Institute for Civic Service
The architecture of our shared life.
Civic service is the noble calling spanning the full spectrum of work toward the common good: volunteers, nonprofits, private-sector partners, and, at its cornerstone, the professional civil service. That service is in a quiet crisis. The Institute exists to renew it, and builds the things renewal takes: a law, a book, a doctrine.
Civic service is the noble calling spanning the full spectrum of work toward the common good, and it is in a quiet crisis.
Together, We Serve
What we build
Three projects, one aim: public service that delivers.
The Institute is product-oriented. We build the things that make change possible, and each one is built to be used.
Active
FRAME for Mobility
A from-scratch rewrite of the federal surface transportation law, written with the practitioners who build and use the system.
Published
Plan for Planning
The Lost Art of the Plan: a book recovering the craft of seeing the city whole, for the planners and public servants who draw it.
In Development
Crafting the New Civil Service
The doctrine behind the work: the classic pillars of governance, upgraded for a high-velocity age. In development now, and a first look is coming.
The diagnosis
The quiet crisis.
Public trust is not collapsing in a single event. It is eroding, delivery failure by delivery failure, as institutions prove unable to do what they promise. Our foundational essay names the crisis and its cause. It ends where the Institute begins: society needs things to be done, not just arguments won.
The people
Built by people who have done the job.
The Institute is led by practitioners: the people designing the reform agenda are the same people who have run the systems it aims to fix, and who argue for it in the rooms where decisions are made.
Support
Help renew the work we were born to do.
The Institute is a small team with a large brief, and it runs on the support of people who believe public service should work. Every gift is tax-deductible through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor.