revised
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW
PRESENTED BY
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Public administrators often fulfill administrative roles providing information to clients, and overseeing and implementing various programs for organizations.
They are often responsible for directing and advising organization employees like researchers, program officers and consultants.
They might also evaluate programs and services within an organization, as well as implement changes to public policy initiatives.
INTRODUCTION
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Public administrators should be ready to shift jobs when opportunities arise. As a public administrator, you can work as a government policy analyst, public relations manager or regional planner. You could also work in nonprofit organizations. Public administrators perform various roles depending on the organization. Public administrators often need at least a bachelor's degree, but many also earn master's degrees in public administration. The creation of public administration (PA) is a research subject worldwide, considering its significance in solving issues of governance in contemporary society. (Kovac & Jukic 2016) Public administration consists of getting the work of the government done by coordinating the efforts of the people so that they can work together to accomplish their set tasks…managing, directing, and supervising the activities of thousands, even millions of workers so that some order and efficiency may result from their efforts.
OVERVIEW OF THE IMPORTANCE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Community Development
Sustainability
Environmental Management
Leadership
Crisis Management
Public Safety
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Public administrators support and network between stakeholders, allowing them to address the details that improve a community (economics, housing, social and medical services). Public administrators facilitate activity by creating networks within multi-organizational partnerships. The concept of Community Development (CD) originated in the late nineteenth century and can be traced to the social reform movement in Britain and North America towards the end of eighteenth century. In earlier stage the main focus of CD was on poverty alleviation but later on it concentrated much more on the people. This concentration resulted to focus more on the capacity building and empowerment of local community in order to bring socio-economic, political and environmental changes to them. (Nader 2016)
Sustainable development is the process of meeting society’s current needs without compromising future generations’ ability to do the same; this means promoting economic development that does not deplete natural resources. As part of this effort, public administrators oversee the stewardship of lands, urban infrastructures, healthcare delivery methods, and many other complicated systems, ensuring their efficiency and stability.
Public administrators are tasked with protecting the interests of the average citizen, and as the population has become increasingly concerned with the harmful effects of climate change, public administrators have begun orchestrating policies related to environmental management. Environmentalists, small businesses, corporations, and the average worker all have ideas as to how the environment and natural resources should be used and maintained, and federal, state and local governments are caught in the middle of that argument.
The public administrator’s role in leadership—especially governmental and political leadership—is expanding rapidly. The daily functions of government are performed by the public administrators who organize, implement and oversee the enforcing agencies that administer the laws and regulations that keep public life in motion.
Though government leaders and public administrators would prefer to avoid crises entirely, they must possess the ability to predict and plan for potential catastrophes in the event that they come to fruition. In the midst of a crisis, efficiency and accountability can mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people. Time is of the essence in a crisis, and public administrators need to have the organizational skills and knowledge to deploy necessary aid rapidly, safely and efficiently.
Public administrators play a crucial role in aiding federal agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Transportation Security Administration. On a local level, public administrators organize efforts to improve communications and share data between public safety services.
MODERN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
CURRENT PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION CHALLENGES
Lack of improvement of the innovational-technical potential of the economy
Poor quality of public decision-making;
Lack of effective policies, taking into account the proportionate interests of both public and private entities
The poor development of informational and analytical factors of managerial decisions is one of the most vulnerable parts of the implementation of the state policy as it subsequently leads to miscalculations and errors in the implementation of socio-economic policies. Decisions at the local level often do not reflect the real needs of the population's majority as they are adopted in the interests of a small social group, which controls almost all national resources. Such decisions lead to a continuous growth of social disparities, not only domestically but also internationally.
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CURRENT PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION CHALLENGES
Insufficient number of competitive businesses in the innovation field.
Poor personnel training of public managers.
Lack of modern mechanism of coordination in the property management.
The biggest obstacle in the development of effective public administration is a lack of flexible mechanisms to resolve conflicts between private and public interests. Indeed, the character of management action, exerted by the management subject on management object, becomes essential in the course of implementation of a public nature of governance. Thus, public administration becomes the result of a kind of social contract, according to which state powers are transferred to government institutions, and the people are the source of these powers, which automatically makes the public administration the most important sort of governance on the national scale. Public organizations, citizens and other public institutions in the field of public administration are subjects of this type of governance. They are actively involved in the administrative decision-making and decision implementation due to the existence of developed feedback.
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CHALLENGES FACING FUTURE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATORS
Corruption in Government
The Rise of New Technologies
Citizen Participation
Racial Discrimination
As populations continue to increase globally, issues within public administration will likely develop and persist enough to create discussion. The question is whether it will specifically address all significant issues. Implementing government policy in a world of increasing demand and finite resources will pose a problem for governments to deal with in the coming decades.
It is time for public administrators to come together and analyze the fundamental problems within the field with the mindset that old practices will not work going forward. Thus, looking for solutions should not come from traditional, but rather, unconventional sources. The problem is not unique and it requires thinking out-of-the-box.
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Corruption in Government
As legislators who commit fraud or governments who alienate citizens find ways to continue their illicit activities, public administrators must develop newer countermeasures that ensure accountability.
Corruption demoralises government and weakens the whole endeavour of policy formulation and its implementation. It diminishes services and causes fiscal stress, but most of all it undermines trust and corrodes legitimate community expectations. Corruption takes many forms and is found in many contexts. (Graycar 2015) Reform is required to fix this problem. One such reform is the disclosure of budget information, which prevents waste and misappropriation of resources. For example, Transparency International Sri Lanka promotes transparent and participatory budgeting by training local communities to comment on the proposed budgets of their local government. Fighting corruption requires careful analyses of its underlying causes and consequences. (Soreide 2015)
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Citizen Participation
Engagement in a democracy is very difficult, consider the rise of empathy toward elections that seem rigged.
