Why Does Government Not Work? Winning Back the Trust

Takeaways from the Harvard Kennedy School IDEASpHERE discussion “Why Does Government Not Work? Winning Back the Trust,” with Ashton B. Carter

Sampling of Notable Thoughts

“I worry about a downward spiral in which confidence is lost in the competence of government, and therefore the willingness of the people to invest in the public good.”

“The hard part is always getting it done! 99 percent of the time, it's obvious what you want to do - and it's really hard to get it done."

WATCH: Recording of Full Session

Summary

Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter told a Harvard Kennedy School “IDEASpHERE” session May 15 that the botched rollout of HealthCare.gov struck a nerve with the American people because it fed a growing fear that the federal government is incompetent. The public, Carter said, worries that Washington can’t execute – so why should they trust the government to do big things?

A major problem, he said, is that government does a poor job of promoting managerial competence. Using stories from his own tenure at the Pentagon, Secretary Carter explained the importance of “domain mastery” – something that was essential to building 253 bases in Afghanistan, a country with no concrete facilities, in the summer of 2010.

As the Pentagon’s COO responsible for $600 billion in annual spending, including $400 billion in contracts, Secretary Carter said his most important job was to defend the integrity of the procurement and contracting process.

Lamenting that Washington didn’t fully embrace a “win now” attitude, he did offer reasons for hope that government can win back our trust, including sharing several accounts of how a government agency had saved millions of dollars – the kind of good-news stories rarely covered by the press.