(Illustration by Melinda Beck)
Alongside a deluge of new policies, this year has seen unprecedented political discourse about the nature of government: how much we should have, how efficient it can be, and whether bureaucracy will destroy even the most well-intentioned ideas.
Realizing the Promise of a Truly Responsive Government
Deep misalignment exists between what the American people want from their government and what they believe they are getting from it. To address this problem and unlock the possibility that our government can be a true partner, truly responsive, and a more effective force for good in our lives, we must shift how entire government agencies do their work, and most importantly, what they understand their responsibility to the communities they serve to be. Sponsored by Third Sector
Federal policy changes are transforming our government’s purpose and federalist design, forcing us to grapple with what we want from government and its purpose. Many communities, dissatisfied with the status quo, want to remake how government helps to create opportunity, well-being, and safety for all.
Local government is leading this transformation and will be the epicenter of modeling our government of the future. Millions of Americans hold dim views of the federal government, but 61 percent of respondents in a 2025 Pew Research Center survey had a favorable opinion of local government. Local government continues to be a sphere of tremendous innovation, particularly in delivering measurable improvements through outcomes-focused projects. Starting locally can help reshape our understanding of what government can and cannot do.
In a healthy democracy, government is of, by, and for the people. That means that our government responds to the needs of the community it serves, especially at the state, county, and city levels. However, the way we have operationalized government is rooted in a faulty premise—that we can develop prescriptive programs in one place with one group of people to meet a specific challenge, codify them in legislation, and then simply replicate the programs everywhere to produce the same results.
People are not widgets; what they need one year may not be what they need the next. Local government should be responsive enough to local needs that residents take it for granted. People should experience government in ways that make it feel as essential as other institutions in the community. Instead of putting up bureaucratic obstacles and asking for more paperwork, we should design local governments with systems, services, and civil servants that have the flexibility, accountability, integrated data, and trust required to support communities and to function in ways that measurably improve people’s lives.
What if you had to fill out a local government form only once, and your information was accessible—and your privacy protected—by all the agencies you interacted with?
What if we hired civil servants from the communities they serve, drawing on local knowledge and expertise, and provided them with relative freedom, data, and the capacity to make decisions that meet the needs of every person who enters their office, rather than hamstringing the process with outdated processes and traditions?
What if the purpose of your local government agency was to support healthy communities and solve problems instead of providing predetermined services—which may or may not meet real needs—prescribed by well-meaning legislators?
Such shifts would exemplify “outcomes-focused government,” an approach states, counties, and cities have experimented with for decades. When a government agency tailors its methods to respond to community members’ voices, perspectives, and needs—especially in ways that cut across the divides of race, background, and circumstance to ensure success for all—its process is outcomes-focused.
At Third Sector, we believe that civil servants can use six levers to help ensure that state and local governments improve the lives of community members:
- Implementation-informed policymaking that links dollars to outcomes, increasing spending flexibility and accountability
- Outcomes-focused funding that reduces departmental silos and funds coordination, innovation, and continuous improvement
- Responsive services that are designed in collaboration with beneficiaries
- Integrated, disaggregated data systems that are used for continuous improvement
- Building and strengthening trustworthy external relationships that are rooted in listening and power sharing
- Outcomes-focused internal culture that elevates civil servants’ mindsets from compliance to improvements in people’s lives
An outcomes-focused model recognizes that our governments, including employees and elected officials, must become more dynamic and responsive. Toward that end, local and state governments should do the following:
- Establish flexibility in policymaking and accountability for outcomes, such as moving away from cost-reimbursement models to milestone and outcome payments.
- Support use of integrated data as essential to program delivery to promote understanding and continuous improvement.
- Revise civil service job descriptions to ground requisite skills, responsibilities, and promotion pathways in outcomes management rather than compliance.
The elevation of our government’s focus on outcomes can only work if we zero in on implementation, a necessarily human part of government service delivery. We should support civil servants by setting the right incentives (via job descriptions, for instance) to help them make that shift. We should also create incentives that generate feedback loops between and among agencies and legislative bodies, reducing procedural bloat and gridlock. Aligning incentives with locally focused innovation in policymaking, funding, and services will improve our lives. A local government that supports the coal regions of Appalachia, for example, will prioritize and deliver different services from those of agencies supporting a major city such as Philadelphia or Houston.
Given its proximity to the people, local government can meet the moment and transform the public sector’s value by adopting outcomes-focused approaches. Our task in this as nonprofits, philanthropists, employers, and constituents is to help our governments make that shift and live up to that potential. Doing this work together can unlock the possibility that government can become a true partner and an effective force for good in our lives.
Read more stories by Caroline Whistler.