also respond to the growing criticism of the "reinvention" movement, acknowledging that the term has often been misunderstood and misapplied. Like Reinventing Government, this volume will fuel the debate over government reform. Essential for specialists in public administration, government officials, and informed lay readers. William L. Waugh, Georgia State Univ., Atlanta 
 ** David Osborne, recognized as the pre-eminent public sector reformer, has an intensive speaking schedule throughout the country. ** Named one of the Best Business Books of 1997 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries. ** Over 200,000 copies of Reinventing Government sold in Plume, with backlist pace of 10,000 per year. ** Reinventing Government was hailed by Business Week as "the new gospel of government," and was embraced by the Clinton-Gore administration as their blueprint for streamlining government.

Banishing Bureaucracy: The Five Strategies for Reinventing Government

Politics & Social Sciences

Peter Plastrik

Politics & Government

Blitzprint Inc.

Toby Potts, fresh from Bar School, and clutching his graduation diploma, is a young, aspiring barrister, full of hopes and dreams and intent on becoming the leading criminal advocate of his time. He can hardly wait to get on his feet and impress the jury with his incisive cross-examination, his mastery of all things legal, and his spellbinding final speeches. Sadly, reality kicks in, and Toby finds the path to fame and fortune far from smooth and uneventful. His trials and tribulations take Toby from his Call to the Bar, his experiences in pupillage, his first brief when he represents the wrong client, through to his great moment of triumph when he represents Santa Claus at the Old Bailey, and many adventures in between. Chambers politics, strange clients, solicitors who come and go on a whim, and even stranger and eccentric judges, all have their part to play in Toby's climb up the greasy pole. Moments of courtroom drama, and many more moments of high fiasco, mark Toby's initiation into the heady world of the Criminal Bar. So much to learn, so little time. Will Toby succeed where so many have failed? He has the determination, he has the self-belief, but does he have what it takes to reach the pinnacle of the profession? Only time will tell. One thing is certain - never a dull moment! Why be ordinary, Toby was once told, if you have it in you to be extraordinary? Reviews "Toby is a marvellous character and had me laughing out loud" "Here we have all the hallmarks of a great British comedy, but with a fresh approach" "Very good, intelligent writing - lighthearted and funny" "Osborne is a very amusing writer with a light touch"

Toby Potts in the Temple of Gloom and Other Adventures of Our Intrepid Hero

Literature & Fiction

Humor & Satire

Exposure Pub

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Books by David Osborne