PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION GLOSSARY OF TERMS

ABILITY TO PAY:
The principle of taxation that holds that the tax burden should be distributed
according to a person's wealth. It is based on the assumption that, as a
person's income increases, the person or corporation can and should
contribute a larger percentage of income to support government activities.
The progressive income tax is based on the ability to pay principle.

ABSOLUTISM:
A government with no limits to its power and under which the people have
no guaranteed or constitutional rights.

ABUSE:
1. The use of an existing authority for purposes that extend beyond or even
contradict the intentions of the grantors of that authority.
2. The furnishing of excessive services to beneficiaries of government
programs, violating program regulations, or performing improper practices,
none of which involves prosecutable fraud.

ACCESS:
1. The ability to gain the attention and to influence the decisions of key
political agents.
Political party leaders, the heads of major interest groups, and those who
make large campaign contributions are typically said to have access.
2. Lobbying; getting information to key decision makers at critical times.

ACCOUNTABILITY:
A political principle according to which agencies or organizations, such as
those in government, are subject to some form of external control, causing
them to give a general accounting of and for their actions; an essential
concept in democratic public administration.
ACCOUNTING:
The process of classifying, measuring, and interpreting financial
transactions. Cash accounting is the recording of transactions at the time
the payment is actually made; accrual accounting means that revenues are
recorded when they are earned and expenses are recorded as they are
incurred.

ACT:
A written bill formally passed by a legislature, such as the U.S. Congress,
and signed by an executive, such as the U.S. president. An act is a bill from
its introduction until its passage by a legislature. An act becomes a law;
becomes a formal statute, when it is signed by (or passed over the veto of)
a chief executive, such as the U.S. president. 2. A bill that has been passed
by only one house of a legislature.

ACTING:
Temporary, for example, someone might be the acting director of a
government agency.
Acting appointments are sometimes automatic, as when a lieutenant
governor is the acting governor whenever the elected governor leaves the
state.

ACTIVIST:
One who is seriously and passionately involved in politics by running for
office, mobilizing support for issues, participating in campaigns, and so on.

AD HOC:
A Latin term meaning temporarily; for this one time. It is sometimes used to
criticized methods that substitute for standard procedures.

AD INTERIM:
A Latin term meaning in the meantime. A public official is ad interim when
serving the unexpired term of a predecessor (who has died, resigned, or
been removed) until a permanent official can be appointed or elected.
ADJOURNMENT:
The putting off of a business to another time or place; the decision of a
court, legislature, or other group to stop meeting either temporarily or
permanently.

ADJUDICATION:
1. The resolution of a dispute by means of judicial or quasi-judicial
processing in which the parties are able to present evidence and reasoned
arguments.
2. The formal pronouncing and recording of the decisions of a court or
quasi-judicial entity.

ADJUSTED GROSS INCOME:

An income tax term referring to the money a person earns minus allowable
deductions for certain expenses for travel, work, business, moving, etc.

ADMINISTERED PRICES:
Prices determined by other than market forces such as those set by
monopolies, cartels, or governments.

ADMINISTRATION:
1. The management and direction of the affairs of governments and
institutions.
2. A collective term for all policy making officials of a government.
3. The execution and implementation of public policy.
4. The time in office of a chief executive such as a president, governor, or
mayor.
5. The supervision of the estate of a dead person to pay taxes and assign
assets to heirs.

ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNTABILITY:
That aspect of administrative responsibility by which officials are held
answerable for general notions of democracy and morality as well as for
specific legal mandates.
ADMINISTRATIVE AGENCY:
1. A government organization set up to implement a law.
2. Any civilian government body (board, bureau, department, or individual),
other than a court or legislature, that deals with the rights of private parties
by adjudication, rulemaking, investigation,
prosecuting, and so on.

ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS OF TAXATION:

Costs related to administering the tax system.

ADMINISTRATIVE DISCRETION:
The ability of individual administrators in a bureaucracy to make significant
choices affecting management and operation of programs for which they
are responsible; particularly evident in separation-of-powers systems.

ADMINISTRATIVE DUE PROCESS:

Term encompassing a number of points in administrative law that require
that the administrative procedures of government agencies and regulatory
commissions, as they affect private parties, be based upon written
guidelines that safeguard individual rights and protect against the arbitrary
or inequitable exercise of government authority.

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW:
1. That branch of law concerned with the procedures by which
administrative agencies make rules and adjudicate cases; the conditions
under which these actions can be reviewed by courts.
2. The legislation that creates administrative agencies.
3. The rules and regulations promulgated by administrative agencies.
4. The law governing judicial review of administrative actions.

