Editor's Notebook

We've seen the trend in two awards programs Government Executive sponsors, one on travel management and the other on applications of technology. And public-private partnerships were a distinguishing characteristic as well of the 10 winners of this year's Innovations in American Government awards, a program run jointly by the Ford Foundation and Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. We are pleased to provide this month a special, 24-page center supplement describing these terrific innovative programs.

The Innovation awards demonstrate the importance of government cooperation with the public and industry, says Bob Stone, a longtime leader of Vice President Al Gore's government reinvention program. "Partnership is a thread that runs through" winning projects, Stone says. "These programs transcend the old system, where government sat on one side of the table and everyone else sat on the other. They are a model for everything government does, from regulatory activities to law enforcement."

The Forest Service won an award for its work in northern New Mexico with community activists and businesses to balance the needs of people living and working around Carson National Forest. The Navy's Best Manufacturing Practices program received an award for getting industry, government and academia to share manufacturing techniques. The third federal Innovations winner, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, encouraged companies to recall defective products in return for a waiver from lengthy and costly government evaluations.

The travel management awards, detailed in last month's issue of Government Executive, went to projects typically done in cooperation with private sector suppliers of software and other services. The awards program began last year, and is supported by contributions by three prominent travel services firms: Gelco Government Network, OAG Worldwide and Visa USA Inc.

The technology awards program, now 8 years old, will honor 19 winning projects at a Dec. 1 ceremony during the annual Government Technology Leadership Institute. The Institute, whose educational program is designed for non-technical managers, is a public-private partnership with corporate sponsors including BMC Software, Litton/PRC, NCR and SAP America Public Sector.

Which brings me to a year-ending, closing thought. Government Executive itself is in a sense a public-private partnership, endeavoring to serve you in the public sector while also offering a way for private sector companies to communicate with people in the markets they serve. Without the support of these companies, we could not survive. So let me end by thanking our top 10 advertisers for 1998: Visa USA, Compaq Computer Corp., Canon USA, Computer Associates, Unicor, GEICO, Johnson Controls Inc., Lucent Technologies, GTE and SAP America Public Sector.