Given limited resources for institutional improvement, the institutions most worth improving are those where the marginal institutional quality improvement produces the largest improvement in outcomes for the populations most dependent on them.
The Priority Calculation
The institutions most worth improving are not necessarily the most visible or the most prestigious — they are the institutions where the marginal improvement in institutional quality produces the largest improvement in outcomes for the populations most dependent on them, and where the current institutional quality is furthest below what is achievable with the governance investment that improvement requires. This priority calculation directs attention toward the institutions serving the most vulnerable populations, where the accountability gaps are largest and the governance investment most underprovided relative to the improvement potential. The public school in the underserved community where the gap between current performance and achievable performance is largest. The community health system where the accountability investment could produce the largest health outcome improvement per dollar. The legal system where the access gap between the well-resourced and the poorly-resourced is widest.
The priority calculation also directs attention toward the institutional improvement investments that produce spillover effects on other institutions — the improvements in the accountability infrastructure that benefit multiple institutions by creating the accountability mechanisms that all institutions in the environment must respond to, the improvements in the information infrastructure that increase the transparency of multiple institutions simultaneously, and the governance norm improvements that shape the operating environment for all institutions within the governance system. These spillover investments are often undervalued relative to their systemic impact precisely because the impact is distributed rather than concentrated in a specific institution's performance metrics.
The institutions most worth improving are the ones where the improvement potential is largest, the investment is most underprovided, and the populations most dependent on improvement have the least alternative recourse. These are not always the institutions that receive the most governance attention. Redirecting attention toward them is one of the most consequential governance choices available in any institutional landscape.
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