The seventh chapter of The Next Government of the United States by Donald F. Kettl discusses the failure(s) of our government, but also how we go about moving forward in our government with policy for the people. He does this by talking about accountability, a new way to provide accountability, and what kind of obstacles the future government(s) will have to encounter.
The challenge that presents itself is two fold. First, is how to use government with the vending machine method/routine (as he puts it), while dealing with the rocket science issues of government (in other word, the complexities that we see today). To Kettl, there needs to be a greater level of accountability over the issues that are more complex. It almost seems like (at times) that no body knows who is in charge. This is due to the vending machine method trying to solve rocket science problems. As one could imagine, this creates a huge disconnect between the people and government, and an unraveling of the problems at hand. To make matters worse, we our rocket science problems are increasing every single day—terrorist, natural disasters, nuclear weapons, etc. There is a …show more content…
In my opinion, Kettl is not interested in how things have been done in the past, but rather how to we do things for our new America—over even the America of the future. He wants to have a mixed system and hierarchical system to help create better accountability when problems do arise. He also argues for said systems to exist for the routine problems, but to blend other parts of government for different issues: authority, contracts, regulation, private standard-setting, voluntary self-regulation, negotiated rule-making, markets, incentives, and competition. Kettl goes on to discuss how this blend of government coupled with rocket science problems can be frustrating in terms of solving problems/create accountability in