Letters to the Editor: Find the audio leakers and give them a reward
Here’s a quote from the “new” “National Academy of Public Administration” (NAPA) on their web site:
“During the 1990s, the field of public management began to expand with the emergence of public service innovations and the evolution of research and knowledge. Many of these developments will need to be sustained and strengthened in order to build institutional capacity and achieve the public management vision that they embody.”
“Sustained and strengthened” is apparently code for “prove it.”
The NAPA has not been in existence for more than 10 years and so is hardly an unevaluated or ungrounded group.
The Academy has an agenda. As is so often the case, its agenda is for the profession it addresses. And, given past history, with many of our members being the “founding fathers of the concept of ‘public management’” (John H. Macomber, Executive Director, Public Administration Council, 1997), we are often seen as an “unbalanced” Academy.
Many of our members, particularly from the public sector, feel this is unfair. When I was at the Chicago University School of Public Administration, nearly 80 percent of our graduates accepted jobs in the public sector – many after working in the private sector for years and years. The result is that we need to demonstrate that public management is not a “consultancy” or a “one-size-fits-all” public policy approach or a “boutique” or a “hobby” service. The public and private sector have different goals and different needs, and if we do not begin to move in a cooperative way, we risk seeing public and private institutions drift in separate “channels” with separate objectives.
By its website, the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) describes its purposes as:
The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) is a nonpartisan, independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that the public sector provides safe, secure, functional and accessible services for current and future communities. Its purposes are:
to inform the public and policymakers of the impact and value of public sector management strategies on society;
to advocate