THE INSTITUTE FOR MODERN GOVERNMENT: HOW AN OREGON NON-PROFIT MANAGED THE COLLABORATION OF ACADEMICS, RETIRED VOLUNTEERS, AND CURRENT PRACTIONERS TO "RESOLVE" WICKED PROBLEMS

The United States, State of Oregon has long struggled with two specific wicked problems: Collection of $2.3 billion liquidated debt owed to state government and with customer dissatisfaction with Department of Motor Vehicles... [ view full abstract ]

The United States, State of Oregon has long struggled with two specific wicked problems: Collection of $2.3 billion liquidated debt owed to state government and with customer dissatisfaction with Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) services.

The Institute for Modern Government (IMG), affiliated with Willamette University’s Atkinson Graduate School of Management and Center for Governance & Public Policy Research, has been credited by auditors, legislators, and administrators with major influence on their “resolution”. Changes include major legislation, practice reforms, increased staff and financial resources, and funding of a DMV Core Replacement system.

IMG is entirely voluntary and relentlessly nonpartisan. It provides a safe venue for frank discussions, sharing of human and financial resources and for research and planning. IMG’s long term goal is to be a catalyst for modernizing government. We believe IMG is viewed as a neutral 3rd party forum for advocating positive governmental change.

Our process, still evolving, is to identify problems, bring all stakeholders to the IMG table to work on them; the teams then propose and advocate solutions for policymakers to consider. In essence, we create and support collaborative teams to resolve wicked problems.

Each team is composed of: Board Members, Academics, and Practitioners. Board members include retired elected and appointed officials. Academics include faculty and students at Willamette. Practitioners include current legislators, agency managers, staff and line workers.

IMG Board Members- knowledge volunteers - derive satisfaction from networking and using their experience and brains to solve problems they have worked on for years; Academics see their horizons expanded, ideas and research applied; Practitioners get new resources, support and some tools they need to modernize.

IMG is a model for what retired public executives can do in collaboration with government officials and academics, to make government better.