Redesigning the Work of Human Services

Redesigning the Work of Human Services explores alternative organizational designs for the delivery of human services—designs that emphasize collaborative governance and partnerships among public and private agencies, local control and responsibility for results, and the use of innovative information, planning, and community capacity-building technologies. This book redefines the debate about whether human services should be privatized or not. The author suggests that the basic task of human services—to enable families to socialize the young—is one that can neither be fulfilled effectively by the state nor by private agencies. Rather, carefully crafted public-private partnerships, when combined with new accountability mechanisms and the sophisticated use of emerging information technologies, are likely to offer more in the way of effective, efficient, and appropriate human services. Because this work is solidly grounded in the literature on both human and business services, the author's suggestions for major redesign are comprehensive and intelligently qualified.

JOHN O'LOONEY is Public Service Assistant at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia, and a consultant to local and state governments in human resource management, organizational development, program evaluation, and applied research.