Books

Click to access free online copies of Banishing Bureaucracy and The Reinventor’s Fieldbook.

The Price Of Government: Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis
by David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson
(published by Basic Books, 2004)
In their book, David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson propose a radically different approach to budgeting as a solution to the fiscal difficulties currently dominating the public sector. Rather than relying on traditional approaches put forward by leaders on the right and the left, the authors assert that governments can save money and increase their effectiveness, by focusing on the outcomes desired by citizens, ranking budget items under each outcome from most cost-effective to least, buying those that contribute the most, and eliminating those that contribute the least.

The Reinventor’s Fieldbook: Tools for Transforming Your Government
by David Osborne & Peter Plastrik
(published by Jossey-Bass, 2000)
This encyclopedia of practical tools, from best-selling author David Osborne and Peter Plastrik, offers a variety of indispensable lessons for managers in any government position–from the schoolhouse to the state house. Presenting more than 70 tools, this text includes hundreds of practical ‘lessons learned,’ ‘do’s and don’ts,’ ‘steps to take,’ and ‘pitfalls to avoid’ in public management and governance. Contains guidelines, lessons, and resources for revitalizing schools, public services, and government agencies at all levels. Also available online.

Banishing Bureaucracy: The Five Strategies for Reinventing Government
by David Osborne & Peter Plastrik
(published by Addison Wesley, 1997)
The author of the 1992 bestseller Reinventing Government goes a step further, focusing on strategic levers for changing public systems and organizations on a permanent basis to achieve dynamic increases in effectiveness, efficiency, adaptability, and capacity to innovate. A hands-on guide for making the concepts of reinventing government a practical reality, this book outlines the five strategies that have the most power to transform public bureaucracies into the continuously improving organizations we need in the 21st century, whether they are school districts, city or county agencies, state agencies, or federal departments. Also available online.

Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector (Plume)
by David Osborne & Ted Gaebler
(published by Addison Wesley, 1992)
A revolt is stirring in America. People are angry at governments that spend more but deliver less, frustrated with bureaucracies that give them no control, and tired of politicians who raise taxes and cut services but fail to solve the problems we face. Reinventing Government is both a call to arms in the revolt against bureaucratic malaise and a guide to those who want to build something better. It shows that there is a third way: that the options are not simply liberal or conservative, but that our systems of governance can be fundamentally reframed; that a caring government can still function as efficiently as the best-run businesses.

Laboratories of Democracy: New Breed of Governor Creates Models for National Growth
by David Osborne
(published by Harvard Business School Press, 1988)
In his first book, David Osborne argued that to see the future of American politics and policy, one must look beyond Washington to America’s political laboratories, the states. Driven by the wrenching transition from an industrial economy to the Information Age, governors and state legislators have had to rethink everything from education and economic development to welfare and health policies. Osborne profiled six governors who were leading the wave of innovation in the 1980s: Mario Cuomo of New York, Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, Bill Clinton of Arkansas, James Blanchard of Michigan, and Richard Thornburgh of Pennsylvania. He described a new political paradigm that would emerge in the 1990s, with Bill Clinton’s New Democrats and their “Third Way.”