Integrating Housing and Social Services case

Program Development and Sustainment in Intergovernmental Management: the

Role of Networks

PADM 524

June 22, 2010

Mario A. Rivera

Intergovernmental Relations (IGR)

• Several important features– Federalism: while IGR occurs within our federal system, it encompasses

more than is conveyed by the term

– Human dimension: the activities and attitudes of persons occupying official positions in units of government

– Relations among officials: not occasional occurrences fixed by statutes or court decision but continuous day-to-day patterns of contact and relationship among similarly-situated individuals of kindred backgrounds and interests in different levels of government (Deil Wright)

– Participation: In networked relationships at all levels

– Policy component: policy consists of the intentions and actions (or inactions) of public officials and the consequences of those actions. Interactions among public officials generates policy.

Intergovernmental Management (IGM)• Defining features that distinguish its more limited

focus from IGR include– Problem-solving: activities often focus more on joint

problem-solving than policy making (coordination)– Coping capabilities: Managing ongoing relationships and

coping with systems as they are– Broader mix of actors: activities often include relationships

between public/private/nonprofit sector– Lead actors: policy/management professionals (mid- or low

level) rather than administrative generalists (high-level)– Networks: Non-hierarchical communication networks &

collaboration– Conflict resolution: bargaining, negotiation, cooperation,

dispute settlement, coping

Context Matters• Intergovernmental management is influenced by:

– Physical environment: size, location, relative isolation, visible boundaries, proximity of organizations

– Political environment: trends include changes in administration, resource shortages, shifting local politics, etc.

– Socioeconomic environment: are there local resources to support implementation?

– Institutional environment: institutional system across sectors creates opportunities and constraints on joint action, often on scaled-up basis

– Local culture: rural vs. urban, nature of the problems, local preference for specific policy solutions

– Situational histories: particularly previous governance efforts, history of either shared objectives, organizational conflicts, or both

– Importance of trust and social norms: Need interactive, on-going process that builds trust and personal relationships; trust is an important governance mechanism that lowers transaction costs and promotes efficient resource exchanges; builds slowly, is destroyed quickly, and needs maintenance

Cumulative Impacts/Benefits• Many intergovernmental administrative problems are the

result of the “tyranny of small decisions”– Addressing problems requires a systematic, long-term effort consisting

of many small projects/actions/decisions– Politicians have short time horizons, while systemic changes will only

be visible over long time frames

• Need a systematic long-term approach– Performance measures and monitoring are a useful strategy

• Intergovernmental systems encourage “random acts of environmental kindness”– Individual projects actions are too limited in scope, scale, magnitude, or

duration to impact the entire policy system– As in this case, the help of allies is essential

Allocating Resources• Intergovernmental grant system

– The one who controls the resources sets the priorities

– Hard to maintain a systematic approach to problem solving if external funding agency changes its priorities frequently

– Distributional problems

– Grants administration for demonstration projects is very complex and cumbersome

• Stability is important– Facilitates repeated interactions

– Reduces transaction costs related to finding funding

• Need slack resources to support collaborative efforts– Federal agencies often allow little discretion

– Programmatic changes, as in the present case, can bring a program to a dramatic close

Adaptive Management• Use of true adaptive management is limited

– Lots of constraints on its use

– Reluctance to revise plans even when they get out of date

– Implementation may follow learning by doing but the problem then becomes accountability

– Risk taking in the public sector is often punished

• Use performance measures and reporting processes to encourage learning– This policy-oriented learning takes place over longer timeframes

• Best thought of as a management philosophy– Encourages policy-oriented learning and embraces

organizational change and innovation

Accountability• Accountability is a fundamental principle of public administration

– For what? To whom?

– Internal vs. external, formal vs. informal

– Hierarchical, legal, professional, political

• Accountability can be a “two-edged” sword– Specific goals, objectives, and monitoring processes provide incentives for

joint action

– Monitoring processes create peer pressure at the political, professional, and individual level

– But there is a constant tension between organizational autonomy and accountability

– Too much accountability can create disincentives for joint action

• Leadership is critical to initiate, maintain, and expand cooperative and accountable processes that span intergovernmental boundaries

What are some strategies associated with intergovernmental management and administration?

