The Civic Assessment

Building Trust Between the Governed and the Government

Nearly ten years ago, I presented a TED talk at the annual conference of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California (MMASC). The topic:“The Why of Public Service.” At the time, I had been a retired city manager for a couple of years but continued as an instructor in three graduate programs of public policy and administration. Just the week before at the downtown Chicago campus of Northwestern University, I had finished the last class of my summer on site course, “The Fundamentals of Public Administration.” Sitting on Midway’s tarmac, I was finally focused on my upcoming presentation. I could center on the old tried and true, the latest and greatest methods in contemporary public service delivery. You know, something on leadership, community outreach, the best ways on managing the public’s money, or discussing solutions for the public policy issue of the moment. But maybe, just maybe, I could bring forward something more foundational, something that is arguably more important: an alternative way for public servants to reevaluate their roles and their relationship with the public, something that speaks to finding better ways of building trust and stronger relationships between government and the governed. It needed to be more than just another presentations on the mechanics of what public servants do and how they do it. I The ideas running through my head ended up embedded in my presentation. The topic:

“The Why of Public Service.” Not the What. Not the How. The Why!

Facing a crowd of some 200+ up-and-coming local government professionals, I started the session by asking them to contemplate “Why Public Service?” The question was purposefully rhetorical and meant to engender a sense of personal introspection. Better yet:

“Why are Each of You in the Public Service?”

A seemingly easy undertaking for a room full of optimistic pragmatists that identify as “Passionate Servant Leaders.” For the majority, the answer was obvious. They were doing good, fighting evil, and improving the quality of life of their communities. Noble responses no doubt. However, the crowd somewhat missed the point. For my intent, the question alluded to the equally if not greater purpose of our unique democratic republic. For clarification, I reworked the question:

“From a Civic Responsibility Standpoint, “Why Public Service”?

It was an added parameter that many had not considered. Most viewed his or her personal civic responsibility in the narrow parameters of voting and jury duty.  These obligations were separate and apart from their professional role as public servants.  After all, most had not been exposed, at least in the classroom, to the greater concept of civics. Chances are their K-12 government class revolved around memorizing names and dates. It was enough to make a student’s eyes role back in his and her heads. If they weren’t political science or history majors in college, they probably didn’t take courses in these subject areas beyond the breadth requirements for graduation. For most, even those with advanced degrees in public policy and administration, were trained in the methods, mechanics, and applications of government, business, and policy formation but not in the much broader notion of the civic responsibility of professional civil servants in our democratic republic.  Conversations about civics and democracy were cursory. It was almost an avoidance by the academy itself since such notions carried political connotations. Something to be separated from the administration of public agencies. In part, this understanding was the result of a too literal interpretation of Woodrow Wilson’s politics-administration dichotomy, namely, the separation of political decision making and administrative execution. 

As a result, civic responsibility and engagement may have been swept up as political acts.  Historically, civics education had been considered by many as a means of indoctrination. Originally it was. Consequently, it WAS something to be avoided. The observations of Charles N. Quigley, executive director of the Center for Civic Education add to our understanding: 

“This image of education in civics, government and history as dry, dull and irrelevant, indeed an indoctrination that whitewashed our past and much of our present, led in the 1960s to a reaction against the field. This resulted in the elimination of widespread requirements for civic education in our schools and a reduction of attention to political history in texts in favor of such topics as social history, the history of the labor movement, civil rights history and the like. While many of the new emphases were improvements, the reduction of attention to civics and government and political history was not.”

Whether public servants recognize a broader sense of civic responsibility or not, they are members of the public tribe as well as purveyors of quality and timely public service. They are an integral part of both the political and administrative decision-making process. Even by intention, they did not leave their citizenship at the employee’s entrance to city hall.  To sustain a sense of professionalism and the non-political approach of bureaucratic neutrality, many thought they were supposed to keep their personal civic selves at home. Others intentionally understood their roles as separate and apart from the very public they serve. Some confused civic responsibility with political engagement.  As card carrying members of meritocracy, it was the professional expert in them speaking. What they might not have realized, they have an even greater responsibility as what Terry Cooper references as, The Public Administrator—The Virtuous Citizen Administrator.

