This summer, I had the good fortune to attend a workshop at the Ash Center on regulatory reform, and the even more delightful experience of working with Chloe Christman, an Ash Center fellow sent to assist my work in Chicago on regulatory reform. I learned much from both.

When Mayor Emanuel approached me about regulatory reform, I had no idea that it was “a thing” on academic and political fronts. I knew, however, that Chicago’s municipal code and city regulations were old, outdated, and a problem – a problem too big to tackle while managing a city department or dealing with the day-to-day “whack-a-mole” nature of local government. Then the mayor gave me the opportunity to tackle it and introduced me to the Ash Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, where I learned that Chicago was not only part of a reform movement – but on the cutting edge of the movement!

In July, I met with others in the movement. I was struck by the unanimity of opinion that culture change was our biggest obstacle. Having spent the last several years as a change agent in Chicago under Mayor Emanuel, I agreed whole-heartedly. But where I differed was in my approach to how to make change happen. I do not believe that you can change the average government worker. And that’s a good thing. Let me explain why.

In 2006, when I first stepped foot into an operational department at the City of Chicago, I immediately started to work on changing things. A “40-years-on-the-job” city employee took pity on me and gave me some advice. I will never forget what she said to me: “Rosemary, I know you mean well. But you’ll be gone in a few years, and the rest of us will still be here. And when your replacement comes in, they’ll have new ideas and want to change everything too. In the meantime, we have a department to run.”

This same concept was echoed by a remark that Robinson Hernandez, Deputy Commissioner, NYC Business Acceleration team mentioned at our gathering in July. In discussing his experience in New York, he said sometimes he got the feeling that “they” were all just waiting for his team to go away so they could go back to doing things the way they used to do them.

To move forward in regulatory reform, I believe we must acknowledge two basic facts underlying the difficulty of culture change: (1) city employees are incredibly loyal and hard-working, and (2) they run the city. They interface with the public every minute of every work day. Even on the weekends, they are city employees to all of their friends and relatives. They think they know more than we reformers do – and on many levels they do.

Thus, my approach to regulatory reform does not address changing the culture within government, but instead changing the way people access government. Unlike a city worker, businesses will turn on a dime if there is more money to be made on the other side of that dime. One hears the same business complaints over and over – no matter how many roundtables you hold: “one person says one thing, another says something different;” “I need to hire someone to deal with the city; I don’t know who to call” and “I just want to run my business, I don’t have time to go online and find things.” Thus, we think the problem is with city employees and the service they provide. But Uber taught us all a very valuable lesson: if the people who deal with an industry everyday aren’t happy dealing with the industry, then give the customer another way to interact with that industry. Passengers complained often about drivers who wouldn’t take credit cards. So Uber didn’t try to change the taxi industry or the culture of taxi drivers. Instead, Uber used technology to change how people interfaced with the taxi driver—giving users what they wanted: No hassle, just service. To business, city workers and city regulations are a hassle that they don’t want to experience. But just like the taxi passenger who must deal with the taxi driver to get to a destination, businesses need to deal with local government to get what they need: a license, a permit, etc.

My approach to regulatory reform does not address changing the culture within government, but instead changing the way people access government.

The three major regulatory reform undertakings in Chicago are compilations of three areas of the municipal code: (1) Fines and Penalties; (2) Costs and Fees; and (3) Rules & Regulations. Each of these endeavors has been discussed with businesses during various roundtables and has been enthusiastically received by the business community. By indexing and setting forth in one place these three areas of regulation, businesses will be able to see what the City has to offer and what it regulates – without having to hire someone to tell them and without having to interact personally with a government worker.

This seems so rudimentary, but currently Chicago’s regulations, like most cities’ regulations, are sprinkled throughout several City departments. To find something, you need to know what department regulates it, and then navigate through that department’s website.

You also need to know the “proper name” of what you are looking for. What you call something matters to a city employee. You call it a “newspaper stand” and the department of transportation regulates it. You call it a “kiosk” and the department of business affairs and consumer protection regulates it. You call it a “newspaper kiosk” and you’ll play ping-pong between departments until somebody screams.

Create compilations that cut across departments and treat the city as one city – not a collection of departmental silos– and you have taken one major step forward in regulatory reform. Provide business with a glossary so they learn “city speak”, they’ll no longer need to hire someone to translate for them. Index what a city regulates by business activity and purpose, you no longer have to search online to find it – you simply hyperlink from the compilation to the information you need.

No hassles, just “self-service.”