* Jennifer Pahlka, author of Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better, on the An Honorable Profession podcast…
Pahlka: The last piece that I think is the most abstract, but probably the most important, is closing the loop between policy and implementation.
So right now, it sort of works in sort of a waterfall method. You pass a law or policy and it gets handed off to successive layers of a bureaucracy. By the time it’s actually being implemented on the ground by folks that are so distant from the folks who passed the law, a game of telephone has occurred. They don’t quite know what the real intention was. It’s been burdened with lots of procedure. It’s now more about the process than it is about the outcome, and they’re not able to sort of loop back and say, ‘Is what we’re doing what you intended? Is this working? Are we getting the results that we were hoping to get?’
And we have to really fundamentally think differently about the relationship between the executive and legislative branches in order to build these tight feedback loops so that by the time you’re actually hitting the ground we have tested things. We know what works, and we’re confident that we’re going to get there, and that we keep having those feedback loops all the way along.
But right now, most legislators are like, ‘I passed the law. It’s someone else’s job now. I’m moving on to the next piece of legislation, the next bill that I want to introduce.’
That’s a really big mind shift, but I would absolutely encourage anybody here in the legislative branch to shift their thinking. I think your voters will actually reward you for it, for caring more about the outcome than the bill. And that doesn’t mean you spend your days and your staff spend their days on fundamentally different things, but it will pay off.
Host: And that’s an interesting thing, because I think for a lot of elected officials, there’s been a little bit of a using how many bills you introduced or passed as the measurement for success. And so I think that’s a really interesting point to be able to talk instead about what you’ve delivered, because that’s really to your point. That’s what people are looking for.
Pahlka: Almost all of my friends, just like regular voters, people nodding, do you vote for somebody on the basis of the number of bills they passed? They’re like, I have no idea. Like, they don’t even know. They don’t know. But the reason that we introduce those bills, or your audience here introduces those bills, is because they get attention.
And what we have to do is create the mechanisms and affordances that give you the same kind of attention from the press, from the community, from academics, from community groups, that you get the same attention for the follow-up that you do for introducing the bills. And I think that’s the work that the civil service groups will do, that either the good government groups will do that. Academia can do that. You can train the media to pay attention to these things. You have to challenge that conventional wisdom that the reason that you’re doing this is either for votes or attention, because it’s not getting you the votes. There’s a different way to get attention that will also get outcomes, and your people will reward you for that.
She’s right that legislators too often just pass bills and move on to the next thing. She’s also right that successful implementation of laws can lead to much better news coverage.
But writing stories about bill intros is a whole lot easier and completely ingrained into news coverage norms than stories about successful implementation. Often, implementation stories are written after failures, and quote angry legislators railing at the bureaucracy, even though many of them had no idea that their bills were being implemented so poorly.
- Rivers Gently Flowing - Monday, Dec 8, 25 @ 2:39 pm:
Yes. So many times as a mid level state gov policy writer and implementer I’ve wanted to be able to ask questions back to the legislator. A fact sheet, what they wanted to accomplish, and FAQs from the bill sponsor would be great. And my agency should be able to run our implementation policy past them to see if we got the gist of what they wanted.
- Sigh - Monday, Dec 8, 25 @ 2:41 pm:
No matter how hard a legislator fights for implementation too often the administration throws more and more stipulations around it.
- Give Us Barabbas - Monday, Dec 8, 25 @ 2:53 pm:
I’m reminded of how the clients look at architect Howard Roarke’s building model and start eviscerating it piece by piece while talking about how to build it cheaper and faster and easier, then adding irrelevant ornamentation, until it looks pathetic.
But part of the disconnect they spoke of in that conversation is that middle management in state or city governments still is stuck in a forties or fifties era philosophy of management, where you don’t question superiors - you fear them. And you stay in the narrowly defined silos you are put in, communicating with the other silos is disloyal and mutinous. To be punished. Innovation in such an environment is very difficult. There’s a few movements here and there in a few agencies to adopt better communication as part of lean management practices but the institutional inertia is glacial.
- thechampaignlife - Monday, Dec 8, 25 @ 3:04 pm:
It is interesting to think of ways to design a system to focus better on results. Here are a few that come to mind:
- performance bonuses for the implementing agency head with success determined by the chief sponsors
- performance bonuses for the chief sponsors with success determined by the General Assembly
- assigning the chief sponsors to the implementation team with some method to determine how long they will be there and what incentives or disincentives they have to reach a timely and successful implementation (e.g., getting a get-out-of-rules-committee card to use on a future bill, not getting to introduce or vote on bills while on assignment, “points” towards a committee chair or other leadership role, bonus on completion or pay cut while on assignment, etc.)