Strategies for Intergovernmental Management

• Government uses many techniques to manage government relations (IGR)– Fiscal relations (i.e., grants and mandates)

– Regulations and other legal requirements

– Creation of new intergovernmental institutions (e.g., regional councils of governments)

• Adjusting extant institutional arrangements in inter-governmental management (IGM)– Most frequent means is personal contacts to seek advice, information, or

approval from administrator in other agencies

– Negotiating waivers or exceptions to program requirements or regulations on a temporary or permanent basis

– Setting up, establishing, and defending demonstration or pilot programs and diffusing innovations

Strategies for Effective Governance

• Building capacity to solve problems, improve decision making, and use resources efficiently– Strengthen individual organizations

– Develop new collaborative/network organizations

– Identify and mobilize resources in creative ways (e.g., use of VISTA volunteers in the present case, federal stimulus money in New Mexico)

– Utilize economies of scale and take advantage of technical specialization

• Leveraging financial resources– Direct grants, loans, bonds, tax exemptions, and other financial

instruments have proliferated and may have few conditions on their use

– Administrators need to have broad knowledge of various financing opportunities and arrangements

– Manage different grants administration and accounting requirements

Strategies for Effective Governance• Building Networks

– Interdependent structures involving multiple organizations with some degree of structural stability from formal or informal linkages

– Relations involve personal relationships, communication, information exchange, exchange of goods, services, or resources, and service delivery

• Collaboration– Collaboration is a particular type of network relationship

– Two or more organizations work together to deliver services and produce more public value than could be produced when organizations act alone

– Operational, policy making, or institutional level

Strategies for Effective Governance

• Make effective use of Performance Management Systems– Use framework of goals, performance measures, monitoring, and

reporting processes to leverage political and public support

– Used for evaluation, it enhances program accountability and thereby sustainability

– Steering, coordinating, and setting priorities for organizations in a network

– Motivating network members to take actions that advance shared goals, objectives, or policies

– Promoting and celebrating progress by network participants

– Encouraging learning

– Raises questions of competing interests and values

Summary & Conclusions

• Intergovernmental management is an advanced form of governance– Governance challenges are as formidable as those associated with disaster

response– May work best when already have strong institutional system– Requires program capacity and resiliency – Management matters – there is no substitute for well-managed programs

that show results– Wide range of additional skills required to manage network processes

• If collaborative or network-based intergovernmental management is in fact the new paradigm, are we properly training tomorrow’s future managers?

Improving Governance in the Context of IGR

• When viewed from an institutional perspective, you improve governance by– Building, enhancing, expanding, or changing interorganizational

networks

– Managing existing networks more effectively

– Maintaining and improving network relationships

– Altering, changing, or improving how decisions are made both within and across organizations (integration and coordination)

– Building new institutions that improve problem-solving capacity

– Establishing and strengthening performance accountability systems—this will, as a side-benefit, allow one to defend successful programs when they come under scrutiny or attack, and allow as well for the dissemination (diffusion, replication) of such programs

Federalism and IGR Create both Challenges and Opportunities

• Legal– Constitutional provisions: federalism, separation of powers, takings, due process, etc.– Division of legislative responsibility– Divisions of jurisdictional authority (federal, state, local)

• Bureaucratic – Turf guarding by individuals, agencies, level of government– Designing organizations and managing external relationships– Differing professional training and norms of staff

• Financial– Reliance on narrow categorical grants– Distribution of “green pork”

• Performance Accountability– Multiple constituencies– More opportunities for the creation of collaborative networks than more

circumscribed forms of governance

Opportunities• Complex institutional system creates opportunities

for collaborating to – Get things done (project-level) and solve joint problems– Share knowledge, resources, funding– Develop shared policies, norms, expectations to improve

coordination– Create new collaborative or network organizations

• Generate public value– Accomplish things that cannot be done when working alone– Improve capacity to solve problems– Stimulate learning and innovation– Improve government service delivery (efficiency, effectiveness,

accountability, customer satisfaction, etc.)– Create social capital/improve civil society

What is required for emergent organizations to obtain or be sustained? Compare conditions in

both Katrina and Integrating Housing cases

Emergence is likely when members perceive a present threat, when the social climate is supportive of emergence, when social ties are in place – at least to some degree – before the mobilization, when the social setting legitimizes the groups, and when resources are available (Quarantelli et al., 1983).

– Quarantelli, E.L., with K.E. Green, E. Ireland, S. McCabe, and D.M. Neal. 1983. Emergent Citizen Groups in Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Activities: An Interim Report. Newark DE. University of Delaware, Disaster Research Center.

