Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 20th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Local Government Author(s) Marius Profiroiu Bucharest University of Economic Studies Bucharest Romania Tudorel Andrei, Profiroiu Alina, Title The role of public administrator in the local government in Romania - present and perspectives File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Marius Profiroiu Abstract The decentralization aspects regarding local public administration represents an important aspect regarding for the proper function and organization of a state. Following the decentralization reform process in Romania, the local authorities have the difficult task to manage complex responsibilities, respectively to provide a proper management of financial and human resources, for satisfying immediate and long term needs of local communities and to offer high quality public services to citizens. The diversity and complexity of issues facing local communities imposed professionalization of the executive decision-making system within the administration. Based on the local public administration legislation, in Romania was introduced in 2006 the institution of public administrator (which is equivalent of city manager institution from USA), as an important component of modern public management at executive level, which aims to attract professionals that would combine knowledge of technical, scientific, and administrative nature, with managerial traits. The paper presents an empirical research on the actual state, development and consequences of public administrator institution in Romania, as an important factor for local autonomy within the context of administrative reforms. The research is structured on following objectives: 1. Evaluation of the implementation stage of the public administrator function; 2. Identity the causes that determined the actual level of implementation of the public administrator function; 3. Identify the development options of this function in the future. For obtaining statistical information, there have been applied a survey which has three statistical samples: public administrators employed in the administrative units; presidents of county councils and mayors of the administrative territorial units where public administrators are employed; presidents of county councils and mayors of the administrative territorial units that have provided this post in their institution organizational chart. In the survey were inserted questions related to aspects of implementation status and development alternatives of this function in future. Processing data series was made in SPSS. In developing the institution of public administrator, there are four essential aspects: awareness at the level of political system on the role that the public administrator can play in local administration, encouraging representatives of local administrative units for employing public administrator, support from state institutions to develop the professional capacity of public administrators and development of public administrators’ network. The presence of the public administrator is emerging as a necessity of modern public management in the context of separation of political and executive branches. The development of the public administrator function, in all its relevant aspects, can be seen in the following two scenarios: a) in the first scenario, the public administrator is employed for a period that coincides with the mandate of mayor or county council president; b) in the second scenario, the public administrator is hired for an indefinite period. The decentralization process of the Romanian, namely the transfer of competences from central to local, represents a true challenge within the public administration. Therefore, the public administrator is expected to be a change promoter within the reform process of the local public administration. UPDATED
