Stovepipes of Excellence

In reading background materials and attending various meetings relating to rule of law programming, one issue struck me as needlessly complicating an already complex mission with many moving parts: For many reasons, many of them quite benign, less-than-ideal inter-agency collaboration acts as a barrier to forward movement.

Even as people work hard and well within their own bailiwicks, there can be a lack of awareness about what others are doing, which can lead to both duplication of effort and gaps in coverage. This is true as between cabinet-level agencies (State, DOJ, DoD), and within them. I've often heard this phenomenon described as "stovepipes of excellence."

To be clear, this goes beyond the usual/expected fights over turf and conflicts in allegiance, and even personality conflicts and different agency cultures. These still exist, of course, but the real issue is, as the (relatively) newly established Rule of Law Coordinator puts it, herding cats. And making sure that what all these cats are doing -- productive as it is in a vacuum -- gets disseminated amongst themselves and to the Big Cat (here that means, ultimately, the Ambassador).

This is an area I hope to delve into a bit in my remaining time here (because, you know, it's so readily solvable). I just spoke with a professor of public management, actually, whom I had done research for one summer in college. He gave me some pointers and further direction. A few initial suggestions:

• Mandate/support from the top.
• Cooperation/information-sharing along people at lower levels.
• Building common databases.
• Common/pooled funding sources.
• Measurables/benchmarks requiring inter-agency contributions.

Makes sense. The proof, as always, is in the public policy implementation. (That was actually the name of a class John DiIulio used to teach when he was at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, "Public Policy Implementation.")