Table of Contents
This article discusses characteristics of public administration adopted from principles of public administration. These are applied to positively advance public sector education, transportation in rural areas, health care, community development, law enforcement, and environmental policy.
This article hypothesizes what would become of the aforementioned services in the absence of a public administration system. The means by which public administration achieves its goals and the responsibilities vested in it are solely dependent on tactical principles and practices utilized to execute them.
10 Characteristics of public administration
1. Serving public interest
The first characteristic of public administration is to serve the interest of people through service provision. Public administration is an important element that distinguishes, the private from the public. It does not involve profit-making, hence people from different parts of the economy.
Provision of important needs to people ranges from health, security, development, counseling, and management duties. Generally, the public sector, in most countries, issues passports, and driving licenses, and run immigration task forces. Hence the importance of public administration can be a critical department that needs special care, and efficiency to give equal satisfaction to the general public.
2. Formulation of rules and procedures
The formulation of rules shall implement the public principles, policies, decisions, and plans to effectively help the organizations operate effectively and efficiently. Public administration ensures there is good compliance with the legislative principles established by the Legislation Law and conforms to the provisions of the Constitution, laws, administrative regulations, and other superior laws.
The formulation of rules embodies the principle of uniting the powers and responsibilities of administrative organs and, while vesting necessary powers in the relevant administrative organs, provides the conditions and procedures for executing such powers, as well as responsibilities they shall undertake.
Public administrators manage State Council administrative regulations, decisions, and orders, departmental rules may not set norms that impair the rights of citizens, legal persons, and other organizations or increase their obligations, and may not increase the powers or reduce the statutory duties of the department.
3. Transparency in government
Public administration acts as a tool for addressing local government transparency, providing adequate information flow, strong civil society, effective and transparent financial management systems, and procurement regulations. Local government transparency has included supporting the implementation of legislation that promotes transparent procurement processes in the public sector.
Transparency is a fundamental element of abolishing corruption in the public sector. A transparent way of management in governance is important to local governments and the communities they serve because corruption threatens good governance, leads to the misallocation of resources, harms people, public planning, and private sector development, and also distorts public policy. Hence controlling corruption is vital and this is archived through the process of ensuring transparency.
4. Equality in society
‘Equality’ is a contested concept: “People who praise it or disparage it disagree about what they are praising or disparaging” (Dworkin 2000, p. 2). Our first task is therefore to provide a clear definition of equality in the face of widespread misconceptions about its meaning as a political idea. Public administration provides equality’ (or ‘equal’) which signifies correspondence between a group of different objects, persons, processes, or circumstances that have the same qualities.
Equality in its prescriptive usage is closely linked to morality and justice, and distributive justice in particular. Further, people and movements throughout history have used the language of justice to contest inequalities. But what kind of role does equality play in a theory of public administration. Philosophers have sought to clarify this by defending a variety of public principles and conceptions of equality.
5. Ensures compliance with public policies
Public administration ensures compliance with public policies because Public policy is not worth anything if employees and people do not follow it. The workforce and the public may not easily adapt to changes in policy. Further, employees may be reluctant to change practices in their everyday workflows. It’s key to involve HR in this process.
Most importantly, make sure to communicate company policy and procedures well. Part of this is to ensure they are well documented and readily available; both digitally and physically. Public administration furthermore, makes sure that public sector employees understand why policy and procedures are the way they are, or why they have changed. It may also be necessary to implement employee training on how to properly adapt procedures.
And lastly, public administration helps with implementing a reward system for employees who comply and develop sanctions in case of violations.
6. Responsible for state administrative functions
State administration is defined as a system of entities created by statute and in the competence to carry out internal and external management and executive activities with responsibility assigned to the state. The main functions of public administration in a state are maintaining law, order, and stability, resolving various kinds of disputes through the legal system, providing common defense, and looking out for the welfare of the population in ways that are beyond the means of the individual. One example is implementing public health measures.
7. Tax collection on behalf of the government
In order to garner income for the government to finance social projects. The government, through public administration, collect tax. Revenue receipts can be of two types non-tax revenue and tax revenue. Taxes are crucial because governments collect this money and use it to finance social projects.
A tax is collected from individuals and corporations via direct tax and indirect tax. These two tax collections form the government’s revenue. Without taxes, government contributions to the health sector would be impossible. Taxes go to funding health services such as social healthcare, medical research, social security, etc.
8. Focuses on service and not on money-making
The characteristic of public administration is that does not pursue a profit, but the satisfaction of social needs. Profit is an essential part of businesses. Meanwhile, public administration focuses on providing service.
Thus, the Characteristics of public administration should be to work towards not making a profit but serving people and communities. The principle of social responsibility investing encourages investors in society.
9. Supports the private sector through public-private partnerships
The current PPP helps to enhance economic development in the country through partnerships between the government and private sector and supports the national vision of the country. Public-Private Partnership Model and its merits in attracting Foreign Direct Investment. Traditional public procurement is criticized by New public management, PPPs entail a greater role for the private sector, which bears some of the project leading to a higher profit margin based on performance.
10. Enhances public sector efficiency
Characteristics of public administration are to improve public sector efficiency. Governments benefit from less rigid and more decentralized structures that allow high-level executives to have more decision-making autonomy. Therefore, let’s introduce profit incentives into the government sector. Summing up, there is no reason why those working in the public sector have performance targets.