More than 50 years ago, the aerospace giant Lockheed created a special unit nicknamed the "Skunk Works" that was given the special mission of thinking "outside the boxes" and coming up with innovative approaches to create the next generation of technologies and products. Emulated over the years by many other major corporations (including the Ford Motor Co. and McDonnell Douglas Corp.), "skunk works" became an accepted strategy for forcing innovative thinking within otherwise hierarchical organizations, and quickly developing new products and services more quickly and efficiently. Now, as Progressive Policy Institute Vice President Robert D. Atkinson argues in the latest issue of Blueprint magazine, it's time to build a "skunk works" for the enterprise of government.
Atkinson specifically proposes an innovation unit for the federal government in the Executive Office of the President, with close links to the Office of Management and Budget, which exercises considerable oversight of federal agencies' operations and costs. This "skunk works" would focus on a "radical reengineering" strategy for how federal bureaucracies are structured, with special emphasis on building networks between government, business and civic enterprises focused on common tasks:
Skunk works aren't big on titles, protocol, or rules. They stay
away from bureaucratic management, enabling the members to
work quickly and efficiently with a minimum of corporate
oversight. If they don't do this, they can't attract the kind of
creative, policy "extroverts" -- people who network widely and
often travel outside the Washington Beltway -- that are needed
for such an operation to work.
As Atkinson makes clear, a "skunk works" is not a silver bullet for reengineering government. Other initiatives should be part of the overall strategy, including: "consolidated, performance-based grants, fundamental civil service reform, allowing agencies that cut costs to retain savings, creating accountable, performance-based organizations to foster digital, customer-centered government; and funding and flexibility for 'entrepreneurial' new government start-up efforts." But all these reforms would benefit from a designated innovation unit linked to top government decision-makers.
Though Atkinson is specifically proposing a federal "skunk works," the idea is equally relevant -- and perhaps more immediately practicable -- for state and local governments where the scale of operations is somewhat smaller and innovations can often be acted on quickly.
But you could certainly make the argument that the federal government in a Bush Administration urgently needs a "skunk works." After all, the Administration is very proud of its corporate management style, with clear lines of authority, simple agendas and missions, and a very low tolerance for dissent or argument -- precisely the qualities that have led so many corporations to see the need for at least one management unit that is encouraged to defy all this button-down conformity. As we noted with the announcement of the Bush Cabinet, this is an Administration that seems to be lacking in imagination, a rather important ingredient in any genuine reform agenda. It, and the country it governs, could benefit from a "skunk works."
Interestingly enough, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is in Washington today meeting with President Bush, created his own "skunk works" (two-thirds of it staffed by business people on loan from private industry) within his Department of Trade and Industry, focused solely on innovation and long-range planning for government. Maybe Blair will mention the idea to his new colleague in Washington.
