The difficult art of improving government: governments can become more customer-focused and productive.(Commentary)

Everyone who thinks much about local government realizes sooner or later that there's a holy grail for public administration: doing more with less. That is, the secret to satisfying citizens is to provide more or better services while lowering taxes. But that's impossible, right? Actually, no. Businesses do it all the time, offering higher-quality cars, computers, airline connections, even razor blades and panty hose for less than in the past, measured against household income. Why can't government?

That's exactly the question a pair of consultants asked recently in an article in the McKinsey Quarterly, published by McKinsey & Co., the business consulting firm. Their answer: Governments could do these things, if only they adopted some standard corporate procedures. But the article is filled with so many qualifiers and exceptions, you might be forgiven for coming to the opposite conclusion. (You can view the article at http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract.aspx?ar=1806&L2=19&L3= 69&srid=17&gp=0. You will have to register to read the full article.)

This is typical when business consultants encounter the public sector. They begin by working up great enthusiasm for some corporate fix-it theory (reengineering, the balanced scorecard, quality circles, Theory Z, blah, blah) but are stymied when they try to apply it to the gravity-free environment of government, where there's no competition or bottom line and where interest groups swarm like bees, labor unions are deeply entrenched and turf protection is a fine art. On top of all this, of course, is civil service, which makes dismissing bad employees only a little easier than mastering cold fusion. It's enough to send most consultants screaming back to Harvard Business School.

The consultants who wrote this article, Nina Bhatia and John Drew of McKinsey's London office, fit the mold. They're worked up about "lean production," another of these corporate cure-alls, and they'd like governments to try it. Along the way, Bhatia and Drew acknowledge that government is ... well, a little different. They note, for instance, that "persuading ...