Significant Challenges and Issues in Public Service Administration

Many scientists claim that the end of the twentieth century was a time of the dissemination of ideas regarding the need to make changes to the model of public administration. During this time, scientists began realizing the need to forge ahead and adopt a new paradigm in public administration with regards to making changes to the nature of governing the public. This involves a significant change in the role of the state from the producing public goods to regulating market processes. In the implementation of this paradigm, the most significant effect is possible in the area of observance of the principles of innovation, openness, decentralization and the combination of state and market regulation, freedom of individuals and new practices of individual and collective responsibility.

The looming financial and economic crisis in the world since 2007 has had a considerable negative effect on wealth, income and living conditions in the developed as well as the developing nations. Therefore, whether leaders in the public sector are ready for the changes in information communication technologies imply in regards to how they will engage with the society is a question of concern. Also, it is still unknown whether leaders are fully informed of the current technological trends as a manner of interacting with the society as well as with employees. In Africa for example, many governments face the transformation challenge, a model shift which is facilitated by the period of network intelligence (Barber, Levy, and Mendonca 5). Thus, governments are faced with the challenge of undergoing both internal and external transformation to be able to proceed in unison with the private service sectors and respond quickly to the developments and dictates of information communication technology.

Secondly, the structures of industries are undergoing some rapid changes. The final global trend is on the changing economics of knowledge. Successful organizations comprise those that use and invest in new and more different sources of knowledge (Barber, Levy, and Mendonca 5). Organizations in the public sector can systematically draw on internal and external best practice as well as benchmarks. Thus, by externalizing their knowledge such organizations can better inform and engage the public and business. Such trends may have an impact on public service administration. Therefore, the scale of such a challenge limits the numbers linked with nearly any other sector of an economy. In the United States for instance, government forecasts suggest that with respect to the current policies, spending on pension programs and public healthcare might double by 2040, something that will result in potential fiscal deficit of around 3 trillion dollars which translates to 26 percent of the nation’s GDP (Curristine, Zsuzsanna and Joumard 9).

Public expectations for the government keep increasing in terms of improved healthcare, better schools, reduced crime, efficient migration and the provision of social services. Additionally, there is need to offer new services to provide support to the changing household structures as well as develop new skills in the workforce in the wake of globalization. Hence, governments will be required to enhance their effectiveness considerably and this implies looking for more innovative and creative ways of delivering better services to the public. Most organizations in the public sector have for many years had long-term planning units. But in most cases, they contribute less to decision-making. Also, most governments do not have a culture through which performance and decisions are founded on the clear understanding of the evidence on the ground as well as the operational and economic drivers of performance.

Transparency is also an issue that is facing public service administration. The financial and economic crisis has resulted in considerable reductions in levels of income, there is a widespread concern in most nations regarding the reasonable and efficient use of public funds. Furthermore, there is a need to enhance the capacity of public servants to enable them to gain adequate access the timely warnings of potential crises. Leaders need to provide information in order to encourage households and firms to behave responsibly and take any unnecessarily drastic actions in regards to minimizing expenditure, speculating on the issue of foreign exchange, laying off workers and any other action that might prolong the crisis. Leaders may promote through the dissemination of enough information in regards to the adopted policies, the notion that the crisis may not be as deep and lasting as perceived.