Giving frontline staff the power to make exceptions—and improve outcomes

April 10, 2025

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Cities deliver social services according to rules—for good reason. Regulations help ensure fairness, prevent misuse, and make complex systems manageable. But rules alone can’t account for the complexity of people’s lives. When residents face extraordinary challenges, applying standard solutions doesn’t always work—and sometimes makes things worse.

That’s where the Breakthrough Method comes in. Developed in the Netherlands and now used in nearly 100 municipalities, it gives civil servants the tools—and the legal grounding—to make thoughtful, creative exceptions for residents in need. Rather than bending the rules, it helps frontline civil servants work differently within them, unlocking better outcomes and greater trust in government.

At Bloomberg Philanthropies, a central part of our work is helping cities move away from rigid, one-size-fits-all systems—and instead give frontline staff the flexibility to use their judgment where it truly matters. As Beth Blauer, the vice president for public impact initiatives at Johns Hopkins University who founded the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence explains, “When we work with cities across the world to, for example, increase their data capabilities, one of our objectives is to help frontline civil servants make better decisions that are more responsive to residents’ concerns. That means providing those same civil servants with the discretion to provide what people truly need—even if it breaks from the norm.”

Here’s a closer look at how the Breakthrough Method works, and why it offers powerful lessons for cities everywhere.

Trusting frontline civil servants to break from the norm.

The most radical shift the Breakthrough Method proposes is a simple one: It trusts civil servants to deviate from norms without putting their jobs at risk.

City employees trained in the method, which was developed by a think tank called the Institute for Public Values, identify residents whose needs extend beyond the scope of typical service offerings, from housing support to addiction treatment and more. These civil servants craft individualized support plans to help those residents turn their lives around—plans that include actions that might look like rule-bending but are in fact well-grounded in existing law.

For example, a single mother might already be familiar to a civil servant at the local homelessness agency because she’s previously sought help and her situation hasn’t been easily resolved through standard channels. A closer look at her circumstances, as the Breakthrough Method encourages, might reveal that, while she now has stable housing, she continues to face a range of challenges—including mental health, addiction, and childcare. Instead of referring her separately to multiple agencies, a case worker might co-create a more holistic support plan. That plan could include something unexpected—but practical—like a cargo e-bike to help this resident better manage her daily responsibilities.

It’s the kind of exception that, at first, might seem to challenge nearly every standard rule. Yet it could help the woman make progress with her mental health, provide transportation to addiction treatment, and help her get her children to daycare and school. In the long run, it could even save the city money—by helping her stabilize her life. And it all starts with putting a civil servant in a position to use greater discretion for the public good.

Being flexible while staying grounded in the law.

Many municipalities already have procedures for making routine exceptions to their rules, waiving court fees for those who can’t afford them, for example. What they typically don’t have—and what the Breakthrough Method calls for—are pathways to providing non-standard, individualized services that might not be appropriate for the majority of people but can make a world of difference for individuals facing layered, complex challenges.

In cities employing this approach, residents can request Breakthrough support themselves or can be referred by a local official or healthcare provider. But typically, it’s frontline civil servants trained in the method who identify residents as candidates. Whatever a resident’s journey to this point, city staff then work with them to both create a customized support plan and to signal to colleagues throughout city hall that this is a resident who might benefit from exception-making services.

The typical support plan includes a detailed rundown of the resident’s circumstances. This means everything from basic demographic information to a timeline of recent events in their life. But each plan also has detailed references to the laws or other local rules that permit the new—unorthodox—solution. In doing so, the Breakthrough Method gives civil servants the tools and confidence to act decisively within the system, but guided by a deeper understanding of individual need.

Which is to say the Breakthrough Method doesn’t require that cities upend how they do business or that they add new staff. Instead, it reveals just how much is already possible under current regulations—when those rules are interpreted through the lens of purpose, not just precedent. “That’s the beauty of it,” Giulio Quaggiotto, a public-sector innovation expert at the MBR Center for Government Innovation in Dubai who recently hosted the team behind this approach, explains. “In many cases, you don’t need to change regulations.”

Embedding cost-benefit analysis in personalized service delivery.

Another essential component of every resident support plan created with the Breakthrough Method is a cost-benefit analysis. This shows how the intervention—however unconventional—could lead to long-term savings by preventing crises, reducing service use in the future, and improving quality of life in measurable ways. Often, the plan singles out one problem in the individual’s life—in the above example, the lack of transportation—that is a top priority and that civil servants believe could hold the key to turning their larger situation around.

The plans reframe exceptions not as special favors, but as strategic investments. As researcher Friso Landstra of the Institute for Public Values explains: “It’s within the law, is a smart investment, and it saves a lot of money. And, more importantly, people get the help they need.”

So far, the returns are promising. For example, a 2020 study by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences found that 81 percent of those sampled in an effort by the municipality of The Hague employing the method reported improved quality of life. An analysis by the accounting firm Ernst & Young also indicated that the approach can produce significant savings.

Challenging institutional caution to improve outcomes.

Even cities that aren’t ready to adopt the Breakthrough Method can take inspiration from its insights. Chief among them: the importance of distinguishing between rules and norms. Civil servants often default to a standard set of services—not because rules require it, but because organizational culture reinforces it. As Blauer—who once served as a juvenile probation officer herself—argues, the opportunities when cities get more creative with frontline service delivery are virtually limitless.

“Let’s identify the people who are most at risk, and then let's get aggressively collaborative around those folks and see whether or not we can improve their lives,” she says. “And if those practices work, then we now have a model for it to expand across all the ways in which we meet people's needs through city services.”

For example, cities are already experimenting with new ways of spending. Direct, no-strings-attached cash assistance—once seen as unconventional—has recently been tested in more than 100 U.S. municipalities. Early evidence suggests it can be transformative. In the Netherlands, cities using the Breakthrough Method often include direct cash support in their personalized plans, drawing on small pools of discretionary funding.

Ultimately, when cities take the time to not just reimagine solutions but reimagine the bureaucracy that delivers them, they do more than improve resident outcomes. They showcase the potential of what resource-constrained local government can achieve.

As Blauer explains, the larger goal for cities is to habituate "being more creative about problem solving—and being more thoughtful about the ways in which we are touching peoples’ lives.”