Kenneth Kernaghan

The Post-Bureaucratic Organization and Public Service Values1

Recent public sector reforms, especially those associated with the new public management ( npm) movement, have increased concern about the state of public service values. This concern has arisen in large part because some advocates of public sector reform pay little or no attention to values and others focus narrowly on the application of private sector values to the public sector. However, a growing number of reform advocates are seeking to reconcile traditional public service values with ‘new’ values arising from new approaches to organizing and managing public organizations, including approaches based on private sector experience. This paper, in its examination of the implications of these new approaches for public service values, makes three major arguments. The first is that reformers should take careful and systematic account of the value implications of reforms. The second is that account should be taken not only of ethical values but of other types of values as well. The third argument is that a statement of key values (often described as a code of conduct), both for the public service as a whole and for individual public organizations, facilitates an assessment of the value consequences of reforms. The first section of this paper provides a framework for analysing public sector reforms and for comparing the extent of these reforms over time and across jurisdictional boundaries. The second section explains the growing importance of public service values and classifies them into three major categories. The third section analyses the values implications of public sector reforms, and the final section draws learning points from this analysis, with particular reference to issues of public service ethics. This paper is in part a response to the recent call by Montgomery Van Wart (1998: xix) for contributions to the creation of a field of public administration values.

Moving towards integrated public governance: improving service delivery through community engagement

Community engagement for improved citizen-centred service is an important dimension of Integrated Service Delivery (ISD), which is in turn a central component of the movement towards Integrated Public Governance. The experience of such organizations as Centrelink and Service Canada can inform thinking and action on the community engagement activities of ISD organizations in general. Most of these organizations are at an early stage in the use of innovative approaches to community engagement, but many of them are well positioned to use their physical presence in local offices across their jurisdiction to enhance service delivery. This article examines eight ISD organizations in four countries as a basis for discussing such matters as the benefits and challenges of community engagement, the nature of the engagement, and the means by which these organizations have fostered it. For ISD organizations to leverage their community presence, they must collaborate with a wide variety of community stakeholders. Points for practitioners Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) organizations can leverage their physical presence in local communities to improve service for individual citizens. This community engagement activity can take the form of partnerships, consultations and contracts. The corporate level can support community engagement through administrative structures and processes and through training opportunities and learning tools. Each local office needs an appropriate measure of discretion and flexibility to adapt its engagement activities to the communitys particular challenges and resources. The movement in public management towards Integrated Public Governance and the anticipated increase in the delivery of government services by private and third sector organizations point to the need for collaborative community engagement. There are significant barriers as well as benefits associated with the community engagement activities of ISD organizations.

Moving towards the virtual state: integrating services and service channels for citizen-centred delivery

Governments around the world are increasingly seeking to provide integrated, citizen-centred service delivery. The aim is to organize the delivery of services from the perspective of citizens rather than of governments and to deliver these services seamlessly across governments and across the delivery channels of the internet, the telephone and the service-counter. The four major categories of barriers to integrated service delivery are political/legal, structural, operational/managerial and cultural ones. The means of overcoming these barriers include such approaches as creating new service delivery models, perfecting partnerships, establishing an effective governance framework and providing dedicated funding. There are similar barriers — and similar solutions — to the challenge of integrated channel delivery. The challenge to integrating services and service channels becomes greater as initiatives move from the interdepartmental sphere to the interjurisdictional and intersector spheres.

Symposium on Public–Private Partnerships Revisited: Implications for Future Governance

In both developed and developing countries, the use of public–private partnerships has become a pervasive phenomenon in public administration and management. While partnerships have been around for a long time, it was not until the late 1980s that scholars paid serious attention to defining, classifying and analyzing the rapidly growing number of partnerships among public, private and not-for-profit organizations. During the 1990s and the early years of this century, public servants have devoted considerable effort to the creation and operation of partnerships and academic scholars have begun to examine the many dimensions of the partnership phenomenon, including its political, managerial, organizational, legal and ethical dimensions. There is much debate among both practitioners and scholars regarding the benefits and costs of partnerships and even regarding what constitutes a genuine partnership. At the same time, new partnerships continue to be created and there are calls for even greater use of partnerships in the future, especially with respect to several aspects of electronic government (e.g. procurement of information technology, integrated service delivery). Partnering is also a central element of the current and growing emphasis in public administration on horizontal management and on ‘holistic’ governance. There is, therefore, an urgent need to examine what we have learned about the benefits and risks of governments’ involvement in partnerships. To help meet this need, the International Review of Administrative Science (IRAS) commissioned six papers on the theme of ‘Public–Private Partnerships Revisited: Implications for Future Governance’. These papers were presented at the conference of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences held in Yaoundé, Cameroon in July 2003. This symposium is the third in the Review’s program on ‘Advancing Understanding of Public Administration’. The major purpose of this program is to