The Way Forward: Progress, Not Fashion

Abstract

The expression, reinventing government aims to create significant change in

administration and government structure. The culture of government along with its
process will be changed in order for government to run more efficiently and cost less
money. These goals would be accomplished by, decentralizing authority, flattening
organizational structures, and increasing managers involvement in their workplaces.
Reinventing government would also be accomplished if public managers focused on the
needs of their customers or citizens, through focusing on timeliness and quality of their
response. This idea of reinventing government was created by the U.S. National
Performance Review (NPR), which had a mission to improve the federal government and
close the trust deficit by demonstrating to citizens that their tax dollars were well
respected. There was trust restored in the late 1990s, but then taken away in the 2000s
when there was budget allocation to privileged businesses such as energy and
agribusiness, prescription drug subsidy, lack of fiscal responsibility, and the extravagant
expenditure that was higher than previous years.
While the reinventing of government appealed to developed and mature
administrations, it also attracted the attention of countries such as Mongolia, Iceland,
Nigeria, Haiti, Yemen, Canada, Argentina, and Iraq. The NPR advocates for the transfer
from the public to the private sector through privatization, outsourcing and contracting.
There were opponents of this new form of managing the business of government. One
opponent states that private sector management practices rarely apply to government
operations and that the mistakes or errors that are made within public administration are
weighted very heavily in comparison to its outcomes. Unlike in businesses, where profit
and outcome is the main goal, public administration carries the burden of ensuring that
mistakes and errors are not made, which outweighs the potential outcome.
Within developed countries in the late 1970s, many changes that were made
wound up being counterproductive and resulted in massive costs and created a strict
command-and-control system. Due to these changes that caused unwanted burdens,
developed countries are in a third phase of reform to establish the good changes and
abandon bad changes. It is expected in developed countries that the administration and
civil society is strong enough to bounce back to the time before there were bad changes
implemented.
These policy reforms within the NPR do not work within developing countries.
Public administration is weighted heavily on institutional components such as local
capacity, equitable distribution of costs and benefits, and governance holding little weight
within feasibility. One barrier of policy reforms within developing countries are
extremely low capacity guided by customs that are not visible to outsiders from
developed countries. There are various ethnic strains among its own people or with others
outside of its country, which require different policy reform than what would be
implemented within a developed nation.
There are various points to keep in mind when managing public administration.
Some of these include considering risks and costs along with benefits of reform, keeping
honesty within a political system, air on the side of openness due to inevitable suspicion
when there are proposals for change, and look for quick wins, regardless of the size of the
improvement, and avoid looking for quick fixes, or rapid institutional change.
 There are significant differences between developed and developing nations,
which require different forms of public administration. Public policies that are
implemented in a developed country cannot necessary be implemented in a developing
nation due to differences in relation ties, funding, and administrative capacity. Similarly,
policies in low income areas may not run as effectively as if it were implemented in an
affluent community. Variation in policy implementation within these two types of
communities may be necessary as well, just like there may be a need for different policies
within developed and developing nations.