PREFACE

When I agreed to chair the national committee that oversees the Ford Foundation's Innovations in State and Local Government Awards Program, it was a time of increasing demands on state and local governments. The public resources available to respond to basic social and economic needs were being stretched far beyond their limits—not exactly the best prescription for creativity.

Moreover, based on my own experience as the governor of a major industrial state, I was aware of the many constraints public employees face these days: growing responsibilities, limited resources, and layers of regulation and red tape, which are designed to make government accountable but sometimes have the effect of foreclosing initiative.

So I was surprised and delighted to discover the number, variety, and quality of innovative programs operating across the country. The national committee had a difficult job selecting from among them. Those finally honored with Innovations Awards are extraordinary efforts, which successfully tackle some of America's toughest and most intractable problems.

If the programs are impressive, so too are their creators, who, usually through a strong sense of mission, declined to go along with business as usual. The process of innovation usually was no easy matter—most of the programs evolved through successive modifications and adjustments—but the innovators were publicly accountable throughout. And the programs they designed have helped to enlarge the notion of what is possible in government.

Each of these innovations has immediate value in the state or locality that produced it. And each has potential value as a source of ideas for jurisdictions seeking to solve similar problems. One of the aims of the Innovations Program is to help ensure that information about these innovations is widely available to public servants and citizens across the country. We encourage people to borrow and adapt approaches they can