Social Innovation
Doing What Works means freeing government agencies to explore new programs, financing models, and approaches to solving social problems. Innovation in government can take many forms, from providing small amounts of "seed funding" to new programs that promise to deliver results to offering support to "scale up" programs that have proven successful. And, as elsewhere in government, these innovative approaches should be rigorously evaluated for effectiveness, so that more and more funding will be directed toward interventions that deliver results for the American people.
“What Works” in Innovation
Doing What Doesn’t Work:
Jitinder Kohli outlines the importance of government agencies focusing resources on programs that work, not ones like this criminal-justice program run amok.
Finding 'What Works' in Education:
Kristina Costa explores “what works” platforms in education, pointing out their current limitations and also their importance in times of tight budgets.
Washington State Shows What Works:
Kristina Costa explores the state’s telling investment in an institute that judges the effectiveness of programs for beneficiaries and taxpayers.
Featured Content
Innovation for the Public Good
What does innovation in the public sector actually mean? Who is doing it well? And what should agency leaders do to promote innovation? These are among the questions this series will answer.
Bay State Takes Lead in Innovation Finance:
Kristina Costa takes a look at the first state to pursue an innovative idea that could transform the way social programs are financed.
Social Impact Bonds:
Jeffrey B. Liebman examines social impact bonds, a promising new financing model to accelerate social innovation and improve government performance.
The Innovation Imperative : Jitinder Kohli examines ways that the leaders of federal agencies and departments can stretch tight budgets imaginatively and provocatively.
Financing What Works: Jitinder Kohli describes an experimental program working with prisoners in Peterborough, England, that could transform government finance around the world.
Whose Job Is It Anyway? : Federal agencies should establish institutes to help sort through new ideas that are likely to work from those that aren’t, write Jitinder Kohli and John Griffith.
Delegating Up: Jitinder Kohli and John Griffith explore new initiatives to harness the creative power of the federal workforce and those outside government to improve operations and services.
Open and Accountable Government: Gadi Dechter explains the benefits of social impact bonds in The Baltimore Sun.
Inaugural Social Innovation Fund Sets an Example: The Corporation for National Community Service's new Social Innovation Fund helps scale effective approaches to social problems, write Jitinder Kohli and John Griffith.
Big, New Ideas: Jitinder Kohli explains why it's hard to innovate in government, what we need to do to bring big ideas back to the public sector, and how some people are already doing it.
Capital Ideas: Jitinder Kohli and Geoff Mulgan provide a menu of more than 20 different ways public agencies are promoting the generation of great ideas in this Doing What Works project report.
Scaling New Heights: Geoff Mulgan and Jitinder Kohli provide strategies for spotting small successes in the public sector and making them big in this Doing What Works project report.
Doing What Works for the Future: Carmen A. Medina and Jitinder Kohli make the case for government reform that anticipates future trends and offer a list of trends government should keep an eye on to get the conversation started.
What Gets Measured Gets Done: Melissa Boteach and Jitinder Kohli on why a supplemental federal poverty measure will drive smarter policies to bring more families into the middle class.