Public Administrators’ Journal http://pubadmin.org/2015/05/22/beyond-guerrilla-government-intrapreneurs-cuff-systems-side- projects-and-hacks/ 1 Beyond Guerrilla Government: Intrapreneurs, Cuff Systems, Side Projects and Hacks David S. Reed Center for Public Administrators Public administrators often pursue their public interest aspirations and personal aspirations by taking initiative independent of their supervisors. Rosemary O'Leary (2006) called this “guerrilla government”, and provided real-life examples ranging from whistleblowers to “a state department of transportation employee who repaired a train gate where children were playing against the wishes of his superior.” (O’Leary 2010, 12) O’Leary examined such behavior as a predicament for supervisors—should they “nurture, tolerate, or terminate” their guerrilla employees? (2010, 8) But independent initiative is not only a predicament for supervisors, it is a vital part of the public administrator’s toolkit. Whistleblowing is one form of independent initiative, but other forms are widespread and important: Intrapreneurs create innovations in their organizations. Some organizations have procedures by which their hierarchy screens and selects ideas suggested by employees. (Desouza and Smith 2014) That can lead to innovations, if they are attractive to those in power. More substantial intrapreneurship creates innovations despite the disinterest or opposition of the organization’s hierarchy. Because the intrapreneur has very limited command over the organization’s resources, she uses the techniques of effectuation— basing her strategy on the resources she can access, keeping her potential losses survivable, building effectiveness through alliances, and adapting to circumstances. (Sarasvathy 2001) This may lead to implementing the innovation as a “fact on the ground” which then acquires enough acceptance and support to be sustained. That was reportedly the genesis of the U.S. Government’s “Intellipedia” system. (Calabresi 2015) Cuff Systems are information systems that are developed and maintained outside the organization’s official procedures for IT systems. They are often implemented as spreadsheets, but free cloud services such as Google Docs have increased the range of platforms available for such “shadow IT”. (Coles and Yeoh 2015) Public administrators often maintain cuff systems even for functions that are supposedly performed by an official system, because they find the official system does not meet their needs. (Long and McCoy 1982, 14; U.S. Dept. Interior 2002, 11; U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration 2001, 12–13) Side Projects are projects related to the skills and topics of one’s job, but not done as part of the job. One example is an open-source project to assemble a searchable collection of all reports from Federal Inspectors General, by creating software that scrapes each agency’s web site for