The current crisis, since the Autumn of 2008’s financial meltdown, affects the NISPAcee regions particularly strongly, both indirectly – as members of the global community – and directly, because especially in Central and Eastern Europe, it had and still has, a massive impact, already toppling several governments and changing outlooks and policies on a fundamental scale. But the fact that the crisis is severe is as obvious as that at some time in the future, it will diminish and that the regions will (have to) recover and become competitive once more.

The role of public administration in all of this is particularly important because the crisis has signaled and forced, both here and elsewhere, a "return of the state” on a scale beyond anything since the great transformation of late 1989/91. The state is back, and in many respects more strongly than before, because it is now in the business of administering not only the crisis, but also finance and even the economy, both via guarantees, subsidies, and policies and very directly by taking over entire sectors of the economy.

In such a world, the role of public administration is necessarily large, because the "state in action” is public administration, and the success of crisis management – and the wise spending of all the sums allotted to it – as well as of a recovery - depends first and foremost on a high-quality civil service, both in structure and personnel, that is capable of shouldering this gigantic task. The need for such a capacity of public administration and the increased importance of the public sector are therefore hardly contested any longer.

It is quite obvious that the development of appropriate Information Technology and efficient information mechanisms in the public administration are core components of capacity building.

Public administration represents the nucleus of the information mechanism of the state. It perceives, receives and processes information to determine the quality of public policymaking. Information mechanisms within public administration do not function properly, their deficiencies influencing the efficiency and transparency of the decision-making process in the administrative system.

Only properly functioning information mechanisms can support the creation of a consensus based on policies and efficient implementation of government decisions and can increase the "absorption” capacities of the public administration.