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IPMN
Newsletter 1999 |
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Dear
IPMNers Our
network community is growing. The membership database which can
be found at / holds 360 records. Many of our members
have research or teaching contacts and use the IPMN as a basis for
their international activities. One example is a group of researchers
organised by a German group (IPMN members Frieder Naschold, Christoph
Reichard, Werner Jann) who did a study about Central Government
Reforms in seven countries: USA, Sweden, Denmark, UK, Germany, New
Zealand, and Switzerland. Others are hosting visiting research fellows.
The IPMN turns out to be a great platform for international contacts
of any kind. Let's go on like this! Short
time before the new millennium starts, two of our IPMN member colleagues
report about the latest developments in their respective countries.
That's exactly what our network wants: have as many people as possible
contribute to our joint knowledge about the international perspectives
on public management. The countries have been selected by coincidence,
and we are certain that many other interesting reports could be
on the way. Please feel free to send me your own country's report,
and we will add it to the next newsletter! Mexico ********* MEXICAN
MANAGERIAL REFORM: AND OVERVIEW AND FUTURE STEPS
The
administration of President Zedillo has launched an important project
of administrative reform, perhaps the most (at least formally) ambitious
and integral ever: the "Program for the Public Administration
Modernization 1995-2000" (1996). This
program inaugurates long forgotten words in the Mexican public sector:
accountability, citizen rights, information rights, and evaluation.
After a diagnostic, the program proposes two objectives:
The
program proposes four different sub-programs: Citizen Participation
and Service, Administrative Decentralization, Evaluation and Measurement
of Public Management, and Professionalization and Ethics of Public
Officers. Civil
Service: the subprogram for the Professionalization and Ethic of
Public Service enunciates along waited mechanism for the implementation
of a public service career in Mexico. However, the program is still
very general, inducing all public agencies to define their procedures
for hiring and developing their human resources. Now is 1999, and
still diverse parts of government have been incapable of agreeing
in some way to propose a program for civil service. In
addition to these elements, in 1997 a new program for budgeting
began to be implemented. Taking the ministry of Treasury as a base,
budget is going to be defined among public organizations through
a definition of outcomes and outputs. These outputs and outcomes
are going to be the principal elements (through the creation of
indicators of performance) to be considered in the future for the
definition of budget levels of different public organizations. It
is expected for next year that the System of Performance Evaluation
would be implemented within a sample of public organizations. DAVID
ARELLANO GAULTArellano@dis1.cide.mx Finland ********* 1999
Developments of Public Management in Finland
The
Government's resolution on governance and public management (April)
spelled out the main principles for the future: high-quality services,
good governance, and responsible civil society. The main guideline
for the future public management is the differentiation between
three state functions: (1) core functions based on classical administrative
values, (2) public business functions based on business values,
and (3) public service functions based on service values. Political
governance is to vary according to these three sets of values. As
in the three previous Governments, also the new Government appointed
in the spring 1999 has a special ministerial working group responsible
for steering of public management reforms. The ongoing EU presidency
has weakened the priority of developing public management to some
extent. One of the most important ongoing projects concentrates
on the possible reform of the structure of central government. It
includes a survey to ministries, and an international task force
(Guy B. Peters, IPMN member Geert Bouckaert, Derry Ormond) set up
for the comparative analysis of the relevant developments in other
countries. Other projects cover several themes like
In
addition to this, civil service ethics is being empirically studied
by a survey to state agencies, and the experiences of agency boards
with the representatives of ministries and other external organizations
are being assessed by a survey to all the boards. The legislation
and administrative procedures related to electronic transactions
with public agencies, electronic documents and electronic signature
as well as ID card and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) are being
completed. After that citizens may apply for an electronic ID card
and use it for officially binding transactions with government,
provided that they have an access to Internet and that the agencies
have customer service solutions based on generic PKI services. 1.12.
onwards the salaries of all the public servants have been public
- and published by the media. Right now there is public discussion
on how the State and municipalities will be able to compete with
the private sector about new employees with high-level competencies
when the major retiring effect of public service personnel begins
to strengthen in first ten years of the new millennium. As in many
other western countries, the higher salaries of the public sector
tend to be lower than in the private sector, while the lower salaries
are quite competitive.
In the name of the IPMN coordinating team, I wish all of you a Happy
New Millennium! Kuno
Schedler University of St. Gallen |
