Issues in Public Administration MPA 509

Issues in Public AdministrationMPA 509 New Developments in Public Administration Perspectives, Approaches & Critiques

Agenda for Today • Preview of the last Lecture • Public Administration, the way forward • Development Catalysts • Re-inventing Government • New Public Management • Principal Themes and Roots of NPM • Governance and its challenges and Outcomes • E-governance • Broader Issues of Public Administration • Quote of the Day

Public Administration, the Way Forward Public administrative culture is changing to be more flexible, innovative, Problem solving, entrepreneurial, and enterprising as opposed to rule-bound, process-oriented, and focused on inputs rather than results.

􀂉 By the final two decades of the twentieth century, a number of forces—intellectual, political, and fiscal—were making themselves felt within governments. These forces included the emergence Of large, high performance corporations, innovations undertaken to reduce national deficits, rapid technological changes, the end of the cold war, with its attendant refocusing by citizens in many nations on domestic issues, a declining faith—a “trust deficit“—in the governments, and new restrictions on public administrators that led to their seeking new ways of managing.

􀂉 These kinds of social trends resulted in an EXPLOSION OF PUBLICATIONS IN THE EARLY 1990s THAT called for a new kind of government reform. The most famous of these critiques was the national best seller “Reinventing Government: how the Entrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public Sector. (David osborn and ted gaebler, 1992)‏

1. Catalytic government: Steering rather than rowing. 2. Community owned government: Empowering rather than serving. 3. Competitive government: Injecting competition into service delivery. 4. Mission-driven government: Transforming rule-driven organizations 5. Results-oriented government: Funding outcomes, no inputs

6. Customer-driven government: Meeting the needs of the customer, not the Bureaucracy. 7. Enterprising government: Earning rather than spending. 8. Anticipatory government: Prevention rather than cure. 9. Decentralized government: From hierarchy to participation and teamwork. 10. Market-oriented government: Leveraging change through the market

􀂉 IN THE EARLY 1990's, A NEW MANAGERIAL APPROACH TO Public administration began to take hold. Like the traditional managerial approach at its inception, the new approach is reform-oriented and seeks to improve public sector performance 􀂉 􀂉 Managerialism refers to an entrepreneurial approach to public management, one that emphasizes the rights of managers to run the organization and the application of reinvigorated scientific-management techniques. THE NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT (NPM)‏

􀂉 It called for among others: Putting Customers first, making service organizations Compete, creating market dynamics, Using Market mechanisms to solve problems, Empowering employees to get results, Decentralized decision making power, Streamlining the budget process, Decentralized personnel policy, and Streamlining procurement.

􀂉 Today, the NPM is becoming the dominant managerial approach. 􀂉 Its key concept-somewhat evolutionary a decade ago- are now the standard language of public administration. 􀂉 Terms such as "results oriented", "customers focused", "employee empowerment", “entrepreneurship", and "outsourcing", have dominated the mainstream.

CHRISTOPHER HOOD (1991), NPM‘s PRINCIPAL THEMES TO INCLUDE: 􀂄 A shift away from an emphasis on policy toward an emphasis on measurable performance; 􀂄 A shift away from reliance on traditional bureaucracies toward loosely coupled, quasi-autonomous Units and competitive services; 􀂄 A shift away from an emphasis on development and Investment toward cost-cutting; 􀂄 Allowing public managers greater "freedom to manage" according to private sector corporate practice; and 􀂄 A shift away from classic command-and-control regulation toward self-regulation.

The roots of the new public management : 􀂄 Government should be entrepreneurial and improve the quality of its service. 􀂄 Government should collaborate and work with other government and the non-profit and private sectors to achieve social goals. 􀂄 Government should judge its performance with measurable result. 􀂄 Government should improve its accountability to the public interest, which should be understood in terms of law, community, and shared values. 􀂄 Government should empower citizens and public employees alike. 􀂄 Government should anticipate and solve problems. (Henry)

Toonen (2001) devised an analytical model of NPM, as: 􀂉 A business-oriented approach to government; 􀂉 A quality and performance oriented approach to public management; 􀂉 An emphasis on improved public service delivery and functional responsiveness; 􀂉 An institutional separation of public demand functions, public provision and public service production functions.

Models of community and civil society 􀂉 Citizens felt great frustration and anger that they had been pushed out of the political system by a professional political class of powerful lobbyists, politicians, campaign managers and a media elite. They saw the system as one in which votes no Longer made any difference. They saw a system with its doors closed to the average citizen (mathews, 1994). As a consequence, citizens felt alienated and Detached. How are public administrators affected by and how do they affect community and civil society?

ORGANIZATIONAL HUMANISM AND THE NEW PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 􀂉 Over the past twenty-five years, public administration theorists have joined other disciplines in suggesting that traditional hierarchical approaches to social organization are restrictive in their view of human behavior, and they have joined in a critique of bureaucracy and a search for alternative approaches to management and organization. 􀂉 Collectively, these approaches have sought to fashion public organizations less dominated by issues of authority and control and more attentive to the needs and concerns of internal and external constituents .

