Use Promise Neighborhoods Initiative as a Model for Effective Practices 

One of the major new, community-focused initiatives of this administration is called Promise Neighborhoods:

"The President’s Budget also provides funds to support Promise Neighborhoods, a new effort to test innovative strategies to improve academic achievement and life outcomes in high-poverty areas. The program will be modeled after the
Harlem Children’s Zone, which aims to improve college-going rates by combining a rigorous K-12 education with a full network of supportive services—from early childhood education to after-school activities to college counseling—in an entire neighborhood from birth to college."

In order for the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative to succeed, there must be effective collaboration among numerous federal strategies; inspiring and authentic public participation in the neighborhoods; and outcomes-based collaboration among schools, local government agencies, and nonprofits; in other words, many of the strategies of the Open Government Initiative.

The Administration should design the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative as a demonstration project for the key strategies of the Open Government Initiative to show how an initiative can unfold with effective participation and collaboration.

Develop Coherent Technical Assistance Strategies for States and Communities 

In the 1990s, the federal government, in a very rough estimate, was found to spend almost $100 million per year to hire technical assistance consultants to assist communities with the implementation of federal programs. These technical assistance consultants are often engaged to help communities develop and implement public-private collaboration frameworks and public participation strategies as well as other, more technical skills (e.g., financial management). Since many federal programs target the same low income communities, each federal program sends its own technical assistance consultants, who, at best, are not coordinated, and, at worst, provide contradictory advice.

Federal agencies with federal to community (e.g., cities, counties, neighborhoods, etc.) funding programs should be required to develop a census of which programs funds which community and then develop coherent technical assistance plans that cut across funding streams.

Link Federal Agency Collaboration to creating Coherent Public Participation Frameworks 

Many different federal agencies work on common issue areas. DOJ, Labor, HHS, Education, and others,for example, work on similar youth issues. In community, agency #1 may be trying to prevent juvenile delinquency while agency #2 is working on teen pregnancy prevention and agency #3 is working on youth employment (which is often an possible strategy for the work of agency #1 and #2). Each agency will require its own public participation and local collaboration strategy. Sometimes, these are completely separate siloed processes in the same community. That is a waste of effort and makes it virtually impossible to develop an integrated strategy.

For key target areas (e.g., disconnected youth, livable communities, regional planning, etc.), each agency with relevant funding programs should be required to join with other agencies with relevant funding programs to streamline regulations, support unified public participation frameworks, and, in general, promote progress toward a shared set of outcomes.