The Shift to Servant Leadership: How Federal Agencies Can Support States, Territories, and Communities After the Pandemic
A blog discussing how federal agencies can support states, territories, and communities after the pandemic.
In spring of 2020, I started working on pandemic response projects as part of my tour of service with the US Digital Service. When we tried to solve the problem of getting better public health data faster to folks who needed it for the response, we traveled to multiple states to speak with local and state public health officials and understand what their concrete technological, organizational, and regulatory barriers were to collecting and sharing pandemic data amongst themselves and with federal teams.
We heard a common refrain: “We are over capacity, and we need help. Not just money, or rules, or requests for data. Help.”
What I began to realize over the subsequent two years was that I was witnessing the beginning of what I believe—and hope—to be a seismic shift in the relationship between the federal government and constituent governments such as states, territories, tribes, and localities. I describe this shift as one to servant leadership.
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