“The public administrator’s role as citizen takes priority over less fundamental demands, such as organizational imperatives, pressure from politicians, or blind commitments to worthwhile values, such as efficiency, stability, orderliness, and timeliness. Specific administrative tasks and duties are properly viewed as penultimate responsibilities. They must be carried out, but their modes of conduct should be ones which encourage participation in the political community and help to maintain the horizontal bonds of political authority. Ultimately, a public administrator’s actions should reflect respect for the public office of citizenship for which he or she bears an obligation, which is prior to any other associated with public employment.”

To underscore this point, Herbert Spiro suggests:
“Moreover, the bureaucrat is also a citizen. By virtue of assuming his delegated, specific, additional responsibility and accountability qua bureaucrat, he does not surrender his original, general responsibility qua citizen. His situation as a citizen, and that of his fellow citizens, must be the main center of our attention.”

This may be an entirely new way of thinking for a generation of public administrators, an updated review of the public servant’s role and place in both the governmental bureaucracy and the greater polity.  In retrospect, it’s easy to see how civic responsibility may have taken a back seat to the more pragmatic applications of governance.  For more than a century, the focus on the siloed mechanics of administration had its origins with Frederick Taylor’s school of “Scientific Management followed by Herbert Simon’s notion of administrative behavior, and his discounting of Dwight Waldo’s theoretical focus on the importance of integrating democracy with bureaucracy. As it turned out, Simon’s commonsensical business-like approach to governance laid the foundation for the next generation of scholarly thought, “The New Public Management. (NPM).”

From the mid 1990’s, NPM’s business like efficiencies have been the focus of governmental agencies and public administration education itself. It replaced the old “Scientific Management” top down, stodgy, uncaring, and rigid approach to governance. Grounded in entrepreneurial thought and economics, it was the business like, customer service oriented, more efficient approach to governance. It was etched in the pages of David Osborne’s and Ted Gaebler’s manifesto, “Reinventing Government.” By the mid-90s, these concepts expanded to not only improving systems, but on improving the individual public servant.  It was now about leadership and not just management. From Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Tom Peter’s In Search of Excellence, to Daniel Goldman’s Emotional Intelligence, continuous improvement, on both an organizational and individual level, dominated large chunks of thought in schools of management and public administration. Members of the public were, and in most instances still are, defined merely as consumers of public goods and services. Clearly, the relationship between democracy and bureaucracy was not an integral component of the NPM school of thought.  

With customer service efficiency as the driver, the academic focus in government had shifted to the tools, mechanics, and methods of government and not the role of the bureaucracy within the greater context of the nation’s democratic republic. Granted, those responsible for implementing the will of the people need the requisite technical, managerial, financial, and leadership acumen. Success is usually evaluated in terms of efficiency, both in time and money. It is a quantifiable exercise. Depending on expected outcomes, evaluating programmatic effectiveness is more difficult. This requires a qualitative approach. In the final analysis, did a particular public policy, from start to finish, meet the needs and expectations of the governed? Not just the demands of the elected body, not just the expectations of the internal organizational hierarchy, but the greater polity? Did it come to pass not just within the legal confines of constitutional and administrative law, accepted managerial and financial practices, but by the affirmation of an engaged and participatory electorate?

“Was the decision-making process itself perceived by the public to be fair and equitable? Did city hall truly consider public opinion?“

The answer to these questions, arguably the most important ones, often go unanswered. If such an inquiry is undervalued, or even ignored by those in government, the risk of alienation between public servants and the public only becomes greater. It is here where the community’s perception of those in government prove to be trustworthy or not? I would posit that today’s public administrators that view themselves as citizen administrators are more thoughtful in their approach in communicating and engaging fellow citizen members.  In the pursuit of building trust, it is these virtuous citizen public administrators that make best efforts to convey a sense of open and transparent public debate. 

