A report of the Harvard Tough Times Project Symposium held in Cambridge, MA, The Leadership for a Networked World Advisory Group, Creative Commons.

This report is based on a series of surveys and dialog among federal, state, local and international researchers, practitioners and leaders. It offers a detailed assessment of leadership in challenging times as well as in-depth analysis.

Creating value in these turbulent times is a defining challenge for public service leaders. Grappling with the economic downturn, organizations have already been forced to make painful choices about program and service cuts—all while constituents are demanding more services, transparency, accountability and value from government. But today’s cost- containment measures cannot be built on one-off tactics for immediate relief. They must be driven by structural and efficiency improvements that enable sustainable innovation for the long term. A downturn of this magnitude requires a new mindset, not just a retread of traditional responses

Ten years after the tragic events of 9/11, most U.S. cities still have challenges collaborating and communicating across police, fire, medical, and other first response units. This whitepaper and case study, written by LNW and originally published in 2007 for Cisco Systems Inc., shows how Oakland County MI officials met the cross-boundary communication challenge by aligning policy, programs and technology in order to synchronize planning and response. Using a network-centric approach, Oakland County conducted a large-scale pandemic exercise in which they inoculated more than 12,000 individuals in five hours.

As e-government enters the difficult and dangerous territory of cross-boundary transformation, what does this mean in terms of CIO leadership?