Dan Tangherlini, a member of the 2023 cohort of Democracy Fellows at the Center for Effective Government (CEG) within the Harris School of Public Policy, sat down with The Maroon to discuss his career, the virtues of a career in public service, and the idea of effective government.
Tangherlini is a two-time alum of the University of Chicago, having received both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Public Policy. He was confirmed to the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service on May 12, 2022. Tangherlini currently sits on the board of the Partnership of Public Service, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC, along with serving as a managing director of the Emerson Collective. Previously, Tangherlini held positions at the Office of Management and Budget, the Departments of Transportation and Treasury, and the General Services Administration.
Note: this interview has been abridged and edited for clarity. The conversation took place on Tuesday, January 16, before Tangherlini’s scheduled appearance at the CEG’s Breakfast and Benchmarks event.
Chicago Maroon: How did you come to be a part of the Center for Effective Government, and what does it mean for you to be able to come back where you went to school?
Dan Tangherlini: Wow. I didn’t know I was doing this (laughs). No, I’m kidding. I was working with a variety of these different programs that are exploring ways to improve government effectiveness through research and data collection. I’m on the board of the Partnership for Public Service, and my organization, the Emerson Collective, actually brought together a group of these different organizations to connect with each other to try to build some connective tissue between the various different entities across schools that are exploring different aspects of how you determine effectiveness in government, how you improve effectiveness of government, and how you build trust in government.
[The CEG] was an exciting opportunity to continue to explore my own personal project of trying to understand how to make government more effective, as well as learn from other practitioners and reconnect with my alma mater. I’m really interested in helping to build enthusiasm for people to explore careers in this important activity.
CM: So you’re a double-alum of UChicago. Was your desire to work in the public sector obvious to you when you were here? Or was it something that you developed as you were starting your career?
DT: I guess “yes” isn’t an answer, but it kind of is. Yes, I was. I was super interested in public service through a series of jobs, but I have to say it was a work study job I had when I was at the Harris School that really kind of sealed the deal for me. I worked for the Chicago Park District for two years, and the breadth of the services that were done within an organization of that scale, and then just the beauty of that service we’re delivering—I mean, it’s kind of hard to be mad at a park, right? But you’d be surprised.
I got to work on a program specifically around the reconstruction of the Chicago shoreline of Lake Michigan, doing the necessary economic analysis to support the expenditure of federal funds. It was a study we had to present to the Army Corps of Engineers. After I graduated, I did something called the Presidential Management Internship where I got to work at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). My second year at OMB, I worked in the Army Corps of Engineers, and my own report landed on my desk (laughs). I had to hand it to some other person to do the review of it, but it was fascinating to see something come all the way around the horn like that.
CM: You mentioned the OMB. I know you’ve filled many different roles in the public sector. The Transportation Department, the Treasury Department—
DT: I do have difficulty keeping a job (laughs).
CM: Well, I was going to ask what it’s been like to be able to see such a wide variety of processes happening. What stayed constant for you?
DT: That’s a really great question. Part of the excitement about public service is that there is so much interesting work to be done. There are many opportunities to move around within it, to come to places where there were problems, and to try to be part of the solution. It’s fun. You can work with great teams and smart people.
There’s this impression about the soul of people who work in government that I would say is mainly developed by people who haven’t worked in government and don’t actually have those experiences. There’s a reason that people devote whole careers to public service: because it is incredibly satisfying. That was something I learned pretty early on, that there were so many different interesting areas of inquiry.
It was fun to be able to take a common set of tools from one [job] to the next, some of which I learned in programs like the Harris School, some through experience, and some through having really brilliant mentors and people who I held in high regard and attempted to emulate. My boss at the Chicago Park District was a brilliant man by the name of Ed Uhlir, who we lost a few years ago. He was the brains, the passion, and the motivation behind Millennium Park. This idea that you could be part of something that we leave behind, a legacy that for many generations people would benefit from, was super appealing, right? How do you have an impact in the short amount of time you have?
CM: And because of how many roles you filled in the time that you’ve spent in government, one might call you a DC veteran, or maybe an insider—
DT: Are you calling me a swamp dweller? (laughs)
CM: Well, in an age where the general public hears a lot about “draining the swamp” and bringing outsiders in, what can you say about the virtues of someone who’s well-established and has experience in government?
DT: So is DC a swamp? Well, most of our major urban areas are built adjacent to a water body, so there’s going to be some natural tendency for the soil to be a little damp. The swamp references are really designed to create a negative impression of the people working there, so let’s put that aside and realize that that’s politics, if I’m being generous, or [an] ad hominem [attack] if I’m being less so.
Are there values of people who haven’t had a lot of experience coming in and bringing different experiences into things? Absolutely. That’s why Teddy Roosevelt was so passionate about creating the civil service. I think we have to realize that our whole democracy is kind of like a maglev train, you know? Attraction and repulsion are pushing this thing down the track. It only begins to fall apart if we over rotate towards one of the poles.
