Agile: A New Way of Governing

Abstract

The evolving concept of “agile” has fundamentally changed core aspects of software design, project management, and business operations. The agile approach could also reshape government, public management, and governance in general. In this Viewpoint essay, the authors introduce the modern agile movement, reflect on how it can benefit public administrators, and describe several challenges that managers will face when they are expected to make their organizations more flexible and responsive.

Disaster Resiliency of U.S. Local Governments: Insights to Strengthen Local Response and Recovery from the COVID‐19 Pandemic

“…Our survey research with the ICMA points to learning on the part of local governments that have managed prior disasters and robust preparedness on a number of fronts for weather‐related disasters. Vital in this current crisis, leaders and staff of these governments exhibit the values of agile governing that require strongest attention to people over process; operational digitized systems over antiquated paper trails; collaborative, not adversarial problem‐solving across sectors; and nimbleness of response in the face of faulty, inadequate, old, or no plans (Mergel, Ganipati, and Whitford 2020). Ultimately, agile governing calls for the celebration of small wins gained from action rather than avoidance of failure from inaction.…”

“…Examples abound of public officials and managers engaging and steering proactive, nimble actions espoused by New Public Management in conjunction with collaborative efforts promoted by New Public Service (Denhardt and Denhardt 2000). In fact, this crisis has nudged governments not only to generate “new packages of routines and processes” characteristic of agile governance but to do so by breaking up and reforming traditional work groups and structures (Mergel, Ganapati, and Whitford 2020). Such actions are occurring, in light of or in spite of the fact that COVID‐19 has exposed social inequities that have been exacerbated as the virus spreads and takes hold of localities (Duhigg 2020; Jacobson 2020; Nania 2020).…”

Confronting the big challenges of our time: making a difference during and after COVID-19

“…Alongside big thematic challenges are shifts in the field that have already started, and which will lock in with these challenges in interesting ways. The emerging work by Mergel, Ganapati, and Whitford (2020), for example, on agile governance provides a new way of thinking about public administration and management and can be an important influence. Or the manifesto developed by Douglas et al (2019) on positive public administration which focuses on success and positive contributions in the field rather than just failure.…”

Emergency Basic Income during the Pandemic

“…16 Setting up a robust floor upon which other support mechanisms can be built makes EBI an agile policy: it is light and fast compared to the "waterfall" planning of measures that are decided from the top and then need to filter down through successive implementation stages, often encountering barriers and requiring timeconsuming adjustment along the way. 17 True, EBI will still require many people to actively sign up to some sort of national register and equally each jurisdiction must decide on the fastest way to deliver the basic income grant to every person within its remit. 18 These are not trivial or negligible problems but neither are they intractable, given sufficient political will.…”