Senior Public Servants Research Articles

Mothers’ preference for routine immunization appointment reminders in Gombe, Gombe State, Nigeria

Background: Globally, under-5 children account for three-quarter of the two million annual deaths caused by vaccine preventable diseases (VPD). The VPD is comparatively higher in developing countries, and in particular, Nigeria where 1 in 5 childhood deaths is VPD-related. This higher mortality has been attributed to inequitable uptake of immunization variably caused by low education, confusion and forgetfulness among others. The millennium mobile phone proliferation has made it a useful reminder tool. We therefore explore access to mobile phone, willingness and predictors of willingness to receive reminder by mothers. Methods: Semi-structured questionnaire was deployed in this cross-sectional study to obtain relevant information from 384 mother-child pairs at the immunization clinic (cluster) over 9 months.Results: A total of 372 (96.9%) and 379 (98.7%) mothers had access to personal and husbands’ phone respectively while 339 (88.3%) mothers showed willingness for a reminder. The factors significantly associated with willingness for immunization reminder were mother’s tertiary education (p=0.008), mother’s unemployment (p=0.011), father’s occupation as senior public servant (p=0.001) and mother’s access to personal phone (p=0.015). Adjusting for confounders, the factors predictive of willingness for immunization reminder were access to personal phone (aOR 11.1, 95% CI 3.160-390.08) and mother’s tertiary education (aOR 2.9, 95% CI 1.822-5, 302).Conclusions: Access to personal phone and improved education are significant tools in enhancing immunization coverage.

Legal Profession and Corruption in Health Care: Some Reflective Realities in South Africa.

The article is an empirical attempt to research, analyse, and dissect the corrupt involvement of legal practitioners in illegal and fraudulent acts, and mainly their involvement in litigation associated with issues of medical negligence. This is done primarily but not exclusively through the utilisation of several qualitative research methods, including the content analysis of primary literary sources such as official state documents, existing legislation and court proceedings and personal interviews with senior public servants, as well as secondary sources. Beginning with a short exploration of South Africa's public legal terrain and the fears of sections of the statutory leadership of the legal profession, the article continues with the identification of key findings in several the country's provinces, the modus operandi of the corrupt individuals and groups, as well as the monetary, financial and social repercussions of such actions.

Perceptions of bribery in Papua New Guinea’s public sector: Agency and structural influences

AbstractThis study explores the perceptions of bribery among senior public servants within Papua New Guinea’s (PNG’s) government departments. Using structuration theory, consideration is given to individual, cultural and organisational factors influencing bribery, based on interviews with 11 senior public servants from three government departments. Findings reveal that most public servants acknowledged bribery exists in PNG’s public sector. Perceptions of and perceived reasons for bribery typically reflected prioritisation of personal agency influenced by traditional and organisational (public sector) cultural norms, rather than responsibilities and accountabilities as agents operating within formal public sector structures.

Leadership on the run: time management among deputy ministers in Canada

PurposeThe authors examine the time allocation and management of deputy ministers (DMs) in Canada.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyze the results from a 2020 survey of DMs.FindingsThe authors observe that, like private sector leaders, DMs work very long hours and tend to allocate their time fairly consistently across functions. Nevertheless, important differences exist particularly depending on the size of their department.Research limitations/implicationsWhile a substantial percentage of answers were returned, these skew toward provincial rather than federal public servants and not all jurisdictions are equally represented.Practical implicationsThe distribution of areas of focus for DMs and their time allocation differences speak to potentially important discussions to be had in time management practice.Originality/valueThis is the first and only analysis of time management for senior public service executives based on a survey instrument.