ADMINISTRATIVE MORALITY:
The use of ethical, political, or social precepts to create standards by which
the quality of public administration may be judged; such as the standards of
honesty, responsiveness, efficiency effectiveness, competence, effect on
individual rights, adherence to democratic procedures, and social equity.
ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER:
A directive carrying the force of law issued by an administrative agency
after adjudication.

ADMINISTRATIVE REMEDY:
A means of enforcing a right by going to an administrative agency either for
help or for a decision. People are often required to exhaust all
administrative remedies by submitting their problems to the proper agency
before taking their cases to court.

ADMINISTRATOR:
1. A manager.
2. The head of a government agency.
3. Someone appointed by a court to handle a deceased person's estate.
4. Anyone with fiduciary responsibility.

AD VALOREM TAXES:
Those levied as a percentage of product price.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PLAN:

An organization's written plan to remedy past discrimination against, or
underutilization of, women and minorities. The plan itself usually consists of
a statement of goals, timetables for achieving them, and specific program
efforts.

AGENDA SETTING:
1. The process of deciding what issues will be considered at a formal
meeting.
2. The process by which ideas or issues come up through the various
political processes to wind up on the agenda of a political institution, such
as a legislature or court. The process makes extensive use of the mass
media to take a relatively unknown or unsupported issue and through
publicity expand the numbers who care about the issue, so an institution
whether it be city hall or the U.S. Congress, is forced to take some action.
ALLOCATIONAL EFFECTS:
The ways in which policies influence the use of resources.

ALLOCATION FUNCTION:
The shifting of resources into preferred (and out of non-preferred) areas.

AMENDMENT:
1. A change in a prior law by the enactment of a new law.
2. A change in a bill during its time of consideration in a legislature.
3. A provision of a constitution adopted since its original ratification.

AMICUS CURIAE:
A Latin term for friend of the court; any person or organization allowed
participating in a lawsuit who would not otherwise have a right to do so.
Participation is usually limited to filing a brief on behalf of one side or the
other.

ANARCHISM:
The belief that government and its administrative institutions are
intrinsically evil and should be abolished (typically by violence) so they can
be replaced by arrangements not corrupted by exploitative and oppressive
governments.

APOLITICAL:
1. Outside of politics; not concerned with political dominance; apathetic
toward voting or politics.
2. Nonpartisan; not affiliated with a political party.

APPEAL:
1. Any proceeding or request to a higher authority that a lower authority's
decision be reviewed.
2. A formal request to a higher court that it review the actions of a lower
court.
3. A challenge to a ruling made by a presiding officer of a legislature. If the
challenge is supported by a majority vote of the legislators, the initial ruling
is overridden.

APPOINTMENT:
A non-elected government job. Most jurisdictions offer several kinds of
appointments. A noncompetitive appointment is government employment
obtained without competing with others, in the sense that is done without
regard to civil service registers.

APPORTIONMENT:
Process by which funds are allocated to agencies for specific portion of the
year.

APPROPRIATION:
Funds set aside by a legislature to pay for something authorized by law.

AUTHORITY:
Power defined according to a legal and institutional framework, and vested
in a formal structure (a nation, organization, profession); power exercised
through recognized, legitimate channels.

AUTHORIZING LEGISLATION:
Legislation action that permits establishment or continuation of a particular
program or agency.

AUTOCRACY:
Government by one.

AVERAGE TAX RATE:

Calculated by dividing tax liability by taxable income.

BASE:
The point from which most budgetary calculations begin, generally that
appropriation which the agency received in the previous fiscal year, with
the expectation that spending in each agency will approximate the existing
level of expenditures.

Benchmarking:

“It is the process of measuring an organization''s internal processes then

identifying, understanding, and adapting outstanding practices from other
organizations considered to be best-in-class". Most business processes are
common throughout industries. For example NASA has the same basic
Human Resources requirements for hiring and developing employees as
does American Express. British Telecom has the same Customer
Satisfaction Survey process as Brooklyn Gas. These processes, albeit from
different industries, are all common and can be benchmarked very
effectively. It's called "getting out of the box”. Thus, Benchmark is a
standard by which something can be measured or judged.

BASE BROADENING:
Increasing the tax base to eliminate or reduce tax expenditures.

BENEFIT-COST RATIO:
The ratio of the present value of benefits over the present value of costs.

BENFITE PRINCIPLE:
Taxation principle whereby taxes are assigned on the basis of benefits
received.

