Defining and Creating Value for the Public

Mark Moore, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, is one of the leaders of a an academic movement that studies and advocates for the concept of “public value.” Public value asks public officials to consider the benefits and costs of public services not only in terms of dollars and cents, but also in terms of how government actions affect important civic and democratic principles such as equity, liberty, responsiveness, transparency, participation, and citizenship. Public value seeks to provide public officials with the ability to talk about the net benefit of government actions, while overcoming the limitations inherent in attempting to create a “bottom line” that is analogous to that of the private sector.