Rights of civil servants as the basis of their legal status

Problem setting. The civil servant is one of the main objects of public service reform and, at the same time, its subject. This is due to the fact that civil servants, as representatives of the senior public service, are the main actors in the formation of reform policy in the field of public service, as well as, subject to regulatory legislation, catalysts for its implementation. At the same time, transformational changes affect the legal status of public servants, which in turn affects the formation of their rights and responsibilities.
 Recent research and publications analysis. It was found that the issue of the rights of public servants is insufficiently covered in recent research, which has led to the relevance of the selected issues.
 Highlighting previously unsettled parts of the general problem is to reveal the essence and content of the rights of public servants as a fundamental component of their legal status.
 Paper main body. Research has shown that the legal status of a public servant should be understood as a system of rights granted to him, as well as a set of responsibilities imposed on him, including certain incentives, prohibitions and restrictions, as well as measures of legal liability for non-compliance or improper level of performance of professional duties assigned to him in accordance with the job description. The essence of the concept of “rights of a public servant” should be understood as a set of certain material, economic and social benefits that are guaranteed to the official and ensure the realization of his natural rights in the course of professional activity.
 Conclusions of the research and prospects for further studies. It is concluded that the rights of a public servant can be disclosed as a set of certain material, economic and social benefits that are guaranteed to the official and ensure the realization of his natural rights in the course of professional activity. There are three levels (aspects) of the rights of civil servants, namely: private law; Labor Law; public law. Thus, private law ensures the freedom and autonomy of the individual, the independence and autonomy of the individual. Labor relations arising in the activities of public servants are an element of the general system of labor law. At the same time, public servants perform their job functions personally and must obey the rules of official discipline, which are established at both the local and state levels. In the course of using the labor of public servants, labor relations arise, which, however, are characterized by the peculiarity of official functions and the level of responsibility for decision-making of state importance. Prospects for further research are the analysis of the state of protection of the rights of civil servants in modern Ukraine, the study of improving the organizational protection of the rights of civil servants and compliance with the rights of civil servants as an optimization tool for building an effective state in Ukraine.

Issues for reregulation of private hospital insurance in Australia.

Objective The aim of this study is to explore policy paths towards private health insurance (PHI) reform that might reduce out-of-pocket costs, restore public confidence and allow insurers to finance value-based care. Methods This study used thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with informed opinion holders, including a politician, three former senior public servants and an industry lobbyist. Critical analysis of peer reviewed and grey literature was also conducted. Results PHI regulation is contributing to unexpected out-of-pocket expenses and low-value care. Modification of existing tax incentives would be incapable of significantly increasing PHI coverage. Regulatory reform could restore confidence among policy holders by promoting value-based care, wherein health outcomes are measured and incentivised with remuneration. Conclusions Targeted relaxation of out-of-hospital restrictions should be explored to promote value-based competition and facilitate bundled payments for chronic disease management and community services. To address out-of-pocket diagnostic and procedural costs, insurers should have more responsibility for private specialist's fees, including by financing the entire provider's bill through insurance and redirecting the Medicare Benefits Schedule fee to the insurer. What is known about the topic? Healthcare expenditure and out-of-pocket costs have grown rapidly, while confidence and depth of coverage in private health insurance has declined, as has the fiscal appetite for expanding public financing for health care. What does this paper add? This paper outlines the regulatory and policy factors that are contributing to low-value care and unmet expectations from insurance policy holders. It also maps the strategic terrain of the non-government health sector and considers feasible policy options for reforming the PHI industry that do not increase drawings on the public purse. What are the implications for practitioners? An appreciation of the ongoing challenges to financing value-based care provision will inform key stakeholders, including policymakers and health service providers, as reforms are debated and implemented.

COVID‐19 and Re‐Storying Economic Development in Oceania

<scp>COVID</scp>‐19 and <scp><i>Re</i>‐Storying</scp> Economic Development in Oceania

The struggle over the character of social services: conceptualising hybridity and power

ABSTRACT Extensive critical literature has pointed to the corrosive effects of managerialism and New Public Management (NPM) on social services and demonstrated how its local versions dominate policymaking. Challenging such critical views, another stream of thought has emerged, emphasising the way in which policymaking could take a hybrid shape, reflecting the mutual contribution of NPM and critical professionalism to the shaping of social services. However, the hybrid proposition lacks a nuanced formulation of the power relations between these contesting standpoints. Here, we offer to add this missing aspect by investigating senior public service managers’ encounter with the critical professional standpoint. Based on the analysis of 16 interviews with senior administrators shaping Israeli social services for people living in poverty, we identify the operation of three modes of power exertion, namely, conditional funding, suspicion, and rejection to articulate the integration of power dynamics into the conceptualisation of hybridity.

