Actually Existing State Capacity Reform

Compared to some of the other areas we work on, improving “state capacity” can seem a bit nebulous. The end goal of improving the productivity of government is laudable, but what, specifically, does that mean? With that question in mind, I enjoyed Jen Pahlka’s rundown of North Carolina’s recently passed Public Modernization Workforce Act.

One concrete way of making government more productive is via civil service reform. Prior to the new bill, finding new job opportunities in the North Carolina government was byzantine, giving calibrated feedback to workers wasn’t happening, retaining high performers with pay increases was challenging, and letting go of poor performers was extremely protracted and difficult. The Public Modernization Workforce Act streamlines much of this process, and introduces a lot of new innovations to help recruit, retain, and effectively manage civil service talent: a track to more easily make temporary workers permanent, a pilot testing upward feedback (where reports rate the performance of their managers), and setting in motion a review of the underlying classification and compensation system. As Pahlka notes (and we agree), hopefully the Federal Government and other state governments can learn from North Carolina’s experiment.