Fast Company: The last mile for public policy

This week, Fast Company published an article by Roundtable co-founder and CEO Madeleine Smith about how today’s approach to technical assistance creates bottlenecks that prevent expertise from reaching the practitioners who need it, and how agencies can address them. Below is an excerpt.

Every major government initiative depends on hundreds or thousands of implementing partners, from local government agencies and nonprofits to service providers.

For example, a state board of elections spends significant time advising election clerks on hiring and recruiting, advocating for rule changes with the state government, and helping educate the public about local election processes. The same is true for public health programs, veterans’ programs, homelessness coordination, and dozens of other initiatives. Technical assistance makes these programs possible, but it is delivered ad hoc, typically at a single point in time, rather than continuously meeting ongoing needs.

Tools built for TA must meet two requirements. First, they must capture intelligence from across the network. The answer to a question from a nonprofit employee in one county is probably useful to a local government employee on the other side of the state. Rather than remaining siloed, that knowledge bridges jurisdictional gaps and connects everyone involved in delivering a service.

Second, tools built for TA must preserve institutional memory. Instead of an answer languishing in one person’s inbox, it’s available to everyone in the ecosystem—and to everyone working on a similar initiative years from now.

Read the full article on Fast Company here: https://www.fastcompany.com/91605837/the-last-mile-for-public-policy