Examining bribery in Papua New Guinea's public sector: forms and accountability implications

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine bribery and its accountability implications within Papua New Guinea's (PNG's) public sector.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 senior public servants from three central government departments. Perceptions, forms and accountability dimensions compromised through bribery were analysed through an actor network theory (ANT) lens to understand the actors contributing to bribery and how it might be addressed.FindingsForms (and variations) of bribery included “promises” by clients, pre-commitments by public servants and expectations/obligations imposed by public servants. Multiple and interdependent actors (including compromised accountability perceptions) are identified.Practical implicationsFindings provide important insights for public servants and policy-makers within and beyond PNG's government departments, highlighting the associated implications for individuals, the public sector and the country more broadly.Originality/valueThe incorporation and analysis of accountability dimensions through an ANT lens provides new perspectives on bribery. Further, the significance and extent of compromised accountability dimensions within the network suggests a broken accountability system.

Use of Social Media in the Public E-Procurement

This paper reports the results of a research project addressing governance issues in public e-procurement using social media technologies. A case study approach was adopted where Australian senior public service managers involved in public procurement were interviewed to assess the potential of using social media as a tool for enhancing efficiency, transparency, accountability, and responsiveness of the e-procurement system. In addition, a focused group discussion was held involving public officials and e-procurement experts for exploring in-depth insights into the topic. Despite acknowledging the potential benefits of using social media, most officials interviewed have expressed reservations including the security of data, the cost in managing opinions, the structure and mechanism of using social media, and the burden to handle multiple suppliers. These findings have implications for understanding the designs and potentials of using existing social media for enhancing good governance in public e-procurements.

Viranhaltijoiden suhtautuminen kuntalaisosallistumisen lisäämiseen kuntahallinnossa

Public administrators’ perceptions of public engagement in local government&#x0D; This article is an empirical study of the attitudes of public administrators toward public engagement. Currently there is a gap in the research on the attitudes of senior public servants who are important gate-keepers for the implementation of public engagement policies. This article contributes to filling this gap in the research by using interviews with senior public servants in a Finnish municipality. The study reveals that the administrators positively value citizens and their participation. However, there are differing views concerning the relationships between the new models of civic participation and the traditional models of planning and decision-making. The results indicate that there is an ongoing cultural change within the administration. The main factors that undermine the realization of public engagement policy can be divided into legislative, organizational, individual and cultural capacities.

Organization of distance learning in the regional cloud of public administration

The need to maintain the appropriate level of qualification of personnel in the new conditions of management, the functioning of the market economy and public administration reform leads to the urgent need for continuous training of a large number of public servants at all levels in all regions of Ukraine, including Dnipropetrovsk region.&#x0D; Traditional methods, tools and forms of education require a significant number of additional highly qualified teaching staff, increasing the number of educational institutions for training, retraining and advanced training of public servants and increasing their training capacity, frequent and long absences from the work of senior public servants. All this is time and money, which our country is very short of. The way to solve this problem is a large-scale transition to a qualitatively new level of full-time and part-time education – distance learning.&#x0D; Currently, there is a rapid development of cloud technologies, in Ukraine the infrastructure of the e-government system is being created, which includes as a fragment the infrastructure created at the regional level. The regional fragment of the e-government system can be used effectively by filling it with modern and efficient cloud applications. Including applications, which allow to organize distance learning for public servants, employees of utilities, organizations and enterprises at the regional level. Therefore, today, the study of the functional capabilities of modern information and communication systems for the organization of professional distance learning at the regional level is an urgent task.&#x0D; This article substantiates the feasibility of creating an educational service in the regional cloud of public administration. To this end, the followings are identified functions of educational service, groups of users of the educational service, Google applications that implement these features. Cases of foreign and domestic experience in organizing training of public servants using Internet technologies are considered. The experience of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Institute for Public Administration National Academy for Public Administration under the President of Ukraine shows that the use of the G Suite for Education package allows to create quickly and efficiently the single information and educational space for training and retraining of public servants and local government officials in the region.&#x0D;

