Solving Public Problems: A Practical Guide to Fix Our Government and Change Our World

Description

How to take advantage of technology, data, and the collective wisdom in our communities to design powerful solutions to contemporary problems The challenges societies face today, from inequality to climate change to systemic racism, cannot be solved with yesterday's toolkit. Solving Public Problems shows how readers can take advantage of digital technology, data, and the collective wisdom of our communities to design and deliver powerful solutions to contemporary problems. Offering a radical rethinking of the role of the public servant and the skills of the public workforce, this book is about the vast gap between failing public institutions and the huge number of public entrepreneurs doing extraordinary things—and how to close that gap. Drawing on lessons learned from decades of advising global leaders and from original interviews and surveys of thousands of public problem solvers, Beth Simone Noveck provides a practical guide for public servants, community leaders, students, and activists to become more effective, equitable, and inclusive leaders and repair our troubled, twenty-first-century world. Author’s Note Introduction 1 Public Problem Solving and the New Public Entrepreneur 2 The Government That Governs Least Governs Best: The Politics of Problem Solving and the Crisis of Trust 3 From Idea to Implementation 4 Defining a Public Problem 5 Human-Centered Design, or Understanding Problems with Help from People 6 Understanding Problems Using Data 7 Using Collective Intelligence to Solve a Problem: Crowdsourcing, Collaboration, and Codesign 8 Fast Field Scanning 9 Implementing Solutions with Partners 10 Testing What Works: Evaluation and Evolution 11 Doing Differently, Learning Differently 12 Training the Next Generation of Leaders and Problem Solvers Acknowledgments Notes Index