e.Republic is a media and research firm focused exclusively on the public sector - primarily state/local government and education. Central to our mission is the idea that a dramatically new era requires new kinds of government and educational systems. We’ve stated this in many ways over the 20 + years we’ve been at this but they boil down to the belief that you can’t successfully run 21st century schools, cities, counties and states on 20th century “operating systems”.
Clearly public organizations are frustratingly slow to evolve. Much of the current economic crisis has its roots in governments overwhelmed by a world made smaller, faster and complexly interdependent by new technologies.
This week President Barack Obama was inaugurated as our 44th President. I watched the inauguration ceremony, streamed live over the web, with tremendous pride and hope as a citizen of both America and the world.
Politics aside, there is strong promise in the new administration in Washington. President Obama is a one of a new generation of leaders who get it - for real – it’s in their DNA. They know we won’t succeed in this new century with a 20th century government.
As President Obama said in his
inauguration Tuesday: “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” Also speaking about the scope and ambition required to meet the challenges ahead he remarked: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them…the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”
No doubt the obstacles and inertia to transforming our public institutions are nearly insurmountable, but a new spirit is loose in the land and here at e.Republic a recommitment to our goal of being at the forefront of informing 21st century government.
