Laws & Policy - Your Maze Needs a Map.
Taking action to improve performance in government is more complicated than other sectors, because the path is lined with legal and policy boundaries which are often hard to reconcile.
Why Are Laws and Policies Causing Inaction?
There is a legitimate question of legality. Government managers often wish employees were taking more steps to share information between departments. But many employees have legitimate questions about whether sharing information with colleagues is legal.
Why? US law contains certain privacy protections for citizens and the mistreatment of sensitive information by government employees is punishable by law. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) are all complicated laws which make it clear sharing health, financial, and education information is quick route to putting yourself at risk, so information sometimes stays siloed.
- What can you do about it? Make it crystal clear to employees which behaviors are allowed, which are risky, and which are prohibited. Don’t leave room for doubt or speculation. Use examples and train employees repeatedly on best practices that keep them operating in bounds.
The federal government requires annual employee training on ethics and information security requirements. The Department of Homeland Security even publishes a handbook for safeguarding sensitive and personally identifiable information.
The law or policy constrains creativity and innovation. Government employees don’t often feel free to improvise, because some laws and policies are written in a way that confuse them and constrain their choices. Also, if it takes a lawyer to understand the policy, there’s a problem.
Why? Federal grants often come with strings attached. For more than a decade, cities and school districts who accepted certain federal public health grants had to teach abstinence-only education, a curriculum roundly proven ineffective at reducing STI transmission and unwanted pregnancy. In other cases, city-drafted policies focus on ensuring the taxpayer dollar isn’t wasted, meanwhile considerations about customer service and the user experience go unmentioned.
- What can you do about it? Define who you exist for and make sure every law, regulation, and policy has that end user in mind. If the policy makes it clear government services are about getting to yes for the people who qualify, instead of just getting to no for the people who don’t, then employees will exercise more autonomy in taking creative and innovative action to achieve the end goal. Bad policies are often a major contributor to inefficient and bureaucratic processes. If a manager wants more output and better outcomes, rethink the policy.
Between November 2012 and March 2013, New York City restored heat, power, and hot water in more than 11,700 homes representing more than 20,000 residential units affected by Hurricane Sandy through an innovative program called Rapid Repairs - a first-of-its-kind pilot program to provide free, government assistance to those without heat, power, and hot water. Until then, no other city had responded to a natural disaster by offering emergency repairs to allow homeowners to shelter in their own homes.