Transformation Of Public Service Research Articles

Transformation of Public Service: Rise of Technology, AI and Automation

The rapid advancement of technology has proven beneficial for enhancing efficiency, transparency, responsiveness, and effectiveness in the administration of public services. The internalization of technological innovations, including AI and automation, has become imperative to address the increasing needs and expectations of citizens in modern governance. Various developed and developing countries have revolutionized public services through the adoption of AI and automation. Nepal has made strides in digital governance, advancing from a paper-based form of governance to digital governance. Moreover, the Digital Nepal Framework aspires to restructure the economy through increased service delivery, production, and productivity by harnessing digital technology. The issues of the digital divide, ethical and responsible adoption of AI, citizen engagement and participation, and inclusiveness have been challenging. The government should prioritize investments in digital infrastructure, encourage tech innovations, and promote capacity development in the field of technology.

Infrastructuring Public Service Transformation

HCI has a tradition of engaging in democratic practices and contributing to public service innovation. Working with complex socio-political realities presents significant challenges for HCI researchers, which are amplified by the current democratic and economic crisis. In this article, we present insights from a longitudinal study where we worked with multiple stakeholders in the context of an austerity-driven transformation of public parks service in a city in the North East of England. Over the course of 20 months, we developed a participatory socio-technical process designed to create collaborative spaces between communities and institutions to re-envision and re-shape the city's public parks service. The study contributes to HCI research concerned with developing tools and processes that aim at connecting across the boundaries between communities and institutions. Our process and the resulting analysis expose the practical complexities of transformation and co-creation processes and the troubles that come with opening spaces for wider participation within highly contested and political settings. We provide an orientation for HCI design research aspiring to contribute to social innovation and democratic practices in troubled times.

Exploring Cross-Media Audience Practices in Two Cases of Public Service Media in Estonia and Finland

AbstractStemming from the concept of active audiences and from Henry Jenkins’ (2006) idea of participatory culture as the driving force behind the transformation of public service broadcasting into agencies of public service media (Bardoel, Ferrell Lowe 2007), this empirical study explores the attitude and behaviour of the audiences of two crossmedia projects, produced by the public service media of Finland (YLE) and Estonia (ERR). This empirical study aims to explore the behaviour, wants and needs of the audiences of cross-media productions and to shed some light on the conditions that support the dynamic switching of the engagement with cross-media. The study’s results suggest that audiences are neither passive nor active, but switch from one mode to another. The findings demonstrate that audience dynamism is circumstantial and cannot be assumed. Thus, thinking about active audiences and participation as the lymph of public service media becomes problematic, especially when broadcasters seek generalised production practices. This work demonstrates how television networks in general cannot be participatory, and instead, how cross-media can work as a vehicle of micro participation through small acts of audience engagement (Kleut et al. 2017).

Public debt accounting and management in UK: Refunding or refinancing? Or, the strange case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis

Since the 1990s at least, UK HM Treasury has been leading a general transformation of public service and the relationship between public and private sectors, driven by a distinctive preference for the private sector. This preference has led to transplant the IFRS to provide a balance sheet accounting representation of public administration, while favouring the recourse to private actors for financing, delivering and even auditing the public service. However, in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, since 2007–2008, the joint action of the HM treasury and the Bank of England has been running exceptional policies that belong to and activate the very financial–economic core which constitutes the specific economy of public administration: (i) its use of public borrowing for redistributive purposes; and (ii) its public debt management based upon issuance and progressive refinancing over time. Our analysis provides clear-cut evidence of these policies and their material impact on public debt management. This tells the strange case of Doctor Jekyll who advocates the imitation of private sector by the public administration, while Mister Hyde does actually foster public policies based upon the specific economic working of public administration, which makes it and its public debt different from private entities and their corporate securities.

The transformation of the South African Public Service: exploring the impact of racial and gender representation on organisational effectiveness

AbstractThe transformation of the South African Public Service into a bureaucracy that is broadly representative of the population is one of the most significant public sector reforms to occur since the end of apartheid. Grounded in the theory of representative bureaucracy, this study examines demographic representation in the South African Public Service and how it impacts the organisational effectiveness of national departments. The empirical analysis is based on longitudinal data from 60 national departments from 2006 to 2013. The findings show that as these organisations become more representative by hiring a higher per cent of Africans, of Coloureds, and of Indians, they achieve a higher per cent of goals. The findings for gender representation are more mixed and show that female representation among most racial groups is unrelated to organisational effectiveness.

