Public Admin: Processes, Policies, and Management for Government Functioning - Essay Sample

Introduction

Public administration refers to the process involved in the implementation of government policies; however, the term is also used to denote the academic discipline that studies the said implementation as well as preparing the civil servants to work in public service (Koliba et al., 2018). As an inquiry field, public service has a diverse scope, with the principal goal being advancing the policies and management in order for the government to function. Its main concern is the organization of programs and policies of the government as well as the behaviors of public officials who are, in formal terms, responsible for the conduct. These officials, particularly the non-elected public servants are usually considered as public administrators, and they include cabinet secretaries, state mental health directors, census managers, city managers, human resource administrators, and heads of federal, state, county, city, and regional departments, and so forth (Koliba et al., 2018). In other words, they refer to all the officials who work in public agencies and departments at all government levels. One of the major contemporary aspects of public administration is e-governance.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

E-government refers to the application of technology like the internet and computers to offer the citizens of a country or residents of a region with public services; the term is the short form of electronic government. A majority of the governments across the globe are gradually adopting the e-governance for the reasons that it offers new opportunities for the government to offer services directly to its citizens; these services are more convenient and direct (Shareef et al., 2012). E-government denotes the digital interactions between the government and employees (G2E), government and businesses/commerce (G2B), government and citizens (G2C), governments, and other government agencies (G2G), and lastly a citizen and their government (C2G) (Shareef et al., 2012; Ibrahim et al., 2017). The interactions involve the communication between the citizens with all the government levels through the utilization of business process re-engineering (BPR), and the information and communication technology (ICT) like websites and computers. This process is known as e-governance where ICT services are applied to deliver government services, interactions with the entire government framework and back-office processes, communication transactions, exchange of information as well as the integration of various stand-alone systems mentioned earlier, that is G2E, G2G, G2B, and G2C (Shareef et al., 2012; Ibrahim et al., 2017). E-governance enables the government to offer its citizens services in a transparent, efficient, and convenient manner.

On the other hand, the concept of public value was expounded in-depth as a theory by Professor Mark Moore in the year 1995 in his published work titled "Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government." Over the decades, scholars have perceived public value as a public management's normative value that provides a conceptual framework used to inform as well as inspire public services' improvement and reform (Castelnovo, 2013). The concept is perceived as abstract because of the difficulty involved in categorizing it; it has not only been interpreted in various ways but also has been misinterpreted. However, generally, public value denotes the value generated by the governments through laws, services, regulations, and any other actions; in a democratic society this value is defined by the public itself. According to Moore (1995), the value is determined by the preferences of the public, which are express in various ways and therefore providing a 'rough yardstick' for gauging the government policies as well as public establishments. Nonetheless, in his 1995 publication, Moore defines the concept 'public value' as the collective expectations of the citizens with respect to the public and government services (Moore, 1995). In this context, Castelnovo (2013) defined citizens as the individuals in their diverse stakeholder roles including citizens, entrepreneurs or tax-payers, participants, customers or users of public services, public servants, policymakers, and so forth. The author notes that the actions of a government do not usually have a direct effect on specific citizens, but rather, their main intent is to directly impact on stakeholder groups, especially their interests. Therefore, in this sense, public value is centered on specific stakeholders' groups together with their interests. In this research proposal and subsequent project, the public value concept or rather theory will be adopted from the public administration perspective; to be specific, it will be adopted from the Moore (1995) 'public value' theoretical framework where it is defined as the collective expectation of the citizens based on the government and public services.

Importance of the Research Topic

The perceived values drive the implementation of technology, and according to Bannister and Connolly (2014), technology is not value-free, a well-known fact. In this regard, it is critical for the public administrators and stakeholders, including the government, to understand the e-government as well as the value that it is supposed to create; this is crucial for the effective management of the public sector. Even though both private and public institutions and organizations exist for the purposes of serving people, they have different concerns. In other words, the people are served as constituents that are owners of the government or simply citizens by the government while private organizations serve people as customers with their motivation being driven by the creation and maximization of profits. Consequently, the government organizations have extra concerns with regard to accounting for the 'public value' as opposed to only questing for revenue, from the citizens, to facilitate their sustainability.