Best Practice:

Based on the report of the Preparatory Committee for the United Nations
Conference on Human Settlements to the General Assembly (A/50/37),

“Best practices”:

 Should demonstrate a positive and tangible impact on improving the

living environment of people;
  should be based on partnerships between the public, private and
civil society sectors;
 Should be socially, economically and environmentally sustainable
focusing on “best practices” means accumulating and applying
knowledge about what works and what does not work in different
situations and contexts. It is both the lessons learned and the
continuing process of learning, feedback, reflection and analysis.

BLOCK GRANTS:
Grants in which the money can be used for nearly any purpose within a
specific function field.

BOND:
Promise to repay a certain amount (principal) at a certain time (maturity
date) at a particular rate of interest.

BOUNDED RATIONALITY:
Seeking the best possible solution, but not necessarily the most rational
from a purely economic standpoint.

BUDGET DEFICIT:
When public spending exceeds tax revenues.

BUDGET SURPLUS:
When tax revenues exceed public spending.

BUREAUCRACY:
A formal organizational arrangement characterized by division of labor, job
specialization with no functional overlap, exercise of authority through a
vertical hierarchy (chain of command) and a system of internal rules,
regulations, and record keeping; the administrative branch of government
(national, state, local).

CAPACITY:
The ability of individuals, institutions and societies to perform functions,
solve problems, and set and achieve objectives in a sustainable manner
(UNDP, 2002). There are three levels at which capacity should be
developed: Individual (experience, knowledge, technical level),
Organizational (organizational systems and procedures), and Systemic or
related to the enabling environment (policies, legislation, social norms,
etc.).

CAPACITY BUILDING:

Capacity building refers to building capacity in situations where there is no

capacity (like, for example, post-conflict reconstruction of public
administration, UNDP, 2002) to evaluate and address the crucial questions
related to policy choices and modes of implementation among development
options, based on an understanding of environment potentials and limits
and of needs perceived by the people of the country concerned. It
encompasses the country’s human, scientific, technological, organizational,
institutional, and resource capabilities.

CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT:

Capacity development is the central process of long-term development. It is

the process through which the ability of individuals, institutions and
societies to perform functions, solve problems, and set and achieve
objectives in a sustainable manner is developed and maintained over time
(UNDP, 2002). In other words, it involves the acquisition of ability by an
institution, organization, group or individual to perform a function or group
of functions. And it allows them to do this regularly in an efficient, effective
and sustainable manner.

Capital Budgeting : The separation of expenditures that produce long-

term benefits, especially those involving the construction of public facilities,
from the annual operating costs of government the process for reviewing
expenditure decisions for capital projects and deciding on the methods for
financing them, usually through the sale of bonds.

CAPITAL GAINS:
Increases in the value of assets realized at the time of their sale.

CAPITAL GRANTS:
Grants for use in construction or renovation.

CASH TRANSFERS:
Transfer policies that give money to recipients.

CATEGORICAL OR PROJECT GRANTS:

Grants requiring that the money may be spent for only a limited purpose;
typically available on a competitive basis.

CITIZEN PARTICIPATION:
The involvement of citizens in a wide range of administrative policymaking
activities, including the determination of levels of service, budget priorities,
and the acceptability of physical construction projects, in order to orient
government programs toward community needs, build public support, and
encourage a sense of cohesiveness within neighborhoods.

CIVIL SERVICE:

Body of government employees entrusted with the administration of the

country, and mandated to carry out the policy of the government of the day.

CIVIL SOCIETY:

Civil society includes voluntary civic and social associations that are not
part of the state, private sector or the extended family. Each civil society
organization, and its members, may be seeking to advance broad social
interests, narrow group interests, or even narrower individual interests
(pecuniary or recreational). (Citizen Participation and Pro-Poor Budgeting,
DPADM-UNDESA, United Nations, 2005).

Civil society is a vital component of governance and decentralization, the

one component that is supposed to vigilantly hold those in power
accountable and to promote democracy. Simply put, civil society is that
sphere of action independent of the State, within the realm of civil
organizations, capable of stimulating resistance to and change in
undemocratic regimes.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM:

Civil service reform, which implies developing the capacity of the civil
service to fulfill its mandate, defined to include issues of recruitment and
promotion, pay, number of employees, performance appraisal and related
matters, still constitutes the main part of national program of public
administration reform. Civil service reform has historically focused on the
need to contain the costs of public sector employment through
retrenchment and restructuring, but has broadened towards focusing on the
longer-term goal of creating a government workforce of the right size, with
the appropriate mix of skills, and the right motivation, professional ethos,
client focus and accountability.

