Public Service Innovators: Mark Sakaley (MC/MPA '88): Reform Is Government's Business

"I view government as a facilitator and seed funder," says Mark Sakaley (MC/MPA '88), special assistant to the director of the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) at the U.S. Justice Department. "I think it's important to examine federal management systems from a business perspective, replacing the bottom-line profit margin with development on the individual, community, and national level."

Despite this distinction, Sakaley acknowledges he sometimes sounds like a dot-com entrepreneur, and his resume-packed with numerous programs he's initiated and administered at the Departments of Justice and Commerce-reveals a clear affinity for the "start-up" mentality. For the past twenty years, however, Sakaley's focus has been working for change in the public sector. "That's why I don't mind bouncing around," he says. "No matter who I'm working for, my job is to edge people toward what will help them the most."

ICITAP, he explains, has two functions: to work with existing police forces to increase institutional capacity within a framework of international human rights standards; and to develop new police forces in the context of international peacekeeping operations. Created in 1986 in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, ICITAP has been involved in developing countries around the world, from Guatemala to Indonesia to Kosovo. Funded primarily by the Department of State and the Agency for International Development, ICITAP programs are instituted in part at the request of governments that seek its assistance.

"You need to have some authority and a certain level of cooperation to do reform," Sakaley notes. "There are often complex social and ethnic overtones involved, to say nothing of finding and evaluating potential recruits in a city where all the records have been bombed or burned up."

Problem-solving is a skill Sakaley relies on constantly, ever since a 1978 car accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. "I have to figure out creative, imaginative ways to get things done on a daily basis," he observes. "One of the most important lessons I've learned is that we can accomplish much more working together as a group than we can as individuals." While he was at the Kennedy School, Sakaley, a former vice president of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, founded and directed "Project Inclusion," an initiative to raise awareness of disability issues.

Looking back on his first year at ICITAP, Sakaley says his responsibilities have covered a wide range of organizational, managerial, and strategic-planning activities. "I'm always trying to find cost-effective ways of adding value, like new information-gathering tools and services-anything to keep us lean and mean," he says. "If there's a common theme running through the various positions I've held over the years, it's figuring out how to make my little corner of the federal government run better."