Further, evaluating the 'public value' topic with regard to public administration in e-government is vital given that it affects the citizens in their diverse responsibilities as stakeholders including citizens as taxpayers, participants, civil servants, and policymakers. Therefore, the public value notion, in this context, is critical as it affects the daily lives of the citizens. Castelnovo (2013), states that 'public value' can be utilized as an evaluation tool where e-government policies are evaluated based on their capability to upsurge the capacity of the public administration to produce public value for its citizens as operators, policymakers, and customers of public administration. More so, according to Cordella and Bonina (2012), understanding 'public value' is essential for the reasons that it is a more effective means of addressing the complex social, and political effects of adopting ICT in the public sector. They also noted that the public value framework is critical in reforming the public sector through the composite outcome of the socially-shared prospects of trust, legitimacy as well as fairness, whose impact relies on political as well as social setting of the e-government. Therefore, exploring the public value topic in the public administration of e-government is important because the wishes and needs of the citizens are met by public organizations through public value.

Additionally, Moore (1995) states that the public value, in a public sector that is ICT-enabled, can be used to study e-government reforms. Other scholars such as Bannister and Connolly (2014) noted that through understanding and converting the public sector value into behavioral form, the ICT possesses the ability to transform or modify. The strategic goals that the government deals with, to realize 'public value' go beyond just the economic gains to include accounting for social and political objectives like accountability, stewardship, community-wellbeing, community regeneration, openness, social inclusion, equal treatment of constituents, and efficiency in public service (Moore, 1995; Cordella & Bonina, 2012).

Furthermore, according to Pang, Lee, and DeLone (2014), the public value in e-governments through IT resources touches on the critical aspect of public administration capabilities, which include public sector innovation, resource building, co-production capacity, public engagement, and public service. Therefore, examining this research topic will be instrumental in not only understanding the context of public value in public administration but also in gauging the e-government systems' ability to offer improved services to citizens, improved efficiency in government operations, and enhancing social values like participation, transparency as well as democracy.

Research Question

• What is the e-government's public value, and what value should the e-government generate?

Brief Overview of What the Paper Will Cover

The proposed project's main purpose is to examine the e-government's public value and determine the value that should be generated by the e-government. This research proposal will involve a synthesis of preliminary literature of not less than eight peer-reviewed journal articles to give an overview of the study problem, and research question. The paper will also provide a proposed methodology that will be adopted in facilitating the completion of the final project once approved. Based on the preliminary research and review of the literature of the topic, the paper will provide a summary of the findings and identify gaps to be addressed in the final project; this will be done in the conclusion section.

Literature Review

Administrative Efficiency

Several studies have examined administrative efficiency as one of the e-government's public value. Bannister et al. (2014) in their study established that e-government, to some extent, delivers better equality, honesty, and fairness; besides it eliminates or reduces the abuse of law and risk of corruption by public servants. This is by removing the human beings from the chain of decision making hence allowing for rules to not only be embedded but also formalized in the IT. Unlike Bannister et al. (2014), Cook, M., & Harrison (2015) conducted a case study on "Using Public Value Thinking For Government IT Planning And Decision Making" where they noted that e-governments often face challenges with regard to how they can systematically incorporate, into their decision-making practices, the public thinking value even though there has been considerable interest in the public value ideology from theoretical and academic perspectives. The authors concluded that invoking public value analysis in e-governments can enhance administrative efficiency. This is by adding insight into both planning as well as carrying out enterprise projects through the generation of a deep understanding of stakeholders' perspectives. Addition of insights through public value facilitates the collective identification of internal and external values of stakeholders which consequently informs the change of communication and management strategies by the government agency, and according to Cook, M., & Harrison (2015), the two are critical to the success of not only any enterprise investment but also administrative performance.

In a different study, Karkin, N., & Janssen (2014), evaluated websites of the Turkish local government in the perspective of public value. Unlike Cook, M., & Harrison (2015), who employed a case study research design, Karkin, N., & Janssen (2014) conducted a meta-analysis of literature that evaluated websites and contrasted the results with a survey that they had carried out on...