State, Federal Managers Talk Shop at K-School

For three weeks in the height of the summer, they go back to school--the deputy administrators, commissioners, city managers, project coordinators and executive directors.

At the Kennedy School this week, 110 of them have gathered to participate in two of the school's growing projects in training government workers--the program for senior executives in state and local government and the program for senior managers in government.

What those fancy titles mean is three weeks of intensive class sessions with professors drawn from the K-school and elsewhere, three weeks of case studies and problem-solving, three weeks of getting to know people from all over the country who have the same problems that you do.

Spartan

What it also means for the 53 participants in the state and local program is living in Kirkland House, taking their meals in the dining hall and working as hard, if not harder, than they would when on their regular jobs.

It is not, as Michael S. Dukakis, director of intergovernmental studies at the K-School and faculty chairman of the state and local program, says, "a vacation in New England."

For $2600--room, board and tuition included--a group of men and women from places as far as Albuquerque and as diverse as Nashville and Los Angeles, gathers in Kennedy School classrooms to take courses in management, economics and policy analysis.

The state and local program has expanded this year--its second--and is so successful and generates such intense competition for admission that the school plans to almost double the program next year. The program is the Kennedy School doing what President Bok wants it to do--train people in the real-world problems that they have to face back in Denver.

"These are the hands-on people," says Dukakis. "We believe that we can provide a variety of managerial tools and a strategic perspective about how things get done," he continues. "We want to give the manager greater understanding of how to operate more skillfully and efficiently in a Proposition 13 age."

Efficiency, effectiveness and responsibility--those are also the watchwords downstairs in the Kennedy School, where 57 men and women--from the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to field workers in local offices of the Department of Transportation--are learning about the ins and outs of the giant federal bureaucracy.

These are also the hands-on people--the administrators right below the level of presidential appointees who are dealing on a day-to-day basis with the implementation of policies sent down from above.

The program for senior managers in government has changed this year, says Hale Champion, K-School executive dean, instructor, and one-time undersecretary in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Professors from the K-School have stepped in to replace their colleagues from across the river at the Business School, and the program now aims to help its participants put their problems in perspective.

"We're trying to make them understand that policy-makers are not just dolts and fools," says Champion. "We start by looking up at the policy makers and then having the people look within their own departments."