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                                 TheLectern
 Should federal
contracting be more
like Airbnb?
A lighter touch could transform the government’s oversight culture into one based on mutual trust
BY STEVE KELMAN
Roger Cohen is a columnist for the New York Times who typically writes about foreign
human nature. And when I read the column for the first time, that was the only message I got. As those who know me are aware, I am the kind
column, I began to see Cohen’s story as one that, while not contradicting his basic hopeful message, is slightly more complicated. And it has implications
that extend well beyond Airbnb to two areas I care a lot about: managing government contracts and managing government employees.
Better behavior through reviews
The philosophies behind federal contract and employee management do not give expression to the trust that Cohen claims is basic to Airbnb. The infrastructure of com- pliance-oriented process rules, requirements and prohibitions all reflect a real worry that contrac- tors and employees will cheat and loaf without extensive oversight and constraints. But that infra- structure, aside from being
quite costly to administer, also feeds on itself, making participants less inclined to behave in trustworthy ways without harsh oversight and constraints.
policy, but a recent column from the beaten path to focus on Airbnb.
The column begins with an account of a conversation Cohen had with Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s co-founder and CEO. “He told me about trying to raise $150,000 in 2008 for his idea of a peer-to-peer home and room rental company. Everyone called him crazy,” Cohen wrote. “They scoffed at the notion that people would trust one another enough to allow strangers into their homes. They derided the idea that those strangers would be nice enough, or honest enough, to respect properties.”
Yet it turned out that millions of people were indeed willing to open their homes to strangers, and millions of those strangers were willing to treat
the properties right. “Without fundamental human goodness,” Chesky said to Cohen, Airbnb “would not work.”
Chesky’s basic message is an extraordinarily hopeful one about
strays
  26 September/October 2018 FCW.COM
The Airbnb system displays a light touch, unlike the harsher oversight of contractors and employees common in government.
of guy who assumes the best about people, and I felt very good seeing an affirmation of this assumption.
Yet as I thought more about the












































































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