Transforming Governance Institutions in the United States: How Siloed Programs and Outdated Designs Undermine Outcomes—and What to Do About It

As the 250th anniversary of this nation nears, the celebration highlights the radical values in the Declaration of Independence and the genius of a constitutional republic, creating new institutions to advance normative commitments. The anniversary illustrates the power of creating formal governmental institutions, including legislative, executive, and judicial, with enumerated powers, and reserving others to the states.

The fifty state constitutions similarly illustrate varied institutions advancing values and enumerated powers. They also provide permissive authority for the creation of local governments and for the activities of civil society and commerce, including property, contracts, and creation of associations and firms.

The National Academy of Public Administration’s Working Group on Transforming Institutions began with the recognition that institutions have enduring effects on future choices through designing path dependences that empower or constrain future policy implementation.

Over time, the institutional design of the Founders transformed through significant Supreme Court decisions, legislative acts of Congress and States, initiatives of high public officials, and voter-approved initiatives, including but not limited to:

• Humphrey’s Executor (1935)
• Administrative Procedure Act (1946)
• California Proposition 13 (1998)
• Affordable Care Act (2010)
• Weather Ready Nation (2011)
• California Enhanced Infrastructure Finance Districts (2016)
• Loper Bight v. Raimondo (2024)

Pressing contemporary governance failures call for continued transformation of institutions. Despite increased federal involvement and spending, the United States is falling behind peer nations and past performance on critical societal outcomes for economic opportunity, K-12 education, health (as measured by life expectancy), and housing affordability.

Current institutional designs have evolved to typically include multiple federal programs and agencies involved, illustrated by 27 means-tested housing programs. Including related state and local agencies, dozens of public bureaucracies exist for any significant societal issue.

Multiple siloed agencies do not deliver desired societal outcomes, increase transaction costs, diffuse responsibility, increase opacity to citizens, and reduce accountability.

Emerging practices and principles that transform institutions can be identified, illustrated, and contrasted with the limited results in current approaches:

Three contemporary examples illustrate how institutions are transformed:

1. The “Weather Ready Nation” initiative was launched in the National Weather Service (2011) to increase user understanding, encourage intergovernmental partnerships, and accelerate local action in response to forecasts of dangerous weather events. This required expanding focus on an accurate, timely forecast of dangerous weather, a program output, to include the societal outcome of reducing human deaths from those severe storms. The changes included “impact-based decision support services” provided by NWS personnel and the recruitment and nurturing of “Ambassadors” among key local authorities to communicate. It dramatically reduced fatalities from dangerous weather events.
2. California enacted legislation allowing local governments to create “Enhanced Infrastructure Finance Districts”. It distills a long arc of permissive state authority to create a district addressing societal challenges that cross political boundaries such as infrastructure, climate resiliency, or homelessness. The EIFD institutional transformation offers freedom to select a mission, set geographical boundaries, and access multiple financing sources. Local elected officials and related public administration professionals initiated the effort, enlisting the support of state representatives and then-Governor Jerry Brown.
3. South Carolina’s “Nurse-Family Partnership on At-Risk Families and Children” shifted from a program output focus of nurses working with families to a outcomes-focused initiative with specially trained nurses to achieve specified results for an additional 3,200 first-time, low-income mothers. It was launched in 2016 by then-South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Social Finance, a philanthropic organization focused on evidence-based pay-for-success initiatives. The project was funded by $17 million from philanthropic sources and $13 million through a 1915(b) Medicaid Waiver. The Sorenson Impact Center found the aggregate economic impact to be $5.50 for every $1 spent.

These examples invite initiating future institutional transformations. For example, what other federal programs can identify and pursue social outcomes related to current program outputs? Can individual states extend tax-increment authority, a common tool for value capture, to the more powerful EIFD?

Can health and human services design outcome-focused initiatives consistent with the Social Impact Partnerships to Pay for Results Act (2016) ? Or can initiatives support value capture projects that attract non-public financing, such as the Federal Highway Administration Center for Innovative Finance Support, with includes toolkits and case studies of “value capture” projects.

NAPA’s Working Group on Transforming Institutions invites public sector leaders to focus on extending and improving institutional transformation to address the challenges the nation now faces.