About

Times are tough. We’re in the worst economy since the Depression. The political environment is plagued by bitterly unproductive conflicts, stalemates and missteps. And within this environment public service leaders have been forced to make painful choices on program and service cuts – all while constituents are demanding more services, transparency, accountability and value from government.

How should leaders respond?

In today's crisis, some "hunkering down" is clearly necessary to defend budgets, staff, and mission – yet today’s cost containment measures cannot be built on one-off tactics for immediate relief – they must be driven by structural and efficiency improvements that enable sustainable innovation for the long-term.

We know that network-enabled business models, Web 2.0 and communication technologies and advances in management and business processes have brought new possibilities to the fore. We also know that, in the past, tough times fostered the game-changing innovations that reshaped the world as the economy recovered. For visionary leaders, the best defense will include a strong offense – and some will use today's crisis to turn pain into a better future.

Now is the time to shape the initiatives that will reshape the world.  

To help leaders move these initiatives forward, Harvard University is convening senior leaders in government, business and academia for The Tough Times Project: Shaping the Initiatives That Will Reshape the World symposium to be held May 19 – 21 on the Harvard campus in Cambridge Massachusetts.

This special event will build on the body of work developed at Harvard Kennedy School by students and practitioners in the Leadership for a Networked World course, and provide a powerful opportunity to work with and learn from some of the world’s foremost policy-makers, researchers, and executives. Through case studies, best practice briefings and one-on-one dialogue, the group will ideate moves that governments can take to improve the flow of work and how that work is coordinated and governed.

Together, we will explore four moves to improve the flow of work:

1. Service delivery/engagement: as in, the “no wrong door” implementations in Canada; the 311 system of Denver; and the civic engagement strategies of the Obama campaign.
2. Enterprise integration: as in, IT consolidation in Michigan and elsewhere; and province-wide standardization for ERP implementations in Nova Scotia, Canada.
3. Cross-boundary transformation: as in, the development of interoperable electronic health records; and a variety of “cloud computing” services provided at a scale far larger than internally possible for any single government.
4. Infrastructure extension: as in, the broadband investments of the Economic Stimulus package; and in the work of the Netherlands to standardize financial data for real-time transparency and oversight.

We will also explore four moves to improve work coordination and governance:

5. Feedback/transparency: as in, the release of data for public analysis by the District of Columbia; and the recently-established Recovery.gov initiative of the Obama administration.
6. Massive collaboration: as in, the Diplopedia project of the U.S. Department of State; and the Peer-to-Patent work of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
7. Open standards: as in, the need to reconcile multiple approaches to identity authentication; and recent experiments with open source office applications over the “cloud.”
8. New authority: as in, institutional support for Maritime Domain Awareness; and the evolution of shared staffing via telecommuting and videoconferencing, along with standardized agreements on transfer pricing.

Even more importantly, we will analyze how those moves can be adapted and applied in diverse social, economic, and political settings.

In addition, through pre-event data collection, in-event discussion and ideation, and post-event synthesis, participants will contribute to a needed and important “Major Moves in Tough Times” report. This report will create a framework to help government leaders implement initiatives, and will mobilize policy-makers, congress and legislatures to align policy with needed outcomes.

Ultimately at this event, you will learn and share the leadership skills needed to propel your organization into the future and create the initiatives that will reshape the world.

This is an invitation-only event. To learn how you can become part of this community and event, please email Jerry Mechling at jerry (dot) mechling (at) harvard.edu.