Obama Aide says Government Not Good at Finding New Ways to Treat Social Problems

In a recent speech, Sonal Shah, head of the White House's Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, said "It's hard to take risks when you have 535 board members," and "that resistance to cultural changes and legal constraints made it hard for government to be agile and try new approaches to finding and financing the most effective and innovative nonprofit groups."  So, she "urged foundations to take greater risks...to figure out what ideas were worth government investing in," according to a column at Philanthropy.com.

In review, Obama created a new "Office of Social Innovation."  The first lesson that the head of this new office learns is that government is a terrible way to achieve social innovation - they are not good at identifying good ideas, and not good at generating new ideas.

Instead of creating a new office that apparently has no function but to provide a few more government jobs, why didn't Obama just give some speeches about Americans donating more to their favorite charities, or volunteering?  Does the government really need to be more involved in channeling tax money into charities of their choice?