The essence of the new book is that citizens need to improve how they evaluate and select candidates. Citizen-voters are the drivers in the American system, and improving government performance begins with We the People. Suggested is that we need to set high standards for candidates for elected office. We need to insist that political parties address their responsibility in helping voters establish standards for candidates and for improving how they are recruited, nurtured, and vetted before being franchised to wear their party's brand.
In the Democratic Republic such as the United States of America, the government is formed and sustained as the instrument of all citizens to attend to priority outcomes. We need to identify and define those priorities and to achieve consensus as that constitutes the purpose of government.
In past articles and books, I have advocated that the highest purpose of the U.S. Federal Government is to create an optimal environment in which individuals and their corporations may flourish. The federal government exists to optimize return on national resources such that all citizens can realize a high quality of life by working hard at applying their inherent abilities. No one should live in poverty. All who are unable or are physically or mentally challenged should be ensured the capacity to live in the absence of poverty.
The government is the people's instrument and works in partnership with public and private corporations to achieve economic results.
To begin, we need to establish the context for the role and purpose of the American government that operates under the rule of law as defined by the Constitution and on-going body of laws and regulations.
The American political system depends on political parties as a direct extension of citizens to attend to the process of staffing the legislative and executive branches of government. Citizens need a timeout to reflect on what has happened to their process and current performance. As an analyst, I submit that the scope and scale of the nation's needs have evolved to a state of complexity such that Congress and Presidents have created massively complex systems and enabling bureaucracies to perform the work that produces required and desired outcomes.
The trouble stems from certain deficiencies:
Government systems are developed in three dimensions to produce outcomes: 1) Processes define how outcomes will be produced, 3) Constraints (laws, regulation, budgets, and schedules) govern processes as controls, 3) People and technology are enabling mechanisms that perform the work defined by processes.
Congressional legislators define the rules and constraints. They write prescriptions for processes that will produce required and desired outcomes. That is an outcome-driven government.
When enabled by people (organizations), technologies and infrastructure, processes become systems that provide citizens with essential services. That is service-oriented government enterprise.
The skill, knowledge, and experience needed to perform the work of Congress, and the Executive branch requires those who are trained in the law and educated in systems engineering disciplines with high proficiency in computer and communications technologies. In once sense, the government is an automated regulatory environment that controls a service-oriented architecture.
Presently, the American political system that includes parties and their member constituents and leaders are not paying attention to these essential requirements. The system is too ad hoc and is not performing well as a result.
Therefore, the next field of focus will be the political parties, their purpose, their function, and their present performance. They are on the critical path for improving American government by the people.
James George, Author
You can't just say that the system is broken without offering solutions for fixing it. I have solutions.
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