This is the foundation of trust in governance. It requires an intrinsic understanding of the democratic needs of the constituents. Even with the best quantitative review of public service delivery systems, the democratic qualitative impacts of public policy may never be adequately measured, if at all. Checking the boxes on governmental surveys asking: “How are We Doing?” is insufficient. Many times, the outreach efforts of city hall are perceived as self-serving, namely, when it is trying to sell the public on something, e.g., a project, a program, or a new tax. Clearly this is not totally the case as evidenced by many local government agencies and school districts instituting civic outreach through local “Citizen Leadership Academies,” “Coffee with the Mayor,” “What’s Happening at City Hall?” podcasts, and K-12 government days. All good, but very limiting. The challenge is connecting with the greater population prior to a public agency’s need to act. However, worthy intentions alone, those steeped in the latest and greatest albeit perfunctory applications of the day, do not prove trustworthiness. 

No one ever said engaging the public is easy. It’s reflective of an attitude of separation between government and the governed. It is no secret that this is a period in our national history where this divide has once again, widened. Rightly or wrongly, the governed reflect a clear feeling of alienation, not heard and not respected. Most often, even quoting mathematically defensible standards of efficiency doesn’t address these political-cultural needs of the community. Just following the letter of the law and an adherence to public engagement best practices may miss this cultural disconnect. It’s an inadvertent omission. It’s obtuse. It’s a failure of both elected officials and bureaucratic systems that do not recognize the significance of this detachment.

As both citizens and public employees, public administrators are serving citizen partners and fellow stockholders, not just customers and clients. Such an understanding purports common purpose. It’s a bonding of civic and professional responsibility whereby public employees are both recipients and conduits in the civic bridge building process.  It may be an epiphany for some that performance alone does not build the bonds of trust.

 
On average, this whole concept of the Citizen Public Administrator is a lot to take in especially for those that have spent his/her career in the context of the NPM based on the clear distinction between the provider and the consumer of public goods and services.

The Civic Assessment

As Harlan Cleveland once stated:

“We should try, we concluded, to help the maximum numbers of people—to maximize their ‘Morales’ by fulfilling their basic needs. This required that we try to describe the basic needs of modern man.” 

A Sense of Welfare
A Sense of Equity
A Sense of Achievement
A Sense of Participation

These are the civic keys. Every public agency needs to understand the depth and breadth of each of these organizational and community senses. Which of these, if any, are being met? Which one’s are not? Since the notion of civics is interlaced in each of the above, each governmental entity needs to conduct a civic assessment, not only of the community, but of itself. As an example, each should start by asking:

• What are the civic expectations of the citizens within each governmental service area? Not the programmatic, not the fiscal, but the civic needs. The need for citizen induced engagement.
• What are the expected versus existing rules of engagement?
• Is it within a governmental agency’s ability to balance a representative form of government while meeting the direct democratic expectations of the population?
• Are those in authority, both elected and appointed, willing to adjust their internal systems, share power and responsibility, to accommodate the greater engagement requirements of the citizenry?

These, and host of other political, legal, and procedural inquires, need to be continually addressed. An ever-changing society requires it. Such movement necessitates an uneasy reordering of the rules pertaining to the sharing of power and authority. Understanding who or what is responsible. It has been my experience that most individuals enjoy authority and thrive on power. To the contrary, they shy from responsibility. In this environment, the actual coordination of such an effort will fall to the bureaucracy, the professional public administrator as a “Virtuous Citizen.” All of us working within the governmental system, need to be reminded of the necessary bonds that bind the citizenry, our governing boards, and career public servants together. Each needs the other especially in the preservation of our collective civic health.

