Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America. John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 79 JFK St., Cambridge, MA 02138

Concluding Thoughts
In making our recommendations, we are cognizant of the fact that not all of them will be easy to
implement successfully. Policy recommendations always have hidden costs and unanticipated
consequences. Therefore, the goal becomes to craft recommendations whose benefits outweigh
the costs and to anticipate as best as is humanly possible the perverse effects that might flow from
well-meaning reforms.
It is an especially fruitful time for political and governmental reforms, but it is a challenging time,
as well. The major challenge facing reformers stems from the lightning-fast evolution of
communications technology. The Internet, a seldom-used curiosity when Bill Clinton was elected
President, has become in less than a decade a powerful resource for conveying information about