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING:
The process by which an agent chosen by public employees negotiates a
formal labor agreement or settles day-to-day labor disputes on behalf of the
employees in the areas of wages, benefits, working conditions, and
administrative policy with parties representing the top politically elected or
appointed executives.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT:
An approach to the administration of social and economic development
programs in which government officials are dispatched to the field to act as
catalysts at the local level, encouraging local residents to form groups,
define their own needs, and develop self-help projects. The government
provides technical and material assistance and helps the community
establish institutions, such as farm cooperatives, to carry on the
development programs after the officials have left.

Communication Technology

Technology used to transmit information. Thus, in the context of “e-

government”, communication technology primarily refers to computer
networks such as the internet and other data connections, but also includes
fax, telephone, mobile phone. See also information technology.

COMPARABLE WORTH:
Notion that men and women in jobs that are not identical but require similar
levels of skill and training should be paid equally.

CONSTITUENCY:
Any group or organization interested in the work and actions of a given
official, agency, or organization, and a potential source of support for it;
also, the interest (sometimes geographic area) served by an elected or
appointed public official.

CONSTITUENT POLICY:
Policy designed to benefit the public generally or to serve the government.

COHESION:
Degree to which members of a group are uniformly committed to the group
and its goals.

CONSUMER SURPLUS:
The difference between maximum possible expenditures and actual
expenditures.

CONTINGENCY APPROACH:
The use of different administrative strategies under different conditions; the
study of the relationship between factors such as the task an agency
performs or the technology it uses and the style of supervision, type of
organizational design, and other administrative strategies that will work
best given those factors.

CONTINUING RESOLUTION:
Resolution permitting the government to continue operating until an
appropriations measure is passed.
COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM:
Greater sharing of responsibilities between federal and state governments.

CO-OPTATION:
Alliance building between an administrative agency and a clientele group in
which the clientele group is allowed to influence agency policy making, in
return for which the clientele group tacitly agrees to support the general
mission of the agency, provide it with political support, and defend the
agency against assaults on its powers, programs, or budget.

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE:

Corporate governance refers to the process of managing and running

companies. It influences how objectives of the company are set and
achieved, how risk is monitored, and assessed, and how performance is
optimized. Good corporate governance structures encourage companies to
value entrepreneurship, innovation, development and exploration, and
provide accountability and control systems commensurate with the risks
involved (Australian Stock Exchange ASX, Principles of Good Corporate
Governance and Best Practice recommendations, March 2003)

CORPORATIONS:
Legal entities created by states, which approve charters submitted by
founders.

CORRUPTION:

Corruption is operationally defined as the misuse of entrusted power for

private gain. Transparency International further differentiates between
"according to rule" corruption and "against the rule" corruption. Facilitation
payments, where a bribe is paid to receive preferential treatment for
something that the bribe receiver is required to do by law, constitute the
former. The latter, on the other hand, is a bribe paid to obtain services the
bribe receiver is prohibited from providing.
COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS:
Technique designed to measure relative gains and losses resulting from
alternative policy or program options; emphasizes identification of the most
desirable cost benefit ratio, in quantitative or other terms.

COST-BENEFIT RATIO:
The proportional relationship between expenditure of a given quantity of
resources and the benefits derived therefrom; a guideline for choosing
among alternatives, of greatest relevance to the rational model of decision
making.

CUTBACK MANAGEMENT:
A management strategy made necessary by the advent of fiscal stress;
tactics can include, among others, systematic priority setting, diversifying
programs, adopting user charges, improving productivity, eliminating weak
programs, and decreasing services.

DEBT CAPACITY:
Value of a city's resources combined with the ability of the government to
draw on them to provide payment.

DECISION ANALYSIS:
Technique where decisions are likely to be made sequentially and under
some degree of uncertainty.

DECISION TREE:
Technique that identifies various possible outcomes, given the risks
associated with each.

DECENTRALIZATION:

Decentralization is commonly regarded as a process through which

powers, functions, responsibilities and resources are transferred from
central to local governments and/or to other decentralized entities. In
practical terms, decentralization is a process of striking a balance between
the claims of the periphery and the demands of the centre.
Decentralization, when appropriately structured, provides an arrangement
through which critical issues (such as those of national unity and
indivisibility, how to safeguard national interests and ensure coordinated
and even development, equity in the distribution of resources, diversity, and
local autonomy) can be reconciled.

DELEGATION:
Assigning tasks to others.

DELEGATION:

Delegation refers to "the transfer of government decision-making and

administrative authority for clearly defined tasks to organizations or firms
that are either under its indirect control or are independent. Most typically,
delegation is done by central government to semi-autonomous
organizations not wholly controlled by the government but legally
accountable to it. Examples of the types of organizations to which
delegation is made include state-owned industrial or manufacturing
enterprises, public utilities, housing, and transport authorities, and urban or
regional development corporations. (John Cohen and Stephen Peterson,
Administrative Decentralization, 1999, Kumarian Press)

Devolution, which is a type of administrative decentralization, "occurs when

authority is transferred by central governments to autonomous local-level
governmental units holding corporate status granted under state
legislation... It is possible to talk about devolution when a unitary system
decides to adopt a new constitution based on states, regions, or
municipalities holding extensive devolved powers (John Cohen and
Stephen Peterson, Administrative Decentralization, 1999, Kumarian Press).

