He outlines his ideas in a 2005 report, "Leveraging Collaborative Networks in Infrequent Emergency Situations," for the IBM Center for The Business of Government at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Moynihan's suggestions are rooted in the response to an outbreak of a disease in California and other western states that threatened the U.S. poultry industry in 2002 and 2003. A task force of state and federal responders was created to eliminate the threat of Exotic Newcastle Disease.

Moynihan, who joined UW-Madison this fall, has research and teaching interests in performance management, homeland security, citizen participation and public budgeting. In particular, he studies the selection and implementation of public management reforms. He is working on a book entitled "Rethinking Performance Management," to be published by Georgetown University Press.

Like bird flu, Newcastle Disease is lethal to poultry and transfers via bird feces, says Moynihan. The primary challenge facing the task force was to identify the spread of the disease, quarantine affected areas, test or euthanize millions of birds, and clean affected premises and dispose of carcasses in biosecure ways. As states and the federal government plan to deal with the threat of bird flu, eliminating the spread of the disease among birds will be a critical part of any response, Moynihan says.

No single organization is capable of dealing with an unusual, infrequent and large-scale threat such as bird flu, Moynihan says, meaning that collaborative networks like the Newcastle Disease task force will necessarily be part of the solution.

From a public management perspective, networks are a set of connected actors involved in the delivery of services. These multiple organi
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Contact: Donald P. Moynihan
dmoynihan@lafollette.wisc.edu
608-263-6633
University of Wisconsin-Madison
6-Dec-2005