Adriana Cîrciumaru, Director of Communication and International Relations, National Agency for Civil Servants, Romania. She served as manager in numerous European and national projects pertaining to public administration development. Adriana Cîrciumaru has a vast experiece in drafting policies for a diverse, non-discriminatory and open administration.
Diana-Camelia Iancu is a Senior Lecturer of European Governance and serves as Dean of the Faculty of Public Administration at the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration. She was public policy consultant for different international donors (OECD, World Bank Group) and managed a European Social Fund project dealing with blended learning and quality assessment of public administration teaching programmes in Romania. Her research interests include international development and administrative capacity building in transitional countries.
Rationale:
1. Comparative best practices provide added value to public administration research. Public administration today faces complex challenges: citizens’ trust in government declines around Europe and populism rises; high corruption allegations are widespread across Europe and democratic backsliding in the CEE region is presently abundantly researched. Learning how local and central governments manage to face these challenges, discussing grassroots experiences and results is important for the development and relevance of public administration research.
2. More practitioners involved in the 2018 Annual Conference. The National Agency for Civil Servants (Agentia Nationala a Functionarilor Publici – ANFP) is known for its ability to connect and interact with civil servants and their grassroots experience of working for the public interest. Annually, for the past ten years, ANFP awards and presents Romanian best practices: projects that brought more participation of citizens to local policy-making, helped the environment or assisted the delivery of more efficient services. NISPAcee could become more attractive for practitioners from Romania and neighboring countries.
3. NISPAcee strengthens its role as a hub for disseminating best practice in public administration. For CEE region and Romania, in particular, NISPAcee played a great role in connecting researchers with their field of study. With the growing number of networking opportunities, NISPA has strengthened its position by inviting agencies, regulators and local governments to share their experiences, discuss their problems and identify potential partners. The Practitioners Forum was a great example in this sense; organizing a 2018 Panel in partnership with the National Agency for Civil Servants may invite similar actors in the region to join in the following years.
Concept:
One-day panel (2-3 sessions of 2 hours each) – English posters presentation and discussion of projects local governments and central governments acknowledge as "best practice”.