Taking control

Drawing on in-depth interviews and research from the private sector, this study demonstrates how open, information-driven systems perform and can be used by government to solve our major problems, including quality education, health care, protection of the environment, and public safety. In the 1950s, when America was the world's single industrial giant, three out of four U.S. workers were engaged in manufacturing. Forty years later the industrial age is over: in 1996, almost 50 percent of the workforce relies on computers and fewer than one in six hold factory-related jobs. Though the economic landscape has been transformed, few politicians of either party seem to have noticed. Human capital has replaced investment capital as the necessary ingredient of the new economic age. Empowered by the microprocessor, "knowledge workers" - educated, adaptive, and technologically adept - are identified here as a powerful new constituency. Unmoved by ideology or hierarchy, these individuals are team players who believe in sharing information but are suspicious of authority. Disdainful of public policy based on outdated assumptions, they have confidence that "a government can be redesigned to do more with less."