How do professionals learn from result-oriented management? How do supervision and policy learn meaningfully from each other? And how does middle management in an official organisation actually learn from their managers?
In 2006, 2007 and 2008, three groups of fellows from the Dutch School of Public Administration (NSOB) are researching these questions as part of the workshop phase of their MPA training. In 2009 I summarised the lessons in an essay written especially for the NSOB (in Dutch):
The government seems to be running into learning barriers again and again and, according to some, is becoming further and further away from reality. At the same time, much is invested in knowledge and learning.
A learning government strives for improvement: of knowledge, of policy and – finally – of society. Results management, inspection and supervision are – just like, for example, quality assurance, risk management and policy research – the tools that are used in this process. Because the world may be complex and dynamic, and there may be more actors alone than the (national) government, that is no reason to sit down in misery…