- Norseman - Monday, Dec 8, 25 @ 3:16 pm:
As Harry Potter and Griphook said to each other, “it’s complicated”. I’m not seeing great insight by Pahlka.
Legislators rarely pull ideas out of their own minds. They are asked to introduce bills by staff, lobbyists, groups, agencies, other electeds and constituents. Some are PR bills that aren’t worth implementing, i.e. write a report on things that have already been studied by others. First bills are usually something very lame.
Lawmaker follow-up is thus driven by the folks who gave it to them. Associations will work directly with agencies on implementation. If there is a disagreement, the lobbyist or wired-in person will yank the legislator’s chain to yank the agency’s chain. The more powerful the group, the more legislators who will care and the harder they will lean into the implementing agency. At the federal level, you’ll see committee report that discusses implementation issues. I wish IL would require committee reports for laws. This would discourage the merely bills that don’t really mean much to the public. But that’s why legislators will not support such reform.
Finally, implementation is difficult when the ideas pushed by others aren’t well thought out. The problems come out of the woodwork when you put the pen to paper. It sounds good, but the resources aren’t there, or other barriers have to be surmounted.
- Yellow Dog Democrat - Monday, Dec 8, 25 @ 3:47 pm:
I agree with Norseman.
In addtion, the Executive Branch does not want the Legislative Branch’s input on implementation.
And tne policy/legal staff for sure does not want the comms/media staff snooping around JCAR.
You have the additional issue of effective dates for laws all happening simultaneously.
Finally, “Coverage follows conflict”, so rarely do we see any “Good News” policy stories.
That said, maybe someone wants to do a SAFE-T Act story, about all the people who never had to post cash bail, and were then either exonerated or had the charges dropped or served no jail time.
it seems like that would be a good story to tell this Christmas season.
- MikeMacD - Monday, Dec 8, 25 @ 4:49 pm:
One of the first things we taught new managers is that half of your time involves follow up. You don’t just tell your staff to do something, you actually check by asking if they did what you asked or go out on the floor and see that things got done and observe the results. The successful managers made it part of their everyday tasks on a continuing basis. The ones that had problems sat in their offices imagining the results and were constantly surprised by the world that unfolded.
When I say half the time, I literally mean half the time.
- GoRamblers - Monday, Dec 8, 25 @ 5:10 pm:
Working in the executive branch in various roles, I agree with Pahlka, and recommend her book. I think thoughtful critiques like hers should be taken seriously.
Her observations are most applicable when considering how policy interacts with program administration, as well as in design and implementation related to IT. While it focuses on the Federal level, it’s applicable to the state, and makes some insightful and precise observations about why programs do not work as intended.
For example, she illustrates an episode at the Federal VA where a middle manager running a program follows administrative guidance too strictly, leading to what he knows will be bad results for the Veterans who depend upon it. He knows better, but it’s less risky to just follow the bad guidance than it is to speak up, or to apply his own judgment to interpret the guidance more effectively, which he believes would risk an audit finding or IG complaint. It’s not an unfamiliar example. Too often, implementation challenges are not fully explored, just dismissed with an eye roll, or attributed to the stupidity or laziness of people at XYZ agency. But it’s preventable and fixable from multiple angles—that’s the point of the book. The middle manager should speak up to their supervisor. The legislators or those who approved the admin rules should be more responsive. Where possible, legislation should be drafted with sufficient flexibility for those implementing it to adapt to unforeseen challenges.
In the abstract, it sounds trivial and like common sense, but what Pahlka’s really talking about is a shift in emphasis. If you draft and pass a bill, you should care that it worked. (Not saying this does not occur). You should contact those who are implementing it to see how it’s going. Did it help? Do you need additional help? Should we tweak anything next Spring? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of this happening, or that state government is really configured to encourage this. But it could be good.
Further, it’s nice to read a critique of government operations from someone who’s making a good faith point about how to improve government based on experience, not a drive-by derogatory comment focused on “lazy bureaucrats” and “running it like a business.”
- Give Us Barabbas - Monday, Dec 8, 25 @ 5:59 pm:
A truism I recently came across:
“If something stays wrong a long time without it getting fixed, it’s because someone likes it the way it is.”