Jennifer Pahlka: belief

Transcript context

…You put in accountability, everything has to be measured, everything has to have a process. It’s judicial review. Should we have less accountability in government? In a certain sense, I would agree with that. I don’t think in an absolute sense. I think the way that we structure accountability is very flawed. I think we are holding public servants essentially accountable to metrics that are not proxies for real outcomes that people care about. When you have a very high focus on accountability that is really about fidelity to procedure and process instead of to the actual outcome, that’s not accountability. Outcomes are heterogeneous, they’re tricky, they’re long term. When you ask people to measure, you end up with a lot more emphasis on process than you want. So, maybe accountability is the problem. To say accountability for outcomes — that’s just going to morph into accountability for process. That’s what I observe, even in private companies. Big, successful, profitable private companies that we’re all familiar with — they have the same problem, as I’m sure you know.…

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