Capacity-building for the transformation of public service

The past few years have witnessed a wave of unrest in Egypt toppling down two regimes in less than three years. Yet was this sufficient to bringing the demanded change and meeting people’s expectations? In several Arab countries, citizens are offered patronage through public sector employment, subsidies, and limited taxation (Razzaz and Razzaz, 2012). The social contract imbalance offers little support to citizen voice and representation of all segments of society in holding governments accountable. Given the numerous challenges ranging from an overinflated bureaucracy resulting from the guaranteed employment since Nasser’s era, to the declining quality of the available pool of workers and to regulations that hinder its development, capacity building of would pose as one of the least costly areas of potential quick reform (Beissinger et al, 2013; El Baradei and Newcomer, 2008; ETF, 2011; Radwan, 2012; World Bank, 2013). Public management literature implies that a political will and government-endorsed reforms tend to have a higher rate of success (Meyer-Sahling 2011; Nakrošis, 2014). This reflects on the organizational willingness and commitment to training and training transfer (Lim and Morris, 2006; Nakrošis, 2014). Based on previous research in the field that links institutional enabling factors and a committed political will to effective capacity building (Adetunji, 2012; Lim and Morris, 2006; Majeed, 2010; Meyer-Sahling 2011; Nakrošis, 2014; Newcomer et al., 2010; OECD, 1997, Rondineli, 2004) this research will examine the institutional challenges to capacity building in Egypt post the Arab Spring. The methodology utilized depends on a literature review of primary and secondary sources for grounded theory qualitative research on capacity building and institutional enabling factors. The findings are linked to a qualitative analysis to probe the perceptions of public service mid-career managerial level professionals and to identify their perceived expectations of whether training institutions would be effective in transforming public service. Managerial levels were selected to enable probing the commitment of institutions. Two empirical tools were utilized: interviews and surveys. The first tool was a number of in-depth face-to-face structured interviews conducted with 24 informed sources representing senior managerial level public service managers. The second tool was a survey which was distributed both online and in hard copy. The survey targeted a purposive sample of 350 mid-managerial level public service managers of which 324 were received. Thus, exceeding the critical sample size of 200 identified by Joseph Hair and his colleagues (1998) in deciding about the sufficient sample size for empirical research. Data collection took a total of seven months, from June to December 2013, and was approved by the American University in Cairo Institutional Review Board.

Provincial experiences in managing national policies on the transformation of the public service

This article deals with the North West experience of managing national transformation policies. It suggests that the absence of policy analysis skills and practice are major impediments to the implementation of policies. An improvement in policy analysis skills is essential if the government is to improve its performance. Stakeholder analysis, which clarifies a decision maker's strategic options, is another area which has received insufficient attention in the public sector in South Africa. Implementation problems in the North West Province include a lack of reliable data and information upon which to make decisions, which is in turn a consequence of an inadequate Management Information System. However, the problems of implementation cannot only be ascribed to poor management by provincial governments. National policies and directives are often imposed upon provinces without regard to their specific circumstances. Thus, for example, some heads of departments in the North West felt that the publication of the White Paper on the Transformation of Public Service was premature in that at most provinces lacked the capacity to implement its recommendations. A further problem relates to the fact that a number of policies have been initiated by national government with apparently little regard to the enormous financial obligations they impose upon provinces. For example, The Basic Conditions of Employment Act of 1997 imposes onerous overtime burdens upon provincial administrations. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

L'Heure Joyeuse, the First Children's Library in France: Its Contribution to a New Paradigm for Public Libraries

L'Heure Joyeuse, the children's library set up in Paris in 1923 as a gift of an American philanthropic group, played a unique role in the transformation of French public library service. Because the establishment of l'Heure Joyeuse preceded the acceptance of the open-access, user-centered public library in France, the model children's library served as an exemplar of a new paradigm of librarianship. This article analyzes the way in which the l'Heure Joyeuse was used as a means of testing the viability of adapting the Anglo-American approach to public library service in France