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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 01/04
Powering the Future: High-Performance Partnerships
Camille Cates Barnett, Christine Becker, Peter Goldberg, Sandra J. Hale, Sara E. Melendez and Michael Rogers
April 2003
Introduction
American government is at a turning point. Social, economic, and technological changes are fundamentally altering the institutions on which citizens rely to meet their needs. Further, public discontent with politics and government has triggered self scrutiny, reform, and redesign. Responding to these dynamics, governments at every level—local, state, regional, and federal-must meet heightened citizen expectations with limited resources. This can only be achieved by improving performance and increasing results.
Government is not alone in facing this challenge. The nonprofit sector also copes with the pressure to compete for funding and produce more, often with less. In fact, the lines of demarcation among the public, nonprofit, and business sectors are fading. Yet new models for cross-sector collaboration have not fully crystallized, as the rules of engagement are evolving.
For the past two years, the National Academy of Public Administration has explored a model that holds tremendous promise for meeting today's challenges and achieving significant long-term results: the high-performance cross-sector partnership. This effort demonstrates how the sectors, working together, can more effectively serve the public. It also shows that customer satisfaction, performance measurement, and accountability are more than buzzwords. They drive many organizations, and they should.