Archive of the (Mostly) Unspoken: A Queer Project of Caring for the Dead

ABSTRACT Drawing inspiration from Ann Cvetkovich's (2003. An Archive of Feeling: Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press) work on trauma and public affects, I explore contradictions in the public and private stories of my father's life, with a focus on the ways sexual, gendered and colonial power shaped the different narratives he revealed in extremity. My focus is on the development of a condoling methodology to explore this archive. Jack Francis (1918-2019) was a senior public servant in Canadian government during the anti-homosexual purges of the mid-twentieth century and a church archivist. As Cvetkovich (2003) argues, all archives serve as a technology of identity, and contain within them an ‘archive of feelings’ and narratives of collective life. I attempt to do justice to the intergenerational bond between a parent and child and my own commitments to de-colonial solidarity through reflecting on the connections between anti-homosexual regulation and colonial power. I hope this writing can open up what is often unfathomable in the lives that go before us, on the assumption that we can only reach for future worlds when we take seriously the fragmentary signs from the past.

The politics of senior bureaucratic turnover in the Westminster tradition: Trust and the choice between internal and external appointments

The extent to which new governments appoint and dismiss senior public servants is widely claimed to be influenced by their country’s underlying administrative tradition. This is particularly the case within the Westminster tradition where such turnover is limited in nature, with most appointees coming from within the ranks of the public service. This article challenges the assertion that turnover in the Westminster tradition is homogeneously internal. Theorizing that new governments appoint senior public servants to increase their control over the bureaucracy, and that the desire for control is negatively correlated to trust, this article develops hypotheses between the trust new governments harbour towards the bureaucracy and whether they appoint and dismiss bureaucrats from within or outside the public service. The hypotheses are tested with longitudinal data measuring internal and external appointments and departures to the senior public service in Canada’s provincial governments over a period of 18 years. The results from various multinomial regression models suggest that political appointments to the public service are not as homogenous as frequently suggested. Although a transition in the governing party and a newly elected premier from the same party of the previous government both lead to an increase in bureaucratic turnover, a newly elected first minister has a greater incidence of internal turnover than a change in party, meanwhile the level of external turnover does not meaningfully differ between these two political events.

Telecommunications infrastructure in Australia

AbstractThis paper considers Australia’s approach to telecommunications infrastructure from the perspectives of the policy official and the public administration scholar. From the official’s perspective, the approach has been successful in stimulating private sector investment in many markets. This has been achieved by promoting open competition and where necessary establishing a government business enterprise as a transitional measure to build and operate a next‐generation National Broadband Network (NBN) to provide high‐speed fixed‐line broadband to all Australian premises by 2020. From the academic perspective, however, the approach reveals the shifting balances between political objectives and market challenges. This paper consists of three main parts. The first is an introduction by a former senior public servant turned public administration scholar. The second is from a policy official and provides an overview of the Australian telecommunications market, starting with some historical context, the deregulation in the 1990s and the privatisation of the former government‐owned telecommunications incumbent, Telstra. The third is from a public administration scholar and provides a short complementary critique of Australia’s communications policy. The paper discusses, from different perspectives, the policy settings that have been adopted to support infrastructure competition and investment in the Australian telecommunications market, including the development of the NBN.

Competitive Examinations, Special Competitions for Senior Servants or Open Market Competitions - Which of Them Determine Merit the Most?

