Preparing Tomorrow’s Public Service is an initiative of the Volcker Alliance focused on spurring educational innovation to meet the challenges of complex governance in the future. This project furthers one of the primary objectives of the Alliance: supporting the development of new educational approaches to achieve public service excellence. Preparing Tomorrow’s Public Service is a research-based project intended to contribute to the vital work of governance by:

• identifying the essential skills and competencies required of an effective managerial public servant of 2025 based upon input from government practitioners and educators, and
• generating ideas for educational innovations that can support future public managers in attaining those skills and competencies.

Project Overview

The Volcker Alliance has gathered substantive contributions from a diverse range of stakeholders with expert perspectives on public management, including from:

• An advisory group of senior leaders from government, higher education, and government partnership organizations provided guidance to the Volcker Alliance throughout the initiative.
• Focus groups held in four cities and survey data from over 900 “next generation” public manager-leaders – individuals five to fifteen years into advancing public management careers – surfaced data and insights about the skills, competencies and educational experiences they believe can best support their performance as effective and adaptive practitioners.
• A wide range of government, education, and professional development specialists who contributed ideas for how lessons from the initiative can be translated into concrete and actionable recommendations for preparing public managers through education and training innovations.

Advisory Group for Preparing Tomorrow's Public Service:

Jason Briefel- Senior Executives Association
Karl Brooks- University of Texas at Austin, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs
Daniel Chenok- IBM Center for The Business of Government
Suzanne Cooper- Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Kevin Desouza- Arizona State University, College of Public Service and Community Solutions
Elizabeth Kellar- Center for State and Local Government Excellence
Laurel McFarland- The Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration
J. Christopher Mihm- US Government Accountability Office
Sharon Minnich- Pennsylvania Office of Administration
Jon Nehlsen- Carnegie Mellon University, H. John Heinz III College