DEMOCRACY:
A political system in which decision making power is widely shared among
members of the society.
DEMOCRACY:

According to Elgstrom and Hyden, democracy is system of government

with the following attributes: (a) There are institutions and procedures
through which citizens can express effective preferences about alternative
policies at the national level and there are institutionalized constraints on
the exercise of power by the executive (competition); (b) There exists
inclusive suffrage and a right of participation in the selection of national
leaders and policies (inclusiveness/participation).

The UNDP Human Development Report, 2002 stated that “For politics and
political institutions to promote human development and safeguard the
freedom and dignity of all people, democracy must widen and deepen”.

DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE:

Some consider democracy as a set of values and democratic governance

as a process of interaction among three sets of actors, from the State, civil
society and the private sector, which implies that governance is based on
fundamental and universally accepted principles, including: participation,
accountability, transparency, rule of law, separation of powers, access,
subsidiarity, equality and freedom of the press. (UN Secretariat paper on
Terminology, CEPA)

DEVOLUTION:

Devolution is the statutory granting of powers from the central government

of a sovereign state to government at a sub national level, such as a
regional, local, or provincial level. Devolution can be mainly financial, e.g.
giving areas a budget which was formerly administered by central
government. However, the power to make legislation relevant to the area
may also be granted.

Transference (as of rights, powers, property, or responsibility) to another;

especially: the surrender of powers to local authorities by a central
government
DIALECTICAL ORGANIZATION:
A post-bureaucratic form of organization designed to be responsive to
clientele needs; dialectical refers to the permanent state of tension between
the tendency toward bureaucratization and the tendency toward
responsiveness to clients, a tension the organization uses to continually
renew itself.

DIFFERENTIAL TAX INCIDENT:

Evaluates the incidence of taxation under the assumption that public
spending does not change.

DIGITAL DIVIDE:

Digital divide is an inequality between groups, broadly construed, in terms

of access to, use of, or knowledge of information and communication
technologies (ICT). The divide inside countries (such as the digital divide in
Pakistan ) can refer to inequalities between individuals, households,
businesses, and geographic areas at different socioeconomic and other
demographic levels, while the Global digital divide designates countries as
the units of analysis and examines the divide between developing and
developed countries on an international scale

DISCRETIONARY SPENDING:
That portion of the budget still open to changes by the president and
Congress.

DISTRIBUTIONAL EFFECTS:
The ways in which policies transfer income from one person to another.

DISTRIBUTIVE POLICY:
Policy involving use of general tax funds to provide assistance and benefits
to individuals or groups.

DIVIDENDS:
Payments made to owners of corporations.

DIVISION OF WORK:
One of the fundamental principles upon which the science of administration
is based; increased specialization in the organization of work in order to
narrow the range of tasks for which each person is responsible, which in
turn increases the need for administrative planning and coordination and
raises the productivity of the organization as a whole.

DUAL FEDERALISM:
Pattern in which federal and state governments are struggling for power
and influenced with little inter-governmental cooperation.

ECONOMIC DEPRECIATION:
The process by which capital resources are actually consumed or made
obsolete.

ECONOMIC INCIDENCE:
Indicates who actually bears the burden of taxation.

ECONOMIES OF SCALE:
When increased levels of production result in decreased average costs of
production.

EFFECTIVENESS:
Extent to which a program is achieving or failing to achieve its stated
objectives.

EFFICIENCY:
Relationship between inputs and outputs.

ENTITLEMENT GRANTS:
Grants that provide assistance to persons who meet certain criteria.

ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS:
Programs that provide a specified set of benefits to those who meet certain
eligibility requirements.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY:

Refers to efforts to eliminate employment discrimination on the basis of
race, ethnic background, sex, age, or physical handicap; ensures that all
persons have an equal chance to compete for employment and promotions
based on job qualifications.

EQUALITY:
The idea that all persons have an equal claim to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness.

EQUITY:
A criterion for allocating resources on the basis of fairness.

