The New Public Service - Softcover

Light, Paul C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815752431 ISBN 13: 9780815752431

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press, 1999

Synopsis

According to Paul C. Light's controversial new book, The New Public Service, this January's 4.8 percent federal pay increase will do little to compensate for what potential employees think is currently missing from federal careers. Talented Americans are not saying "show me the money" but "show me the job." And federal jobs just do not show well.

All job offers being equal, Light argues that the pay increase would matter. But all offers are not equal. Light's research on what graduates of the top public policy and administration graduate programs want indicates that the federal government is usually so far behind its private and nonprofit competitors that pay never comes into play.

Light argues that the federal government is losing the talent war on three fronts. First, its hiring system for recruiting talent, top to bottom, underwhelms at almost every task it undertakes. Second, its annual performance appraisal system is so inflated that federal employees are not only all above average, they are well on their way to outstanding. Third and most importantly, the federal government is so clogged with needless layers and convoluted career paths that it cannot deliver the kind of challenging work that talented Americans expect.

None of these problems would matter, Light argues, if the government-centered public service was still looking for work. Unfortunately, as Light's book demonstrates, federal careers were designed for a workforce that has not punched since the 1960s, and certainly not for one that grew up in an era of corporate downsizing and mergers. The government-centered public service is mostly a thing of the past, replaced by a multisectored public service in which employees switch jobs and sectors with ease.

Light concludes his book by offering the federal government a simple choice: It can either ignore the new public service and troll further and further down the class lists for new recruits, while hoping that a tiny pay increase will help, or it can start building the kind of careers that talented Americans want.

About this title

About the Author:

Paul C. Light is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service at New York University. He is also Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he founded the Center for Public Service. Light is the author of numerous books on public service and management, among them Pathways to Nonprofit Excellence (2002), Government's Greatest Achievements (2002), Making Nonprofits Work (2000), and The New Public Service (1999).

Review:

"Light has shown in this book why he is among the leading scholars in public policy and administration today. This book goes beyond the description of the challenges to offer clear and compelling recommendations to the many sectors involved with the new public service." —Paul L. Posner, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities, Political Science Quarterly, 7/1/2001

"... Canadian readers will easily benefit from [The New Public Service]. It reminds those who are passionate about government and public policy that the challenge is to ensure that the lasting legacy of the new public management is not a wrecked public service. " —Patrice A. Dutil, Toronto, A Canadian Journal (?)

"Paul Light has done it again. He has brought to our attention a fundamentally important issue with respect to our federal government--in this case the health and future of our public service. Hats off to a very thoughtful analysis." —Senator Carl Levin, United States Senate

"Light breaks new ground in this important book. It should be required reading for scholars and practitioners alike." —Walter Broadnax, American University

"This thoughtful look at the state of public service in this country should be pondered long and hard...With deft strokes, Paul Light paints a face on our faceless and much-bashed bureaucracy." —John L. Palmer, Syracuse University

About this edition

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0815752431
• ISBN 13: 9780815752431
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 199