Essential Activities to ManageInter-organizational Networks

• Activating: recruit and assemble network participants and resources

• Framing: articulate shared purposes (aims, rules, norms) of the network

• Mobilizing: motivate commitment and support for the network and its goals

• Synthesizing: foster exchange and build relationships among network members

(Agranoff and McGuire 2001)

Implementing Networked Government

Designing the NetworkDesigning the Network

Integrating the NetworkIntegrating the Network

Getting Results/Ensuring Accountability

Getting Results/Ensuring Accountability

Building Capacity for Network Governance (Human Capital)Building Capacity for Network Governance (Human Capital)

The transition from a traditional approach to public administration to networked governance is very challenging. Network government requires a different set of skills, including the following: Identify and maximize core values; develop and manage strategy; develop and manage relationships; bargain and compromise; negotiate and mediate; act as a broker or boundary-spanner; understand stakeholder and constituent needs; solicit and incorporate best ideas and best practices; design and integrate the given network(s); organize and coordinate network activities; establish accountability; contract for outside advice when necessary. What other skills are required?Team Read raises the question of whether internal or external evaluation is better at the beginning of a challenging social or educational program.

Laffer Curve (after economist Arthur Laffer) applied to intergovernmental coordinaton

Coordination as a function of proximity

State Local Proximity of decision- makers to

constituents

State Local Proximity of decision- makers to crisis,

constituents

Federal

Principal-agent issues in intergovernmental administration

• In intergovernmental contexts, local (e.g., county, city, COG, housing authority) decision makers have two simultaneous roles. They are both

– Agents for their local constituencies, so they have incentives to provide at least acceptable—preferably very good to excellent— public services

– and agents for higher government levels (in the present case, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development), so they are expected to obey the injunctions of federal agencies to which they must respond, even if their injunctions are detrimental to their local constituencies.

• State and local government managers are therefore often compelled to engage in competitive, zero-sum games, for instance with regard to intergovernmental transfers (e.g., Medicaid “maximization”); in so doing, they are neither serving federal nor local constituencies.

• However, in the present case, the housing authority manager acted as a leader, turning the usual, zero-sum game into a variable-sum one—in which he enlisted the support of the regional HUD office in defense of his responsive local program from HUD HQ, in such a way that everyone emerged a “winner.”

What Accounts for Successful Networked Programs in IGR Settings?

• What accounts for the creation, development, and maintenance of sustained collaborative-network organizations and programs, such as those sustaining Project Self-Sufficiency?

• Do collaborative programs need to reach a certain level of complexity and functionality in order to attain sustainability?

• Does politics engender sustainability or does sustained and demonstrable success engender supportive politics?

• This case indicates the need for both exogenous and endogenous supports, and for their integration: Networks are created and sustained by factors internal and external to them, in interrelation.

Social Drivers:Why and how do we create and sustain networks?

• Theories of self-interest• Theories of social and

resource exchange• Theories of mutual interest

and collective action

• Theories of contagion• Theories of balance• Theories of homophily• Theories of proximity• Theories of co-evolution

• Mimickry and ardstick competition: residents use the performance of another jurisdiction as a yardstick to evaluate their own, so politicians adopt policies similar to those of their neighbors.

Sources: Contractor, N. S., Wasserman, S. & Faust, K. (2006). Testing multi-theoretical multilevel

hypotheses about organizational networks: An analytic framework and empirical example. Academy of Management Review.

Monge, P. R. & Contractor, N. S. (2003). Theories of Communication Networks. New York: Oxford University Press.

Research on Social Drivers for

Creating & Sustaining Governance Networks

Business Applications

PackEdge Community of Practice (P&G)

Vodafone-Ericsson “Club” for virtual supply chain management (Vodafone)

Social Justice Applications

Cultural & Networks Assets In Immigrant Communities (Rockefeller Program on Culture & Creativity)

Economic Resilience NGO Community (Rockefeller Program on Working Communities)

Public Health Applications

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Marketing/Division of Partnerships and Strategic Alliances: Partnerships and Strategic Alliances Evaluation Survey

Science Applications

CLEANER: Collaborative Large Engineering & Analysis Network for Environmental Research (NSF)

Collaboration for Preparedness,Response & Recovery (NSF)

TSEEN: Tobacco Surveillance Evaluation & Epidemiology Network (NSF, NIH, CDC)

Projects Investigating Network Drivers for Communities