E-Governance

E-governance can be defined as the application of ICT (Information,

Communication, and Technology) tools in (1) the interaction between
government and citizens and businesses, and (2) in internal government
operations to simplify and improve democratic governance

 E-Governance is the public sector’s use of information and

communication technologies with the aim of improving information
and service delivery, encouraging citizen participation in the
decision-making process and making government more accountable,
transparent and effective.
 The concept of electronic governance chosen by the Council of
Europe covers the use of electronic technologies in three areas of
public action: - Relations between the public authorities and civil
society - Functioning of the public authorities at all stages of the
democratic process (electronic democracy) - The provision of public
services (electronic public services)
E-GOVERNMENT:

E-government is the application of Information and Communication

Technology (ICTs) within Public Administration to optimize its internal and
external functions. (Source: DPADM/DESA, 2003).

E-Government refers to the use by government agencies of information

technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile
computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens,
businesses, and other arms of government. (Source: World Bank, 2009).

ENGAGED GOVERNANCE:

Engaged governance is ‘an institutional arrangement that links people more

directly to the decision-making processes in a manner that does not by-
pass the representational democracy but complements it.’ (United Nations).

Engaged governance enables citizens to influence more directly the

decision-making process of the State so as to increase their influence on
public policies and program with a view to ensuring a more positive impact
on their social and economic lives. It has become an increasingly
significant feature of public governance in the past ten years.

 Driven initially by new public management techniques in both the

developed and developing countries and by d-nor agencies in the
developing world, it has become a practical enhancement to
representative democracy, a keystone to democratization and crucial
to the rebuilding of post-conflict states.

 Enhanced civic engagement in public affairs has the potential to yield

pro-poor benefits, re-arrange political institutions of decision-making,
deepen democracy, create new citizenship values, and enhance
accountability and transparency in public governance and indeed,
build trust in government. The report emphasizes that it is no longer
 a question of whether participation works or if it is necessary, rather
how it should be done. (UNDESA 2008 World Public Sector Report)

E-PARTICIPATION

E-participation refers both to government programs that encourage

participation from the citizen and the willingness of the citizen to do so. It
encompasses both the demand and the supply side. E-participation, as
defined in the UN Global Reports, aims to achieve these objectives through
the means of: a. Increasing e-information to citizens for decision making; b.
Enhancing e-consultation for deliberative and participatory processes; and
c. Supporting e-decision making by increasing the input of citizens in
decision making.

EVALUATION:
The use of research techniques to measure the past performance of a
specific program--in particular, the program's impact on the conditions it
seeks to modify--for the purposes of changing the operation of the program
so as to improve its effectiveness at achieving its objectives.

EXECUTIVE ORDER:
A presidential mandate directed to and governing, with the effect of law, the
actions of government officials and agencies.

EXPERT SYSTEMS:
Computer programs that mimic the decision making processes of human
experts within a particular field.

EXTERNAL COSTS:
Those costs imposed by majorities on minorities.

FEDERALISM:
A constitutional division of governmental power between a central or
national government and regional governmental units (such as states), with
each having some independent
authority over its citizens.

FEDERALISM:

A system of government in which power is divided between a central

authority and constituent political units. “Unlike a unitary state, sovereignty
is constitutionally split between at least two territorial levels so that units at
each level have final authority and can act independently of the others in
some area. Citizens thus have political obligations to two authorities. The
allocation of authority between the sub-unit and center may vary, typically
the center has powers regarding defense and foreign policy, but sub-units
may also have international roles. The sub-units may also participate in
central decision-making bodies”

FIDUCIARY FUNDS:
Funds used when government must hold assets for individuals or when
government holds resources to be transmitted to another organization.

FISCAL CENTRALIZATION: The degree to which government

responsibilities are borne by the
central government.

FISCAL POLICY:
Public policy concerned with the impact of government taxation and
spending on the economy.

FISCAL STRESS:
A condition confronting increasing numbers of governments and public
agencies, resulting from a combination of economic inflation, declining
productivity, slower economic growth, and taxpayer resistance to
shouldering a larger tax burden; a prime cause for the need to engage in
"cutback management."
FISCAL YEAR (FY):
Government's basic accounting period.

FOREIGN SHARE OF DEBT:

That share of the national debt held by foreigners.

FORMAL THEORIES OF ORGANIZATION:

Theories stressing formal, structural arrangements within organizations,
and "correct" or "scientific" methods to be followed in order to achieve the
highest degree of organizational efficiency; examples include Weber's
theory of bureaucracy and Taylor's scientific management approach.

FORMULA GRANTS:
Grants that employ a specific division rule to indicate how much money any
given jurisdiction will receive.

FREE RIDERS: Individuals who let others pay for goods they themselves
consume.

