Government’s Work

I have argued that the new conditions in which we live have made this a good time to be in government. Only government can meet the challenges of hostility and violence arising in far-off places. Thus demand has risen for government services. And, as in the private sector, rising demand brings more spending and increased supply. Federal executives have the job-difficult and fraught with controversy, but challenging and essential-of making sure that the increased sums of money, and new regulatory and law-enforcement powers, are wisely deployed.

Controversy has swirled around decisions made by our political leaders in the wake of Sept. 11. The USA Patriot Act, and raids and detentions not seen in America in modern times, expand the power of the state in ways disturbing both to liberals and conservatives. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the long-term commitments these actions imply, have brought the word "quagmire" back into political discourse. Critics questioned the awkward melding of 22 agencies into the Department of Homeland Security, and controversy attends Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's ambitious plans to reorganize and "modernize" the active-duty and reserve forces of the U.S. military.

People who make their careers in the government have the duty of making these and other policies work to best advantage for the American people. Government programs never satisfy everyone. They are always born of political compromise rather than unified vision, and those that have flowed from the terrorist threat have also been born in haste. Since programs rarely work as their progenitors intended, those who are responsible for their execution are always targets for criticism.

Kenneth Feinberg is no exception, but his management of the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund offers a compelling example of government at its best. Feinberg's job has been to ensure that the fund's resources are wisely-and that means fairly in this case-allocated to the victims of the attacks. He is making decisions about how to assign dollar values to lives of people who were waiters, janitors, Army colonels and big-ticket investment hotshots, dealing with 3,000 cases whose claim on the Treasury will be in the range of $4 billion. Feinberg is not of Solomonic bearing, Alina Tugend reports this month. But he is doing a helluva job in a highly emotional context.

In a larger, and longer-term endeavor-helping our neglected public health system respond to the threat of bioterrorism-there's also good news to report, writes Katherine Peters. A federally sponsored demonstration project in Pennsylvania promises a revolution in disease surveillance, and the National Library of Medicine has just signed a contract to license a standardized medical vocabulary that will greatly enhance the medical community's ability to keep informed about health developments and trends.

Government is still sorting through its responses to 9/11. What, for example, can we do to improve the chances that intelligence agencies will be able to discern threats in time to act? Shane Harris this month explores the faults in our bureaucratized and homogenized system of developing intelligence estimates-and the part that unconventional thinking and maverick analysts might have in improving the intelligence product.