Daily Times

We can have no effective understanding of public administration unless we keep in mind the wide range of considerations relevant to the administrator’s behaviour. Each administrative situation is unique, suggesting an innovative and creative approach, and the importance of analytical skills to seek solutions appropriate to ever-changing scenarios. Effective bureaucracy immediately responds to the issues, mainly of performance. Good governance means performance and upgrading the equality of administration.

Input-output analysis is a good guide to determine the direction of government programs to keep track of what actually happens to the people they are serving. If that is built in from the beginning, it becomes easy to dispense with a lot of red tapes. The results-oriented government needs to focus on funding outcomes, not inputs. Politicians and bureaucrats have to be clear about the mission, objectives and policy guidelines. Performance measures are essential to bringing quality, competition and cost reduction.

The traditional bureaucratic approach has to be replaced by a new system. Studies show that government departments pay little attention to outcomes. It does not matter how well the children do in one school versus another, or how many poor people get off welfare into stable jobs, or how much the crime rate falls or how secure the public feels.

Entrepreneurial governments seek to change these rewards and incentives. Public enterprises know that when institutions are funded according to inputs, they have little reason to strive for better performance. Entrepreneurial institutions avoid creating an environment or work culture that helps employees assiduously protect their jobs and build their empires, pursuing large budgets, large staff and more authority. But when they are funded according to outcomes, they become obsessive about performance. Because they do not measure results, bureaucratic governments rarely achieve them.

Public policy and governance are the prime movers of development and the true characteristics of society.

Current bureaucratic structures are confronted with basic and irreversible changes. New problems require more organisational structures in which creativity, flexibility and efficiency are underlined and the client or the audience essentially constitutes one of the final and most important orientations. Service orientation has to be focused on the rule of the situation. And that how the organizational culture is being changed

If the substantive decisions, i.e. decisions on programme, are arrived at by the wise and informed use of the resources of administration and by an intelligent appreciation of the political environment, they are far more likely to be sound than if they are arrived at in hit-or-miss or doctrinaire fashion. A realisation of the nature of public administration leads to a clarification of objectives and a more sophisticated approach to those objectives amid pressures generated by society. For both professional students and lay citizens who seek to understand why government officials behave as they do and to learn how to judge their decisions, the same general conclusions apply.

People complain about the government. Some question its very justification for being. We match it against an ideal. We look to government officials for qualities that we do not forcefully demand of others, including those with whom the government does important business. All we can and do ask public administrators is that they use foresight, decency and intelligence in reaching their decisions. Decisions need to be in line with public policy and the norms of good governance.

For public enterprises, the government itself is accountable and has to make sure that public enterprises are operated effectively and efficiently in line with public policy, principles of good governance and innovative techniques and methods. The trend should be toward reinventing and re-engineering rather than privatisation. The government has to make sure that there are no contradictions within and between public policy. An enabling culture has to be created to give meaning to public policy and the system of governance with strong merit orientation, capacity building and the will to serve the people to satisfy their needs.

Public policy and governance are the prime movers of development in various sectors of the economy and the characteristics of society. An integrated approach is needed to make the best use of resources and to improve the delivery systems to the satisfaction of the people. Effective and efficient service delivery depends on the organisation of civil services in a country, particularly on training policies that help in capacity-building and morale-boosting. Rationalising the system of recruitment, career and training, and enlightening and proper orientation of politicians are all necessary to overcome problems of governance that often crop up because of lack of merit orientation, personal idiosyncrasies and corruption. There has to be a proper system to check and prevent distasteful behaviours of politicians as well as civil servants whose indifference is often detrimental and frustrating for their junior colleagues.

The writer is former Director (National Institute of Public Administration); a political analyst; a public policy expert and a published author.