􀂉 Through approaches such as these, scholars hoped to build alternatives approaches to the study and practice of public administration, alternatives more sensitive to values (not just facts), to subjective human meaning (not just objective behavior), and the full range of emotions and feelings involved in relationships between and among real people. NPM

􀂉 In the twentieth century, hierarchical government bureaucracy was the predominant organizational model used to deliver public services and fulfil public policy goals. 􀂉 Public managers won acclaim by ordering those under them to accomplish highly routine, albeit professional, tasks with uniformity but without discretion. 􀂉 Today, increasingly complex societies force public officials to develop new models of governance. GOVERNANCE

GOVERNANCE 􀂉 The traditional, hierarchical model of government simply does not meet the demands of this complex, rapidly changing age. 􀂉 Rigid bureaucratic systems that operate with command-and-control procedures, narrow work restrictions, and inward-looking cultures and operational models are deemed to be particularly ill-suited to addressing problems that often transcend organizational Boundaries.

GOVERNANCE 􀂉 In many ways, twenty-first century challenges and the means of addressing them are more numerous and complex than ever before. 􀂉 Problems have become both more global and more local as power disperses and boundaries become more fluid. 􀂉 One-size-fits-all solutions have given way to customized approaches as the complicated problems of diverse and mobile populations increasingly defy simplistic solutions.

GOVERNANCE 􀂉 The hierarchical model of government persists, but its influence is steadily waning, pushed by governments' needs to solve ever more complicated problems and pulled by new tools that allow innovators to fashion creative responses. 􀂉 This push and pull is gradually producing a new model of government in which executives' core responsibilities no longer center on managing people and programs but on organizing resources, often belonging to others, to produce public value.

􀂉 Government agencies, bureaus, divisions, and offices are becoming less important as direct service providers, but more important as generators of public value. The new use of governance does not point at state actors and institutions as the only relevant institutions and actors in the authoritative allocation of values. 􀂉 They all, to some extent, focus on the role of networks, in the pursuit of common goals 􀂉 GOVERNANCE

Quote of the Day • Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. Henry Ford

The challenges 􀂉 The accountability problem presents networked government with its most difficult challenge. 􀂉 When authority and responsibility are parcelled out across the network, who is to blame when something goes wrong? How does government relinquish some control and still ensure results? Practice, Problems & Prospects

􀂉 How do network managers balance the need for accountability against the benefits of flexibility? 􀂉 Governments have traditionally tried to address most of these issues of governance and accountability through narrow audit and control mechanisms. Although such tools help, they should not constitute the greater part of an accountability regime. Additionally, traditional accountability mechanisms, which rely on process standardization, clash with the very purpose of the network: to provide a decentralized, flexible, individualized, and creative response to a public problem.

􀂉 Whereas the governance discussions in the public sectors is relatively recent, the term governance is much more common in the private sector where a debate about corporate governance has been going on for quite some time. 􀂉 Corporate governance refers to issues of control and decision-making powers within the private (corporate) organizations. CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

􀂉 'Corporate governance’ is the watchword of those who wish to improve the accountability and transparency of the actions of management, but without fundamentally altering the basic structure of firms.

􀂉 Another development is the globalization of the economy and the growing importance of transnational political institutions like the European union (EU), World Trade Organization (WTO), Association of South East Asian nations (ASEAN), and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Outcomes of Globalization 􀂉 New demands of accountability to international markets and standards may clash with the traditional lines of accountability. 􀂉 Some commentators (rhodes 1994, 1997; davis 1997) have characterised these trends as a 'Hollowing out of the state', in which the combined effects of globalization, International obligations, privatisation and reduced regulation deplete the capacity of government to shape and organise society.

Outcomes of Globalization 􀂉 Pessimist suggest that globalization means that government everywhere have become powerless and that managing globalization is impossible, since Globalization is shaped by markets, not by government. Some have suggested that this powerlessness is reinforced by the coming of the internet age –that there is no governance against the electronic herd (Friedman, 2000). 􀂉 In a nutsheel, global governance is about how to cope with problems which transcend the borders (such as air pollution, narcotics, terrorism or the exploitation of child workers) given the lack of a world government.

􀂆Question: do governments know what they are doing? Why should we trust them? 􀂆 The demand for good governance has a long history. But seldom have the forms of governance been under greater challenge. 􀂆 Dissatisfaction and disillusionment about political solutions are rife. Current issues in Public Administration

􀂆 Problem of modern governance is not so much an insufficiency of instruments relative to the changing on objectives, but rather the degree of incompatibility between objectives . 􀂆 why governance, and not merely government? 􀂆 Governance is a broader and more fundamental concept than that of government alone. 􀂆 The concern is with the links between parts of the political system as with the institutions themselves.

􀂆 􀂆 It accepts that the management of the Nation's affairs might need more than government to ensure effectiveness; it sees parties, courts and interest groups not as problems that governments must overcome but as part of the broader process. 􀂆 Governance is the exercise of political power to manage a nation's affairs (the World bank, 1992).

