Imagine this: scrupulously clean, whisper soft, unfailingly punctual trains arriving to whisk orderly queues of citizens to their destination. Volunteers patrol the gleamingly modern subway cars to urge their fellow citizens to respect the rules. A 118-mile underground rail network featuring the latest technology coming in on time and on budget. No, it's not a futuristic fantasty (or Singapore), it's the Dehli Metro—an alternative universe of order, calm, and cleanliness just under the chaotic city streets of the Indian megacity of New Dehli.

The fed scraps red tape—at least for its own workers. The U.S. federal government's Office of Personnel Management is taking a page from Best Buy and other progressive companies with a pilot of an extreme flexibility program called Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE).