Group government

Interview | Policy reformer Steve Goldsmith on why private organizations should deliver public services | Marvin Olasky

Steve Goldsmith, the innovative mayor of Indianapolis from 1992 to 1999, spends two days a week teaching government at Harvard and the rest of the week in Washington. He headed up the domestic policy team during George W. Bush’s 1999-2000 campaign but has not been involved with the White House in any major way since then.

Mr. Goldsmith is co-author (with William D. Eggers) of Governing by Network: The New Shape of the Public Sector (Brookings, 2004). The essential argument is that government officials need to move away from command-and-control production by their own employees in their own buildings, and instead emphasize delivery of services by networked private and nonprofit groups operating on government contracts.