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Activities: Working Group on Degree Programmes of PA/PP Education in Post-Socialist Countries
Theme: Taking stock of accomplishments and identifying guidelines for progress – the contribution of PA/PP education to the creation of effective civil service and improved governance.
After the first meeting during the NISPAcee conference in Moscow in 2005 members of the working group had contact by mail. During the 14th NISPAcee Annual Conference in Ljubljana the working group had its second meeting. This time there were papers on degree programmes in 6 countries(Kyrzygstan, Georgia, twice Russia, Latvia, Ukraine). More then before information on the situation in countries east of the enlarged EU was available. Next to the country information , a paper on accreditation of PA-programmes and a paper on education on state reform were discussed.
Interesting topics were for example :
- the relation between the needs/demands in the public administration and the outcomes of public administration education
- specialisation in the administration in relation to the risks of fragmentation of the education
- The relation between mission, curriculum development, didactics and evaluation of the programmes
- The different target-groups of PA-education
The next step is that the programme coordinators will analyse the materials discussed during the conferences in Moscow and Ljubljana and prepare a publication as tangible outcome of this two-years project.
Call for papers 2006
Theme: Looking back and looking ahead: priorities in the past and present for developing quality programmes within CEE institutes of higher education
The discussions of the Working Group were organized around three main topics:
- Key issues of the past and future developments of degree programs – advantages and obstacles of knowledge transfer,
- Lessons of the Bologna process for involved and non-involved participants,
- Setting a working plan for the next year cooperation and also the 2006 Annual Conference meeting.
The presentations and the unusually vivid discussions (almost all of the participants contributed very actively to each discussion session) raised the following issues:
- What framework could serve best the intention of drawing lessons from the past development of educational programs for progress in the future?
- A comparative study on the requirements of entry to civil service might be conducted, since those requirements ‘state’ the existing needs for PA/PP professional people that are the output of the educational programs OR to what extent the educational programs themselves could identify the future needs of governments and non-for-profit organizations for human resources?
- How to cope with multi-disciplinarity (the very feature of genuine PA/PP educational programs), since a great number of programs are still captured by the traditional (mostly legal or legalistic) tradition of education for state administration?
- What is the ‘good’ mixture of research and educational activities within a faculty, department, or school?
- What is the role of private schools in an environment that is still rather monopolistic (state universities has privileges)?
- How and where should be drawn the line between public administration and business administration educational programs? Are PA graduates who work in private organizations should necessarily be considered ‘losses’ from the perspective of the schools and society?
- The fruitful relation among different level of PA/PP education such as bachelor, master and Ph.D.
- What competencies should be emphasized and developed mostly in the students during different levels of education?
- Changes in larger society (state reform – civil service reform – reforming educational institutions) does not always have clear enough consequences to the PA/PP educational programs, in some countries these changes rather create obstacles, leaving the PA/PP schools for themselves.
- Merit system in civil service is still a dream in most countries, situational factors and patronage system have strong influence (political) on recruitment of employment in civil service.
The participants formulated the following mission statement of the Working Group:
"The task is to identify the ways and means for improvements through education the personal professional competencies of individuals who work and will work as civil servants and/or public administrators in general”.
The group agreed that the following three themes had special importance in future work of the group:
- Multidisciplinarity and flexibility of PA/PP educational programs - The proper role of the traditional legalistic approach in the development of educational programs
- Studying the entry systems of civil service and compare them
- Preparation of the "glossary of misunderstanding” caused my translating English professional terminology into local languages.
Program of the Working Group meeting at 13th Annual NISPAcee conference in Moscow, May 17-21, 2005.
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