Failing Fruitfully

Apropos of yesterday's post about tolerance for failure and error in the federal setting, here's GSA Administrator Martha Johnson in the Federal Coach column in the Washington Post on her approach to encouraging risk-taking:

As a leader, it's very important to have a real clear eye about risk and to be very intentional and transparent about it. I think we need to learn to fail. I have a little saying, "fail forward, fail fast and fail fruitfully," because you never learn or innovate if you always do it right. I think leaders have got to set a different value structure to their people, and say, "I will stand by you."

That's a great sentiment. But it's very hard to back up in the government context. I'm struggling to think of a recent federal example where failure even went unpunished, much less was held up as a valuable learning experience.

Can anyone help me out?