Banishing Bureaucracy: The Five Strategies for Reinventing Government

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.