"GARBAGE CAN" theory of organizational choice: A theory of

organizational decision making
applicable to organizations where goals are unclear, technologies are
imperfectly understood,
histories are difficult to interpret, and participants wander in and out; such
"organized anarchies"
operate under conditions of pervasive ambiguity, with so much uncertainty
in the decision making process that traditional theories about coping with
uncertainty do not apply.

GENERATIONAL ACCOUNTING:
A method of recording long-term liabilities in order to measure their impact
on future generations.

GIFT TAXES:
Taxes imposed on the transfer of wealth while a taxpayer is living.

GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

Global governance may be defined as the complex of formal and informal

institutions, mechanisms, relationships, and processes between and
among States through which collective interests at the global level are
articulated, rights and obligations are established, and differences are
mediated.

GLOBALIZATION:

Globalization is increased global integration and interdependence. It has a

multidimensional character: economic, political, social, and cultural. It is
characterized by unprecedented rapid flows of goods and services: private
capital, circulation of ideas and tendencies and the emergence of new
social and political movements. (UNDESA, World Public Sector Report
New York, 2001)

GOAL ARTICULATION:
A process of defining and clearly expressing goals generally held by those
in an organization or group; usually regarded as a function of organization
or group leaders; a key step in developing support for official goals.

GOAL CONGRUENCE:
Agreement on fundamental goals in the context of an organization, refers to
agreement among leaders and followers in the organization on central
objectives; in practice, its absence in many instances creates internal
tension and difficulties in goal definition.

GOOD GOVERNANCE

Good governance entails sound public sector management (efficiency,

effectiveness and economy), accountability, exchange and free flow of
information (transparency), and a legal framework for development (justice,
respect for human rights and liberties) (World Bank). In seeming agreement
with the World Bank, the Overseas Development Administration of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (now the Department
for International Development), defines good governance by focusing on
four major components namely legitimacy (government should have the
consent of the governed); accountability (ensuring transparency, being
answerable for actions and media freedom); competence (effective
policymaking, implementation and service delivery); and respect for law
and protection of human rights.

GOVERNANCE

Governance is “the exercise of economic, political and administrative

authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. It comprises the
mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups
articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations
and mediate their differences” (UNDP, 1997).

GOVERNMENT

The term government broadly means the organization of public authorities

responsible for governing a society. The way state’s fundamental functions
are allocated among institutions and the relations between them, according
to their respective constitutional framework, determines the type of
government of each state (e.g. in democracy, functions are usually divided,
more or less rigorously, in three branches or powers: executive, legislative
and judiciary).

Commonly, government also indicates all institutions, at national, regional

or local/municipal level, responsible for executive functions, dealing with
day-by-day administration and implemented through bureaucratic
structures. At national level, government is generally the cabinet of
members (ministers or secretaries, etc.) responsible for policies referred to
different matters, under the guide of a leader (president, prime minister,
head of state, etc.).

GOVERNMENT FAILURE:
When a public policy results in an inefficient or inequitable outcome.

GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED ENTERPRISES (GSEs):

Off-budget government agencies that reallocate resources in credit
markets.

GOVERNMENT REFORM

Government reforms can be implemented at the constitutional level and

deal with issues such as re-allocation of primary institutions’ powers (e.g.
by strengthening powers of the cabinet and/or of prime minister) or change
of “checks and balances” system over the exercise of respective functions
by the executive, legislative and judiciary powers. Government reforms can
also focus on the executive power.

 They can be constituted by a multiplicity of measures like merger

and/or suppression of bodies entitled with similar missions (e.g.
ministries or departments), creation of new bodies (e.g. agencies,
offices, commissions, etc.), construction of inter-ministerial
coordination systems, change of inter-governmental relations
between central and sub-national governments, decentralization of
service delivery responsibilities to regions and local governments. In
this sense, reforms may be set in constitutional or legislative acts and
amendments and have unavoidably to do with administrative
functions as well as affecting the so called "machinery of
government" (i.e. the structures of the government and their
executive functions).

 Such reforms take place with the aim to eradicate obsolescence of

public administration and to make it more efficient by reallocating and
streamlining public tasks, by reducing costs, by updating offices,
procedures and responsibilities of civil servants and public managers.

GRANTS:
Transfers of money (and/or property) from one government to another.
GROSS FEDERAL DEBT:
The debt held by federal government agencies plus that held by the public.

GROSS INCOME:
Sum of all income sources subject to taxation.

HIERARCHY:
A characteristic of formal bureaucratic organizations; a clear vertical "chain
of command" in which each unit is subordinate to the one above it and
superior to the one below it; one of the most common features of
governmental and other bureaucratic organizations.

HIERARCHY

A characteristic of formal bureaucratic organizations a clear vertical "chain

of command" in which each unit is subordinate to the one above it and
superior to the one below it one of the most common features of
governmental and other bureaucratic organizations.