From the New Public Management to the New Public Service

Janet V. and Robert B. Denhardt were on to this some 25 years ago. They understood the evolution of public administration scholarship from the old hierarchical, if not rigid old public administration theories, to the business and economic focus of the new public management. They got it. But they also noted that this shift in running government like business came at the expense of bridging the notion of citizenship, community, and civil society. For them, it was the concept of the “New Public Service.” Their thesis was as follows:

• Serve, rather than steer. An increasingly important role of the public servant is to help citizens articulate and meet their shared interests, rather than attempt to control or steer society in new directions.

• The public interest is the aim, not the by-product. Public administrators must contribute to building a collective, shared notion of the public interest. The goal is not to find quick solutions driven by individual choices. Rather, it is the creation of shared interests and shared responsibilities.

• Think strategically, act democratically. Policies and programs meeting public needs can be most effectively and responsibly achieved through collective efforts and collaborative processes.

• Serve citizens, not customers. The public interest results from a dialogue about shared values, rather than the aggregation of individual self-interests. Therefore, public servants do not merely respond to the demands of “customers,” but focus on building relationships of trust and collaboration with and among citizens.

• Accountability isn’t simple. Public servants should be attentive to more than the market; they should also attend to statutory and constitutional law, community values, political norms, professional standards, and citizen interests.

• Value people, not just productivity. Public organizations and the networks in which they participate are more likely to succeed in the long run if they are operated through processes of collaboration and shared leadership based on respect for all people.

• Value citizenship and public service above entrepreneurship. The public interest is better advanced by public servants and citizens committed to making meaningful contributions to society rather than by entrepreneurial managers acting as if public money were their own.

Where do we go from here?

First and foremost an acknowledgement. As well-meaning and dedicated as most public administrators are, I would posit the need for everyone in government to reassess their relationship with the public. To reiterate Terry L Cooper’s thesis:

“The administrator of the public’s business is not primarily a technician, not most essentially a specialist in some policy arena, nor simply an employee of a public organization; the most fundamental role of the public administrator is that of citizen.”
“The ethical identity of the public administrator then, should be that of the citizen who is employed as one of us to work for us; a kind of professional citizen ordained to do that work which we in a complex large-scale political community are unable to undertake ourselves. Administrators are to be those especially responsible citizens who are fiduciaries for the citizenry as a whole.”

“With this role definition in mind, I argue that the ethical obligations of the public are to be derived from the obligations of citizenship in a democratic political community. These obligations include responsibility for establishing and maintaining horizontal relationships of authority with one’s fellow citizens, seeking power with rather than power over the citizenry.”

Secondly, the citizen public administrator shoulders much of the responsibility of facilitating collaborative engagement between the public, elected officials, and the bureaucracy. As outlined in their essay, “Citizen-Centered Collaborative Public Management,” Terry L. Cooper, Thomas A. Bryer, and Jack W. Meek, state:

“We advance the argument that deliberative and collective action strategies of civic engagement hold the most promise in achieving a public-involving, citizen-centered collaborative public management. This kind of collaborative public management represents a form of governance that extends beyond “the process of facilitating and operating in multiorganizational arrangements to solve problems that cannot be solved, or solved easily, by single organizations. We intentionally use the phrase citizen-centered collaborative public management to emphasize the role of the public in collaborative management processes, which have not always recognized the value of citizenship. In achieving this outcome, we believe that civic engagement means ‘people participating together for deliberation and collective action within an array of interests, institutions and networks, developing civic identity, and involving people in governance processes.’”

It is this understanding of citizenship that is central to the theme of building trust and legitimacy with the public. Those local officials that see themselves as citizen public administrators are arguably, the best suited in rebuilding the bonds with the public through deliberative engagement. They are partners with their elected bodies in seeking public input in both budgetary and citizen based strategic planning processes. They view themselves as members of the tribe of citizens as well as members of an agency. However, this dual role is a difficult road to travel.

