Public management frontiers in guaranteed income programs: Advancing implementation

Abstract

This viewpoint analyzes recent experiments in guaranteed income (GI) projects and identifies implementation issues that extend the frontiers of public administration. GI programs provide low-income individuals with substantial and regular cash with few or no strings or conditions attached and are being used to assist the lower income population, including informal workers who are left out of many government programs. The following implementation issues are discussed as frontiers in current public administration research and theory: (1) increasing the federal role in vertical collaboration; (2) improving data integration across levels of government; and (3) finding new solutions to financial and political sustainability. As GI programs and experiments proliferate, it becomes critical to examine implementation and not just outcomes or impact.