One way to get more diversity in government and to promote social equity in decision-making concerns citizen involvement.
Instead of talking down to citizens, we should be listening to the public. Public administrators bring complex issues to the attention of the public. They use public meetings to create discussions, can even delegate research and policy recommendations to a local body that is close to the issue, and then meet to make a decision based upon the recommendations of that body. Citizen involvement helps ensure that public managers do their best to make decisions in the best interest of their constituents. Citizen participation is a process which provides private individuals an opportunity to influence public decisions and has long been a component of the democratic decision-making process. Public involvement is means to ensure that citizens have a direct voice in public decisions. The terms "citizen" and "public," and "involvement" and "participation" are often used interchangeably. While both are generally used to indicate a process through which citizens have a voice in public policy decisions, both have distinctively different meanings and convey little insight into the process they seek to describe.
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Racial Discrimination
A persistent problem, discrimination based on race does occur. With the ever growing populations of our world, governments must modernize their policies to avoid prejudice and implicit bias.
Public administrators have the obligation to protect minorities from abuse by others. This includes law enforcement. Agencies must improve on their training methods and remove techniques that promote implicit bias toward minorities. Body cameras have ensured accountability by forcing police officers to perform their duties without misconduct. Administrators must work hard to prevent unequal wealth distribution, as certain legislators favor economic policies that benefit the wealthy. This has to do with recognizing when people with substantial means, perhaps through wealth and/or education, get public agencies to make decisions that benefit the few, often at the expense of many others. Public services are often provided in markets where both public and private providers operate. Irrespective of ownership status, public services ought to be accessible regardless of clients' race, gender, ethnicity, or age. However, as theories of statistical discrimination and cream skimming suggest, market-based incentives may lead service providers to focus on non-minority clients because they perceive them as easier-to-serve and therefore less costly. This may lead to discrimination and hence jeopardizes equal access. (Jilke et al 2018)
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COLLECTION OF REGULATORY DATA
Regulations are instruments of legislative power and have the force of law.
They carry out the intent of corresponding Acts which set out requirements that businesses must adhere to.
Regulations are necessary to protect the health, safety and security of individual consumers and the environment as well as to support commerce within a country.
The regulators of today must balance the work of application processing, inspections, and liaising with stakeholders while ensuring that regulations are updated to reduce burden on businesses. They must manage this in the face of ever-changing socio-economic realities, explosive technological and scientific advancement, and changing industry practices. With mounting external pressure and complex internal processes, regulators find it increasingly difficult to distribute resources to best serve the public.
The same technologies that are today challenging traditional regulations can also offer many opportunities to reinvent the regulatory process. Technologies which are becoming more widely available today can help regulators do faster regulatory review, automate repetitive tasks, and make faster decisions. In the process of regulatory modernization, artificial intelligence and advanced analytics can play a key role in organizing data and automatically delivering intelligent insights by identifying relationships between regulations and external data, speeding up the process of exploration and review.
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WAYS TO NAVIGATE THE POLITICS OF CHANGE
Map the political landscape.
Understand magnet and fear factors.
Identify which groups are potential supporters and promoters, which are more likely to be skeptical, and which will be most difficult to convince.
Within these groups, which individuals are the opinion leaders? These key influencers have the resources, skills or social networks needed to win over the hearts and minds in the larger group. To find influencers in each group, look for the go-to people whose opinions can sway others. They may have formal power, or their pull may stem from their expertise or their networks. Although the thought of “politics” may make you groan, do not think of politics as a dirty word or something to be avoided by project managers. Think of politics as “slang” describing an organizational work culture and structure. By understanding an organization’s politics and applying organizational cultural and political theories, a project manager can facilitate a project’s acceptance and ease implementation. If you are new to the organization, understanding and hooking into the political network will be necessary.
POINT 2
Do sensing interviews with people from a variety of groups and points of view. Map magnet factors things likely to excite people and pull people toward the change. Also, map fear factors that may cause resistance with potential action steps to address them.
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WAYS TO NAVIGATE THE POLITICS OF CHANGE
Engage the skeptics.
Most leaders are inclined to pay attention to the supporters and ignore or shut down skeptics.
But many may be “positive skeptics.” They believe the change has flaws that need to be addressed.
Engaging these skeptics has benefits. First, they can be catalysts to rethink different aspects of the change, make it more successful, and save your team months of rework by catching flaws early.
Second, engaging them often leads to their increased ownership and commitment. Instead of standing on the sidelines, they often become organizational leaders as the change rolls out. Finally, involving them in the process sends a powerful signal to the rest of the organization that all voices are important, alternative points of view can be heard, and constructive feedback and future efforts are welcome.
Each skeptic will have fear factors that underlie their reservations about the change. Addressing their concerns, listening to their input, opening up channels of communication and alleviating their anxiety by taking their fears seriously and developing action steps will aid the change process and minimize resistance.
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REFERENCES
Kovač, Polonca & Jukić, Tina. (2016). Development of Public Administration and its Research in Slovenia through the Lenses of Content Analysis of the International Public Administration Review. International Public Administration Review. 14. 75-114. 10.17573/ipar.2016.1.04.
Nader, Muhammad. (2016). Exploring the contribution of Community Development to the rural livelihood.
Graycar, Adam. (2015). Corruption: Classification and analysis. Policy and Society. 34. 10.1016/j.polsoc.2015.04.001.
Søreide, Tina. (2015). Corruption in State Administration. 10.13140/RG.2.1.3988.4645.
Jilke, Sebastian & Van Dooren, Wouter & Rys, Sabine. (2018). Discrimination and Administrative Burden in Public Service Markets: Does a Public-Private Difference Exist?. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. 28. 10.1093/jopart/muy009.