What I’m really troubled by is the weaponization of the term “bureaucrat” or the weaponization of experience to diminish the skills and abilities of those people who really have devoted themselves to the largest and most complex organization that human beings have ever created: the U.S. Federal Government. So, I do think that there’s an actual skill set that you develop over time.
Now, can people become ossified or paralyzed in doing that work? I’ve observed that behavior a lot. There’s a lot of disincentives around innovation, in part because if you’re a public servant, the closest thing to the Oscars is something called the Service to America medals. I’m guessing that almost everyone who reads this will never have heard of them. I encourage them to Google it. So, there’s very, very little in the way of reward.
And then there’s all kinds of interesting risks associated with failure for the government, from Inspector General reports to congressional hearings. In some cases, the activity could even cross the line into criminal prosecution. We have criminalized certain mistakes because sometimes those mistakes were intentional and therefore were criminal. But it scares people, and then you’re like, well, what’s in it for me to take that [risk]?
I think one of the things we need to do is find out ways to more safely allow innovation to happen in this space. I think we need to incorporate more ideas from different places, and we should do it all with a sense of respect for those people who have devoted their careers, or portions of or their careers, to serving the public.
CM: You’re speaking at a Center for Effective Government event tomorrow, where you and a few colleagues are going to be talking about the state of the American bureaucracy. At least in some of the promotional stuff I’ve seen, you all will be talking about proposed federal workforce cuts that have been made by a few high-profile presidential candidates.
DT: Well, that won’t exactly be the thrust of the conversation. The conversation is a little bit more technical, but it should still be very appealing to your average University of Chicago student. Which is, how do you apply data and research to better deliver services? And does improving service increase trust in government, and therefore increase people’s engagement in democracy?
There’s the notion that we just have to clear the decks and the shallow swamp dwellers, and that kind of broad-brush description of what’s happening is frankly lazy. It’s not deeply aware of the complexity of the systems and it’s not completely aware of the law, regulation, and policy in which these systems operate. If people really, really, really wanted to make a difference and change the way government service was delivered, they would actually spend some time learning about how the systems work.
CM: I wanted to talk a little bit more about the idea of effective government with you. You sit on the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service, which is normally made up of 11 governors, but there’s currently two vacant seats. What kind of government, effective or ineffective, would you say this is an example of given how important of an institution the Postal Service is?
DT: Yeah, I think that’s a really great question. It’s a matter, for the administration, of priority. And also the ability to get things through the Senate. But right now, I would say that the work of the Board of Governors has not been hampered yet. We still have seven presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed members, and then the two ex officio members, the Postmaster and the Deputy Postmaster.
I do think that if we start slipping below that seven, it gets problematic. We’d start having trouble getting committee chairs. I’m now the chairman of the audit and finance committee, but I think it’s because they ran out of other people to choose. It’s all about, what is the cost to deliver effective government when there are these drags on the ability of an administration to fill those positions? That’s probably a great question for the people in the political science or history departments.
CM: Right, especially when you’re talking about the Postal Service. I know they were surrounded with some controversy back in 2020. There’s been more eyes on it since then than I would say have been on it for years and years before.
DT: Yeah. Now I’m on the board and no one cares (laughs). We were just having a conversation about those big services that the federal government provides. People are rightfully asking the question, “well, what is the future of the Postal Service? You know, when was the last time you mailed a letter?” You don’t have to answer that, I’m not interviewing you (laughs). But at the same time, you know, that’s a 200 plus year investment in infrastructure that we have to be really careful with before we just throw it in the dustbin. I think the big questions are, how do we not waste the legacy of those who came before us, and are there ways that we can reposition it and reuse it?
CM: Let’s touch on the Emerson Collective and your role as Managing Director. What does that entail, and how does that fit in with the trajectory of your career at this point?
DT: I’m one of several managing directors at the Emerson Collective, and my work is tied in part to this work here on effective government and being on the board of the Partnership for Public Service. My primary work is place-based, where we’re exploring ideas of equitable community development. And in many ways, I see it as an extension of all this different work—both the work I did within government and the work I did outside of government with a real estate private equity firm.
There have been experiences I’ve had around real estate and economic development where we ask questions about whether there are ways to allow people to participate in economic development that aligns the interests of the community with the interest of the developer. You see it with the Obama Library here, right? There are reasonable questions being asked in the community like, “wait a minute, what happens to our rent if this thing really takes off?” It’s about creating value so people can afford to stay, but also valuing what they offer so that we aren’t just erasing the culture.
And then for style points, to make it even more complicated, doing it in a way that is planetarily regenerative. Can you use regenerative building materials? Can you create job opportunities with sustainable or economic ecologically regenerative approaches? And are there ways that this becomes a self-supporting cycle of benefit? Everything I’ve done so far, I’m trying to put it to the test here. But most importantly, I’m doing it with really brilliant people in the community, being patient and humble and actively engaging with and listening to great team members, great community members, and great experts.