􀂆 The characteristics of 'good governance‘: 1) an efficient public service; 2) an independent judicial system and legal framework to enforce contracts; 3) the accountable administration of public funds; 4) an independent public auditor, responsible to a representative legislature; 5) respect for law and human rights at all levels of government; 6) a pluralistic institutional structure; and 7) a free press (rhodes 1997).

Good governance, emphesis 􀂆 The current public governance debate places a new emphasis on ‘what matters is not what we do, but how people feel about what we do’ and that ‘processes matter’ or put differently, ‘the ends do not justify the means’.

Personal ethics 􀂆 Often, personal ethics are an issue in decision making. 􀂆 The temptation to divert some of public funds or resources to personal use can be great and the risk of exposure often small. 􀂆 The main reason for the worldwide presence of public administrative corruption is that public administrators have something to allocate that other people want.

Corruption and Public Administration 􀂆 The problem of corruption is endemic to politics and to government simply because its decisions involve so much power and wealth. 􀂆 It becomes commonplace at all levels of government--in the ways contracts are awarded, jobs are created and filled, people are hired, offices are sold, favored political allies are rewarded, power is exerted, and the needs or plight of others are ignored.

Corruption and Public Administration 􀂆 The demand for government's rewards frequently exceeds the supply, and routine decision-making processes are lengthy, costly, and uncertain in their outcome. 􀂆 For these reasons, legally sanctioned decision making processes constitute a "bottleneck“ between what people want and what they get. 􀂆 The temptation to get around the bottleneck—to speed things up and make favorable decisions more probable—is built into this relationship between government and society. 􀂆 To get around the bottleneck, one must use political influence—and corruption, which by definition cuts across established and legitimate processes, is a most effective form of influence. (Michael johnston, 1982)‏

􀂆 Corruption, is a form of privileged indulgence by those in power. It concentrates power in the hands of a few who can make decisions based not on the good of the whole but on the interests of the few. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Corruption and Public Administration

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN ADEMOCRACY

New Role of Public Administration 􀂆 Above figure presents a conceptual framework that sees public administration taking the central role or stage in a broader political system. 􀂆 The model emphasizes the interrelated nature of the parts and how change in an external Environment (cultural, economic, political, social) causes change in the structures and internal processes of public administration. 􀂆 These changes, in turn, influence the outputs of the bureaucracy; that is, what goods, services, policy programs, rules, and regulations are implemented by bureaucracy.

New Role of Public Administration 􀂆 As in any system, a feedback loop develops in which the outputs affect the environment, which causes further change and often new demands from the environment to continue, increase or decrease, modify, or occasionally even cease a public policy or program.

Reinventing government 􀂆 information is a central resource for all activities. 􀂆 In pursuing the democratic/political processes, in Managing resources, executing functions, measuring performance and in service delivery, information is the basic ingredient' (isaac-henry 1997)‏ THE FUTURE OF PUBLICADMINISTRATION: E-GOVERNMENT?

􀂆 Information age reform means an increasing role for information systems In public sector change. 􀂆 Information technology (IT) can be defined as computing and telecommunication technologies that Provide automatic means of handling information. 􀂆 Information systems (IS) can be defined as systems of human and technical components that accept, store, process, output and transmit information. Reinventing government

1. Information to support internal management. This includes information about staff for personnel management, and Information about budgets and accounts for financial management. 2. Information to support public administration and regulation. This Includes information that records the details of the main 'entities' in any country People, business enterprises, buildings, land, imports/exports, etc., 3. Information to support public services. This includes education (school records), health (patient records), transport (Passenger movement information) and Public utilities (customer billing Information), Information system–Supported Reform

4. Information made publicly available 􀂄 Information government wishes to disseminate such as press releases, consultation papers, details of policies, laws, regulations, and details of benefits and entitlements; 􀂄 Information government collects that it may make available such as demographic or economic statistics; 􀂄 Information government is required to supply such as performance indicators, audited accounts, internal policy documents and correspondence, and responses to requests from citizens or journalists or politicians. (See richardheeks, Reinventing Government in the Information age, International practice in IT-enabled public sector reform, 1999). Information system–Supported Reform

Role of Information system 􀂆 The role of information technology is much wider that just public administration reform. 􀂆 E-government refers to the delivery of information and services online through the internet or other digital means. 􀂆 The e-government promises a new horizon in public administration as it will cut costs and improve efficiency; meet citizen expectations; improve citizen relationship; Enhance citizen participation in administrative processes; increase effectiveness of public control and facilitate economic development

􀂆 Information is no longer “walled in”, no longer constrained by time and space. Information is widely available to people regardless of status, position, wealth, location, race, ethnic or culture. 􀂆 Information technology gives a new impetus to democracy as it opens up and widens the way and means for popular participation in public decision making processes. Conclusion

Quote of the Day • Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Albert Einstein

Issues in Public Administration MPA 509