M. Revlon Alice, Systematic thinking of social action. (1971)
Thesis: The chapter deals with appropriate techniques that should be utilized to offer social services such as health services and education. It talks about the methods used to resolve the issue of incentives and reduce the task of trying to discover new efficient ways to offer social services. It emphasizes that the models stated cannot resolve all service production but proper implementation and newer viable methods should be introduced.
“The second cause is “positive failure’-the failure to build into federal programs a positive set of incentives to channel the activities of decentralized administrators and program operators toward the program objectives.”(328)
“The setbacks of the War on Poverty arise, in part, from the difficulties of applying a specific and administered program to more than 30 million poor individuals.” (330)
“Unless the effort is made to develop performance measures and use them as incentives, it is hard to see how decentralization by itself will lead to greater effectiveness.” (332)
Anne talks about decentralization that it involves the breaking down of central administration like systems of government and education sectors into units that can be easily managed. The article suggests that Community control should be encouraged to allow the community to control the social services thus acquiring more power with regards to social services delivery. This article is important due to the fact that it seeks to advice the government and the public how social services like education and health should be provide to ensure they benefit all in the society. My opinion on this article is that the information being relayed is very important and should be implemented to improve service delivery.
Pressman Jeffrey and Wildavsky, Implementation. (1973)
Thesis: The employment effort by the employment development sector in Oakland at the end of the 1960s drew a lot of attention by offering minority employment. The strive to create more jobs made the government to engage in various projects which did not work with time.
“Implementation of the EDA’s programs was just more difficult than any of us had thought” (339)
“Some programs are aborted because political agreement cannot be obtained.” (339)
“In our study of implementation, we have deliberately chosen case material in which dramatic elements are essentially self-explanatory are ruled out” (339)
This article strives to show us the establishment of Economic Development Agency and the roles that comes with it. From the article we find out that the government has come up with extreme measures to control bureaucracy and this has led to bad systems within the government. My opinion on this article is that it communicates very important points that should be taken very positively.
The national performance review, from red tape to results: creating a government that works better and costs less. (1993)
Thesis: This article deals with the people’s trust with the government on most of its strategies of solving issues since most federal programs don’t work. Bill Clinton made effort by creating the national performance assessment to monitor the progress of many programs and make recommendations so as to ensure the government reduces unhealthy bureaucracy and increases productivity of the government. It shows us the several problems facing both public and private firms and the solutions that could be used.
“Our goal is to make the entire federal government both less expensive and more efficient, and to change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment. We intend to redesign, to reinvent, and to reinvigorate the entire national government” (556)
“We have spent too much money on programs that don’t work.”(557)
“The time has come to set our house in order. The administrative management of the government needs overhauling.” (561)
These articles are important in that they give a wide variety of rich information some of which is secretly held by the government, while some other information actually helps boost the federal government itself. In my opinion the article is important because it gives us more information about the functioning of the government and helps increase accountability of the government.
