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David Ellwood on Acting in Time

How to confront and overcome inaction in the face of looming catastrophic events is the goal of the Kennedy School's new Acting in Time Initiative. Launched by Dean David T. Ellwood in May 2007, the Initiative is intended to inspire discussion, research and ideas to prepare public, private, and non-profit sector leaders to confront critical long-term challenges - from climate change to health care to nuclear proliferation - where the costs of inaction are clearly too high to risk. Most importantly, the initiative is intended to provoke action and have impact on real world public problems.

David Ellwood has been dean of the School since July 2004. He is a former assistant secretary of health and human services in the Clinton Administration.

Q: Please explain the genesis of the Acting in Time Initiative, and why the Kennedy School is leading this effort at this time.

Ellwood: The Initiative is based on the premise that a certain paralysis often affects our ability as a society to implement policy solutions before a clear and present problem becomes a catastrophe. This paralysis cuts across sectors and issues, and most often results in a greater social cost than what would have been incurred had we acted sooner to prevent the problem. The most potent example in the United States is Hurricane Katrina.

Many people have been troubled by the poor response to the immediate aftermath and the ongoing inability to properly address Katrina's devastating impact on the people of New Orleans. The great tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is that everyone knew it would happen. It was only a matter of time. We knew for decades that New Orleans was at great risk, and yet we did nothing to prevent the tragedy. We'll probably spend ten times as much money to try to repair the city than we would have spent to prevent the damage. This is one very clear case where if we had acted sooner, rather than later, we could have made a huge difference, and yet for some reason we failed to act in time.

I envision this Kennedy School-wide effort as a catalyst for thought, discussion and ideas. Among other things, the Acting in Time Initiative is supporting a number of individual research projects examining the challenges facing governments, communities and nations as they seek new collaborative methods and structures for confronting significant oncoming public problems. In each case, we expect the research to focus on questions surrounding why societies have failed (or may fail) to act in time. The Initiative also formed the basis for discussion at our recent 2007 Spring Conference at the Kennedy School, attended by a number of top scholars, practitioners and advocates.

Q: Describe some of the urgent issues and areas in which acting in time could make a significant difference.

Ellwood: The most obvious area is climate change. There is a growing consensus that this is a case where if we don't act sooner, consequences later will be vastly greater, multiplied many times. We need as a nation and as a world to act in time or the problems will persist.

And there are many other examples of significant social problems that could be and should be addressed sooner rather than later. One set of issues revolve around changing demographics - in the United States and in many other countries. With baby boomers now retiring, budgets for essential social programs like Social Security and Medicare are going to be enormously unwieldy in the near future if we don't do something about it.

Immigration is inevitably going to grow as fertility continues to decline in this country. And there are an entire set of issues surrounding disaster response, and taking measures to prevent disasters from occurring in the first place. Education over the long term is another challenge that must be addressed. These are the kinds of questions we continue to struggle with, but certainly acting sooner rather than later can make a huge difference.

Health care is another significant policy area in which the window of opportunity for acting in time may be passing us by. The numbers of uninsured Americans has been growing for many years along with the financial burden, yet we have been unable to implement the necessary reforms to salvage this broken system. Somehow we must find a way to forge a consensus among lawmakers, health insurers, hospitals, doctors, and patients or we will be dealing with a much more significant problem ten years from now.

Q: How important is cross-sector collaboration in this endeavor? What are some examples of the ways in which governments, communities and nations can formulate collaborative efforts and shape public policy to ward off pending catastrophic events?

Ellwood: I think all of the interesting problems in the world cross the boundaries between business, government and civil society, whether its climate change, or poverty, even issues around solving problems associated with health care and budget - these are all issues that are going to involve collaborative efforts on all sides. Too often, government, business, and civil society are at odds - they don't trust each other, they don't work together to solve problems. It's absolutely vital that these kinds of institutions work together.

Q: What are some examples of governments effectively mobilizing resources to act in time?

Ellwood: There are more examples than you might realize, and often they have resulted from acts of great foresight and political courage. Think about the Marshall Plan, implemented in Europe following the end of World War II. There was not a great desire on the part of the American people to mobilize resources to support Europe. After all, we'd just fought a war and many, many thousands of people had died and billions of dollars had been spent. But a small and committed group of people in business and government thought that the most important way to prevent another war and to restore the prosperity of the world involved a solution like the Marshall Plan that could really make a difference.

And there have been many cases - as with SARS - in which we were slow to act but then did move more effectively. Avian flu, looking ahead, is an example where we can see it and some people are beginning to take steps to address it, but the question is whether we're doing enough and whether we can do more. So I do think that there are cases where we sometimes do act in time, but the question is whether we can really focus on some of the most difficult and most important problems going forward.

Q: What has been the reaction to the Acting in Time Initiative, and where would you like to see it evolve?

Ellwood: First of all, I've been really gratified by the intensity of the action and interest from across the world. We recently had a conference on this issue and brought in people from across the globe on a variety of different issues and what is striking is what a chord this seems to touch in the sense that people are really very much aware that there are major problems not only in the United States but around the world that we're just failing to work on, and the challenges going forward. I think the real question is, can we have an impact? Can we find new political models, new intellectual models and ultimately the kind of dialogue that is vital to ensure that people really start taking a long-term view?

Q: How is the Kennedy School, as a public policy school, a place of training and research, particularly suited to lead this sort of initiative, which is really meant to generate ideas for the good of the world?

Ellwood: I think the Kennedy School has several advantages that are unique. First, it is fundamentally a school that is focused on the public interest. As such, it has no necessary concerns with one particular clientele or advocacy or interest group. And secondly, and much more importantly, these problems cross boundaries. They involve bringing together the best ideas, the best practices; it involves business, government and others. This school has always prided itself on being an open-ended, impact-oriented institution. We do look at specific problems as well as thinking about issues of governance, so I think that the Kennedy School is the obvious place, within this university and more broadly, where I think we can make a difference.

We are really looking for people to help us think about not only specific problems and how we might go about finding solutions, but also looking deeper into the ways in which governments are structured and how political structures are involved so that we can really make a difference. I think that this is a fundamentally vital challenge; it is something that universities and institutions like ours must take on. But at the end of the day, it will be ordinary people as well as our leaders who will have to be willing to look over the long-term and make some sacrifices in the near term so that we can all really have a better tomorrow.