The virtuous public administrator from top to bottom is responsible to the organizational hierarchy, the expectations of the elected body, and the civic needs of the general public. Maneuvering through this complex and competing mix of needs and expectations, sharing power and authority as they go, is no easy task. Borrowing a dictum from M. Scott Peck, its “The Road Less Traveled.” Still, it must be done now more than ever. Who is more equipped to take on such a task than virtuous citizen public administrators? After all, they have been trained in the mechanics of public outreach. Many have a profound sense of being public servants. The question then becomes: 

Can they be even more effective, broaden trust, by seeing themselves as citizen members of the greater polity and not just well-meaning bureaucrats?

Some Final Thoughts

H. George Fredrickson, Professor Emeritus, University of Kansas
Shared Power and Governance
“For whom do we work? Not long ago, this question would have seemed irrelevant because the answer was obvious: they work for the people who elect or appoint them, and of course they work for the people who pay them. This answer is no longer obvious.”
“In the world of shared power, “the organizations that get things done will no longer be hierarchical pyramids with most of the real control at the top. They will be systems-interlaced webs of tension in which control is loose, power diffuse, and centers of decision plural” (Cleveland 1972). Decision making in the shared-power context in which local governments and their leaders are nested is an increasingly intricate process of multilateral brokerage, both inside and outside the locality.”

John Nalbandian, Professor Emeritus, University of Kansas
“Local leaders, both elected and appointed, work for the whole people, for the community near at hand as well as for communities farther away. The best local leaders have conceptions of the greater good or of the public interest that guide and motivate them. This involves a form of morality and a form of faith.”
“In short, it is the values and the practices of managers that increasingly will define professionalism in local government, not where city managers work or who hires and fires them. Successful professional managers are and will continue to be those who are able to identify, understand, and work with the values of their community.”

Eugene P. Dvorin and Robert H. Simmons–From Amoral to Humane Bureaucracy
“The end of public administration is not to execute public policy with utmost dispatch, with maximum efficiency or value neutrality—or any combination of the three. The refinement of technique is of low priority compared to the discipline’s need to define the public interest.”

Peter Block- Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest
Replacing Leadership with Stewardship
“Stewardship begins with the willingness to be accountable for some larger body than ourselves—a team, an organization, a community. Stewardship springs from a set of beliefs about reforming organizations that affirm our choice for service over the pursuit of self-interest. When we choose service over self-interest, we say we are willing to be deeply accountable without choosing to control the world around us. It requires a level of trust that we are not used to holding.”

Addendum–A place to start.

From the International City/County Management Association (ICMA)-

The genesis of my thoughts originated from a synthesis of the accumulated public affairs scholarship of my own academic influencers such as Dwight Waldo, H. George Frederickson, Terry L. Cooper, Harlan Cleveland, Peter Drucker, John C. Bollens, Frederick Mosher, Norton Long, Robert F. Durant, John Nalbanian, Janet V. Denhardt, Robert B. Denhardt, David H. Rosenbloom, Tina Nabatchi, Mel Powell, Stephen K. Blumberg, Jack W. Meek, Robert Blair, Raymond Cox, David Y. Miller, Peter Block, Harry C. Boyte, Eugene P. Dvorin, Robert H. Simmons, Vincent Ostrom, and Terry Tempest Williams.

About the Author:
Stephen G. Harding, MPA, is an Instructor of Comparative Politics and Political History with the University of California Riverside, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. He is a retired city manager and a former policy, financial, economic development, and management advisor to local and regional government. He is a former instructor of global metropolitan policies in the Master of Public Policy and Administration (MPPA) program at Northwestern University and in the Master of Public Affairs and Administration Programs (MPA) at the University of La Verne and California State University, Northridge.

He is a Distinguished Alum of the Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Long Beach. He has served as a member of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Advisory Board for Graduate Education and the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) in the accreditation and reaccreditation of graduate programs of public administration.

He is past Member of the Board of Directors of the Wolfgang Wolff Foundation, dedicated to preserving the art, textile designs, and life history of Wolfgang Wolff, an exile of Nazi Germany.

When I Wore a Tie