In discussion with the Brookings Institution, Dr. David Bray, inaugural director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, discussed for public service the legacy idea that “leader’s can’t take risks or experiment” in government is an idea that needs to be retired for open societies to thrive in the future.

Specifically, Dr. Bray highlights three of what he calls 21st century realities:

• Public service must include workspaces for those who want to experiment and explore new ways of delivering results.
  
• Public service agencies need, within reason, to be allowed to have things fail, and be allowed to take risks.
  
• Public service cannot be done solely by government professionals in a top-down fashion.

He note that in addition to inverting public service from top-down approaches to championing bottom-up change agents, public service needs to explore new ways of collaborating with the public and private sector.

This discussion was in Dr. Bray’s role as past roles and the post was made publicly available by the Brookings Institution.

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