Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, A New City O/S (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017). 224 pp. $31.99 (Paper), ISBN: 9780815732860

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13060
• Date: 01 May 2019
• Published date: 01 May 2019

450 Public Administration Review • May | J une 2 019

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 3, pp. 450–452. © 2019 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13060.

Reviewed by: William B. Eimicke

Columbia University

Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, A New City O/S

(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017). 224 pp.

$31.99 (Paper), ISBN: 9780815732860

Frustrated by the lack of innovation and poor

performance of the U.S. federal government

in the 1980s, David Osborne and Ted

Gaebler wrote a book about entrepreneurial and

effective local governments across America. Their

Reinventing Government (1993) became a national

bestseller, a playbook for the Clinton–Gore

National Performance Review reorganization of

the federal government, and a viable alternative

to the privatization movement. The book was

also quite controversial in the academic field of

public administration because it was interpreted as

advocating that government be run like a private

business. Goldsmith and Kleiman’s A New City O/S

comes at a time where many citizens and experts find

the performance of the federal government sadly

lacking, and the authors, similar to Osborne and

Gaebler, find many examples of innovative, effective

problem-solving at the municipal level, which they

call “distributed governance” (p. 2).

Using examples from New York City, Memphis,

Louisville, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Atlanta,

Chicago, Los Angeles, and Kansas City, among

others, the authors construct and advocate for a new

distributed operating system for local governance that

encompasses technology, outreach, engagement of

citizens, and a wide range of stakeholders, including

private and nonprofit partners, universities, and

foundations. In many respects, this construct evolves

from two previous works by Goldsmith, Governing

by Network (with William D. Eggers, 2004) and

The Responsive City (with Susan P. Crawford, 2014),

and builds on the influential research and writings

of Donald Kettl and John Dilulio. Goldsmith and

Kleiman show how modern technology enables

government to be more open, transparent, democratic,

and holistic as it develops a strategic plan, determines

its priorities, chooses the appropriate problem-

solving methodology (more frequently a cross-sector

partnership), creates key performance indicators, and

modifies standard operating procedures to improve

outcomes.

Each chapter of the book ends with a very useful

summary of the key points, potential pitfalls,

recommendations, and examples, making it

very user friendly as a textbook for courses on

management, innovation, city management, cross-

sector partnerships, or even social impact. Chapter 1

lays out the broad outlines on what the new reality

could become using New York City’s massive Pre-K

for Everyone initiative. Enabled by technology, the

chapter also makes it clear that the City government

continues to have a primary responsibility to set clear

safety regulations, standard curricula, select qualified

public and private providers, and do all of these

activities while maximizing parental input and choice.

Chapter 2 argues that we have entered into a new

era of municipal governance innovation fueled by

big data and analytics, cross-sector partnerships, and

philanthropic investments. The chapter places this

wave of innovation in the context of the New Public

Management (NPM), suggesting that the new O/S

fosters doing more with more instead of more with

less. Chapter 3 puts the user experience (UX) at

the center of the new O/S and illustrates what this

means with examples from Pittsburgh (open data and

mapping by community) and New Orleans (using

data to arrive at more equitable distribution of public

goods and services).

The most compelling case for the new O/S is Chapter

4, which focuses on how new technology and big data

and analytics is enabling government to better identify

and calculate risk in carrying out its regulatory

responsibility, thereby securing better outcomes for

the public and saving time and money. The chapter

provides specific examples of how Atlanta significantly

reduced wait times and doubled customer satisfaction

in building permit processing in just 12 months.

The authors also detail how Chicago used data

analytics to prioritize health inspections of higher risk

locations, similar to what New York City has done

with its preventive Fire Department of New York City

(FDNY) building inspection innovation.

William B. Eimicke is professor of

the practice of international and public

affairs at Columbia University’s School

of International and Public Affairs, where

he teaches classes on management,

innovation, and policy analysis and is the

founding director of the Picker Center for

Executive Education. He served as Deputy

Fire Commissioner for New York City and

was New York State’s housing “czar.” He

previously served on the editorial board for

the Public Administration Review and

has coauthored six books on management

and numerous articles on public

administration and public policy, the most

recent being Social Value Investing:

A Management Framework for

Effective Partnerships, with Howard W.

Buffett (Columbia University Press, 2018).

E-mail: wbe1@columbia.edu; wbe1@

sipa.columbia.edu