David Osborne is the author or co-author of four books: the Reinventor’s Fieldbook: Tools for Transforming Your Government (July 2000), Banishing Bureaucracy: The Five Strategies for Reinventing Government (1997); Reinventing Government (1992); and Laboratories of Democracy (1988). He has also authored numerous articles for the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Governing, the New Republic, and other publications.
Mr. Osborne is a partner in the Public Strategies Group, a consulting firm that helps public organizations develop and implement strategies to improve performance. In 1993, he served as a senior advisor to Vice President Gore, helping run what the Vice President often called his "reinventing government task force," the National Performance Review. He was the chief author of the NPR report, called by Time "the most readable federal document in memory."
Mr. Osborne also serves as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, a congressionally chartered organization similar to the National Academy of Sciences; a fellow of the Progressive Policy Institute, the think tank of the Democratic Leadership Council; and a member of the Education Commission of the States’ National Commission on Governing America’s Schools.
A New York Times best-seller, Reinventing Government described how public sector institutions all across America were transforming the bureaucratic models they had inherited from the past, making government more flexible, creative, and entrepreneurial. Banishing Bureaucracy outlined the most powerful strategies available to create such governments. Its sequel, the Reinventor’s Fieldbook, fleshes out that picture by providing "how-to" guidance on more than 70 different tools reinventors can use, from performance measurement and customer service standards to competitive bidding and labor-management partnerships.
Mr. Osborne graduated with honors from Stanford University.