How to make social policy help those who need it most

The transition underway in our executive branch of government has been undeniably chaotic. Basic questions about the capacity of the new administration to effectively govern remain unanswered.

While there already appear to be violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution — written explicitly to guard against the undue influence of foreign countries in our internal affairs — additional concern is being generated by a lack of commitment to foundational tenets of governance.

Major departures from the precedents of disclosure and vetting are just part of the story as to why the institutions of government are already under duress.

In the short-term, steps can be taken to secure the pillars of our system of democratic government. These include supporting the civil service workforce so employees have the tools to do their jobs. There is particular danger in appointing people to lead agencies that they have previously sought to undermine or abolish: Incompetence at the top of any organization is difficult to overcome.

The incoherent and poorly defined hiring freeze is a perilous path to manage a federal workforce, and Congress should step in to prevent this abdication of responsibility by the new administration.

{mosads}Over the longer term, we need government to work effectively. It needs to fulfill its commitments and competently deliver a long list of goods and services. It needs to set strategic goals, and then pursue activities that are capable of meeting stated objectives. It needs to set standards. When performance consistently falls short of desired outcomes, government should be expected to respond.

The work of government includes an obligation to improve performance and ultimately to make things better for the citizenry. At a basic level, this requires gathering information about what is working and what needs more attention and reform. Information and feedback are an essential part of this process.

The advent of a new administration is always a time to consider the work of government and this year, the spotlight should be even brighter, especially for the executive branch. It is this wing of government that is tasked with implementing policy, administering programs and effectively running our democratic system. When failure occurs, we need government to proactively respond.

Clearly, there are large swaths of government programs that we know can do better, but what’s missing is an overarching framework for identifying what isn’t working and alternative approaches that can be tried.

For instance, the wide array of social policy programs intended to make good on the American promise of equality of opportunity often fall short. We’ve been collecting evidence of declines in intergenerational mobility, which reflect the sobering reality that those subject to legacies of exclusion and oppression remain unable to fully participate in our society and economy.

This has been one of the key observations of the Family-Centered Social Policy initiative at New America. Our two-year audit of government programs, which covered a wide range of policy efforts from financial security and education, to childcare and workforce development, led to the perverse conclusion that many of our government’s social policy efforts do not disrupt patterns of economic and social division, but instead replicate them.

We see this in the reality that families already advantaged by education, income and inherited wealth are the ones that receive benefits automatically, often via employers, while those without those advantages must navigate a complicated, unreliable patchwork of programs, which provide lower levels of assistance.

In response, we should be looking for a new approach. A recent paper by my colleagues Rachel Black and Sabeel Rahman, “Centering the Margins: A Framework for Equitable and Inclusive Social Policy,” aims to contribute to this process by articulating a framework for the appropriate response.

Their approach is to embed the ideals of inclusion and equity directly into both enacted policies as well as the very processes that design them.

Specifically, Black and Rahman suggest applying the principles and methodology of human-centered design to social policy. The intention is to democratize the process that leads to the creation policy systems that are more in sync with the circumstances of the families impacted.

In this framework, the policymaking process is remade when “recipients” are replaced by “co-designers.”

They argue that by centering policies around what will best serve the families previously placed at the margins and giving them a meaningful voice in the policy design process, we will not only shift the power dynamics inherent in the current approach, but we can identify a set of strategic objectives against which success can be measured.

Interventions can be then be evaluated in terms of their performance in meeting expectations of those impacted, rather than outdated and preconceived notions of success.

This shift is a necessary precondition for the updating of our social policy system, which is by now long overdue. A human-centered design orientation can also provide a means to support those engaged in in the actual work of government and implementing policy by creating access to the information they need to do their jobs more effectively and transform our collective policy efforts for the better. 

Reid Cramer is a senior fellow at New America, a nonpartisan policy institute headquartered in Washington.

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