In honor of Labor Day, a new website from the Ash Institute at Harvard's Kennedy School that highlights the best innovations from across the public sector published a column by SEIU President Andy Stern. In his piece, Stern shares his view on how those working in the public sector can make a positive difference in promoting transparency and cost-effectiveness:

Making Government Cool Again

In the final stretch of his campaign, President Obama, speaking at a forum on national service at Columbia University, said he wanted to "make government cool again."

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) appreciates that sentiment. Obama's words made a lot of us take notice because we've come to expect people, especially politicians, to rail against government.

That wasn't always the case.

Many in my parents' generation went to college on the GI Bill, purchased homes with FHA loans, viewed public service work with respect, and recognized the government's role in lifting a broad swath of society into the middle class.

But by the time I began working as a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania caseworker and then union staffer in the 1970s, an onslaught of anti-government rhetoric was already beginning to erode public confidence in and funding for public services. When I was president of the Pennsylvania Social Services Union, an affiliate of SEIU, I saw Pennsylvania's governor run radio ads against his own state workers to try to push through steep cutbacks in health care and other job-security protections.

In the decades since then, government has been continually scapegoated, ridiculed, and starved of resources, while public services in our country are in crisis.

We are facing massive budget deficits at all levels of government, while states like California are teetering on the brink of a federal bailout.

Collapsing bridges and child welfare horror stories make headlines, but people who work in government know there is disinvestment and neglect everywhere.

Public service employees at all levels of government are an essential, but often overlooked, part of the solution. The people who do the work are often the best people to ask for ideas about how to do it better, faster, or cheaper...

Read Andy's entire column at "Better, Cheaper, Faster" here.