Background
The Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee) was established in 1994 and legally registered under the Slovak legislation as an international, nongovernmental, non profit organization in October 1995, with the Headquarters located in Bratislava Slovakia.
The goal of NISPAcee was set to respond to the changing and increasing role of Public Administration during the post-Soviet political as well as economic transition in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Throughout its almost 25 years of legal existence, NISPAcee has made remarkable contributions to the development of national and regional public administration and local governance practices in CEE. By bringing together the best experts in the fields of Public Administration and Public Policy NISPAcee has facilitated the creation of academic networks and fostered cooperation for transferring best Public Administration-related practices. NISPAcee has also been actively organizing conferences, trainings, seminars and workshops about both theoretical and practical aspects of contemporary PA/PP in the CEE region.
1. Mission adopted in 2012 and confirmed in 2015
The mission of NISPAcee is to promote and strengthen effective and democratic governance and modernization of public administration and policy throughout the NISPAcee region
The mission gives prominence to excellence in research and to the implementation of international standards in the achievement of research projects; to the promotion of theoretically sound, practice-oriented, trans-disciplinary Bologna conform MA/BA programmes and doctoral studies; to the fostering of adequate civil servants training programmes and systems to be in place .
2. Functions and Objectives
The major NISPAcee strategic issues in the present era are the following:
- NISPAcee is an academic association/community. Its first priority is to contribute to the improvement of teaching and research in the NISPAcee region in the field of public administration and public policy.
- NISPAcee provides forum for academicians sharing their results among themselves and with practitioners. The main venue for sharing the results and experiences are the annual conferences and the journal.
- NISPAcee - as an academic community - aspires to increase the cooperation with the training centers even by providing programmes and teaching materials for practitioners when it is needed and resources are available.
- NISPAcee supports democratic governance and public administration modernization with practice oriented research and the involvement of practitioners in its activities. The involvement of practitioners can, among other possibilities, take the form of membership and special activities for practitioners, e.g. thematic panels within the framework of the annual conference, training programmes, thematic workshops, consultancy projects etc.
Therefore the major NISPAcee Functions and Objectives are:
- Facilitating training and education
- Fostering research
- Promotion of public administration and policy as distinct fields
3. Activities
The activities currently carried out by NISPAcee are as follows:
• Annual conferences – Apart discussing theoretical and practical aspects of Public Administration and Public Policy, annual conference also serves as a venue for the General Assembly as well as the working groups and other specialized meetings.
• Research programmes/Working groups covering a broad range of PA-related issues with many scholars from various countries involved.
• European Accreditation of Public Administration Programmes – EAPAA (European Association for the Public Administration Accreditation) changed it structure in 2010 and from January 2011 there are only two members of the association NISPAcee and EGPA. NISPAcee participates in the EAPAA Board, Accreditation Committee and site visit teams.
• Publications – NISPAcee Press publishes a biannual peer-reviewed Journal of Public Administration and Policy. The journal is predominantly devoted to high-quality research papers on public administration and public policy issues in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to the journal, the press has also published outcomes of the WGs research, various teaching, training and research materials as well as numerous translations made into all CEE national languages and a quarterly informative Newsletter.
• Summer schools, based on proposals of members and available resources and projects.
• Specialized Conferences as e.g. The Trans-European Dialogue (TED) established in 2008 as an annual (every second year from 2018) scholarly conference organized jointly by the two major professional associations of Public Administration in Europe – EGPA and NISPAcee.
• Participation in consortia of different projects supported by external donors.
• High Level Meetings and workshops organized based on proposals of partners, members and donors, based on projects.
• Training programmes – NISPAcee has organized a number of trainings, most notably a series of short-term courses on the topic "How to be a better policy advisor” and training programmes within various consultancy projects.
• Study tours – The primary goal for organizing study tours is to facilitate sharing of local experience with visitors in certain fields of Public Administration.
• Development programmes and technical assistance programmes focused mainly on building of effective and democratic governance and the modernization of public administration and policy in countries of the NISPAcee region.
• Website, information services, databases, social media: the NISPAcee website is continuously updated and under ongoing development as concerns the platform as well as the provided services to members and other registered institutions and individuals while regulations of GDPR are applied. NISPAcee is on Facebook and Linkedin.
• Participation in the United Nation Public Administration Network (UNPAN) – NISPAcee serves as a regional center of UNPAN from 2002
• Awards – NISPAcee gives four types of awards to distinguished scholars and practitioners of Public Administration:
- Alena Brunovska Award for Teaching Excellence in Public Administration
- Mzia Mikeladze Award for the Best PhD Thesis
- The Best Graduate Student Paper Award – for a paper presented at the NISPAcee conference
- The Best Comparative Paper presented at the NISPAcee conference
- The NISPAcee Merit Award
4. External Cooperation
NISPAcee signed the Memorandum of Understanding/Cooperation with the following organizations:
- United Nations – UN DESA in 2001, cooperation in the UNPAN (United Nations Public Administration Network)
- European Group of Public Administration (EGPA) Brussels, Belgium, in 2008
- International Comparative Policy Analysis Forum (ICPA-Forum) and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice (JCPA, Routledge: Oxford, UK) in 2010
- European a Association of the Public Administration Accreditation (EAPAA), Enschende, The Netherlands, in 2011
- American Society of Public Administration (ASPA), Washington DC, USA, in 2011
- Chinese Academy of Governance (CAG), Beijing, China, in 2011
- National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA), Washington DC, USA, in 2012
- Asian Association of Public Administration (AAPA) in 2015
- AAPAM, Kenya, in 2015
- ReSPA, Montenegro, in 2015
NISPAcee is a member of:
- EAPAA, Enschende, The Netherland
- IASIA, Belgium Brussels
- IIAS, Belgium Brussels
- NISPAcee was invited to participate in EUPAN (European Public Administration Network) as an observer in 2011.