Selection mechanisms that could identify the best candidates for the civil service are the first step towards the effective and efficient public administration. The competitive examinations, specific competitions for senior servants and selection available on the labour market are the forms of meritocracy, so the question is not to abolish or sustain them, but to know which of them the most expresses talent, effort, and achievement. And this knowledge is the aim of this paper. Merit seems intuitively the best option for the selection of the best public sector employees, but it is questionable which form of selection is the best. Having this in mind, this paper based on the recruiting processes of the first twenty ranked countries based on the rule of law, GINI index, corruption perception and public integrity indexes shows the competition on the labour market system of recruitment of public servants as the most effective; then follows the competitive examination system for senior public servants and as the last (and contra intuitively) the competitive examination system. Based on the country's low Gini index, results also show it is more likely that the competition on the labour market recruitment system is used.

Politicization of the Bureaucracy across and within Administrative Traditions

ABSTRACT It is frequently claimed within the politicization literature that while governments around the world are increasingly politicizing senior public service appointments, the nature and extent of this politicization varies across administrative traditions. To date, however, differences across administrative traditions have received little empirical scrutiny; research tends to be more comparable than comparative. Using data from an expert survey systematically measuring the merit-, political-, and personal-recruitment of senior public servants in 20 countries, this article examines differences across and within the Nordic, Westminster, Germanic and Napoleonic administrative traditions, in addition to the alternative Anglo-American and Southern European traditions. Various tests show meaningful variation in politicization across administrative traditions, with the starkest differences found between the Nordic and Napoleonic traditions. The results also show less variation among the countries comprising the Nordic tradition than that found within the other traditions.

Policy expertise and use of evidence in a populist era

ABSTRACTPopulism and media-enhanced polarisation are reinforcing the declining trust in public institutions. These forces also undermine the perceived legitimacy of using expertise and evidence in highly contested policy areas. Expertise has been decried as elitist, or serving vested interests, or ineffective in tackling real-life problems. We argue that applying relevant expertise to public policy problems remains essential. However, this use of expertise must be situated within improved democratic decision-making and governance arrangements. Good policy governance requires not only using best available knowledge, but also strengthening civic trust and legitimacy, through fair and open processes. We also explore the continuing critical role of senior public servants in strengthening deliberative processes and in enhancing the flows of knowledge.

‘I’m sorry but I can’t take a photo of someone’s capacity being built’: Reflections on evaluation of Indigenous policy and programmes

The Australian Government has recently increased resourcing for evaluation of Indigenous programmes following critical reports by the Australian National Audit Office and Productivity Commission around their failure to significantly reduce Indigenous disadvantage. Evaluation in Indigenous affairs has a long history, although not a consistent or coordinated one. While there is significant knowledge held by those with experience in commissioning and conducting evaluations for Indigenous programmes over a number of decades that could usefully inform current efforts, there has been little research focused on this area. This article outlines the findings of qualitative research about evaluation in Indigenous policy conducted with policymakers, senior public servants, programme managers, researchers and independent evaluation consultants that sought to privilege the voices and perspectives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It outlines key themes derived from those interviews relating to the methods, parameters, politics and accountability around government-commissioned evaluation in Indigenous policy and programmes and concludes by canvassing ways that evaluation could better serve the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Designing effective public engagement: the case study of Future Melbourne 2026

Public engagement can enrich policy-making, bringing a diversity of views and voices to policy decisions being made. By placing the experience of those affected by the outcome at the center of deliberations, it can also lead to better informed policies and programs aligned with citizens’ needs. The engagement process strengthens transparency and accountability in addition to building civic capacity. This paper examines the role of public engagement through the lens of a community engagement project for a 10-year local government plan which set outs the future direction of city life. The case offers insights for effective public engagement including the need for strong leadership from decision makers, whether elected officials or senior public servants, and a commitment to inclusion, participation, and transparency in decision-making.