HUMAN CAPITAL

The set of skills which an employee acquires on the job, through training
and experience, and which increase that employee's value in the
marketplace is human capital. Human capital refers to the properties of
individuals.

 As reported by Gary Becker, an expert in human capital at the

University of Chicago, “To most people capital means a bank
account, a hundred shares of IBM stock, assembly lines or steel
plants in the Chicago area. These are all forms of capital in the sense
that they are assets that yield income and other useful outputs over
long periods of time.

 But these tangible forms of capital are not the only ones. Schooling, a
computer training course, expenditures of medical care and lectures
 on the virtues of punctuality and honesty also are capital. That is
because they raise earnings, improve health or add to a person’s
good habits over much of his lifetime. Therefore, economists regard
expenditures on education, training, medical care and so on as
investments in human capital. They are called human capital because
people cannot be separated from their knowledge, skills, health or
values in the way they can be separated from their financial and
physical assets”.

HUMAN RESOURCES

Human resources is a term with which many organizations describe the

combination of traditionally administrative personnel functions with
performance, Employee Relations and resource planning. The field draws
upon concepts developed in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Human
resources has at least two related interpretations depending on context.
The original usage derives from political economy and economics, where it
was traditionally called labor, one of four factors of production. The more
common usage within corporations and businesses refers to the individuals
within the firm, and to the portion of the firm's organization that deals with
hiring, firing, training, and other personnel issues.

HORIZONTAL EQUITY:
All individuals with identical abilities to pay are assigned identical tax
burdens.

HUMAN RELATIONS THEORIES OF ORGANIZATION:

Theories stressing workers' noneconomic needs and motivations on the job
that seek to identify these needs and how to satisfy them; focused on
working conditions and social interactions among workers.

INCREMENTALISM:
A model of decision making that stresses making decisions through limited
successive comparisons, in contrast to the rational model; also focuses on
simplifying choices rather than aspiring to complete problem analyses, on
"satisfying" rather than "maximizing."

INDEPENDENT AGENCIES:
Agencies intentionally created outside the normal cabinet organization.

INDIVIDUALISM:

The idea that the dignity and integrity of the individual is of supreme
importance.

INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY BUILDING:

At the individual level, capacity-building involves establishing the conditions

under which public servants are able to embark on a continuous process of
learning and adapting to change — building on existing knowledge and
skills and enhancing and using them in new directions. This requires a new
approach to human resources management and also points to the
importance of knowledge management as the new vehicle for increased
learning.

INNOVATION

Innovation is a creative idea and implementation, which is different from

invention. It is the act of conceiving and implementing a new way of
achieving a result and/or performing work. An innovation may involve the
incorporation of new elements, a new combination of existing elements or a
significant change or a departure from traditional ways of doing things. It
refers to new products, new policies and programmes, new approaches
and new processes. Public sector management innovation may also be
defined as the development of new policy designs and new standard
operating procedures by public organizations to address public policy
problems. Thus, an innovation in public administration may be an effective,
creative and unique answer to new problems or a new answer to old
problems.

INTEREST GROUP:
A private organization representing a portion (usually small) of the general
adult population; it exists in order to pursue particular public policy
objectives and seeks to influence government activity so as to achieve its
particular objectives.

INTERGOVERNMENTAL COMPETITION:
A fiscal structure characterized by many competing governments.

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS:
All the activities and interactions occurring between or among
governmental units of all types and levels within the American federal
system.

INTERJURISDICTIONAL EXTERNALITIES:
Arise when governments fail to fully account for costs and benefits imposed
on citizens of other governments.

INTERNAL RATE OF DISCOUNT:

Discount rate at which the present value of a project is zero.

INTERNALIZATION OF COSTS:
The allocation of resources by private markets on the basis of full social
costs.

INTERORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS:
Patterns of relationships within and among various groups and
organizations working in a single policy area.

INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY BUILDING

At the institutional level, a similar approach needs to be applied. Rather

than creating new institutions, often based on foreign blueprints, support
should focus on the modernization of their machinery, with a priority on
systems and processes. In this process, capacity development for policy
support, organizational effectiveness and revenue and expenditure
management is crucial.

INSTITUTION- BUILDING

The process of designing, through the establishment of formal rules and

their underlying values, the public institutions necessary to achieve the
goals set by a community.

INTEGRITY

In public administration, integrity refers to “honesty” or “trustworthiness” in

the discharge of official duties, serving as an antithesis to “corruption” or
“the abuse of office.” Integrity is a key element that completes the notion of
accountability and transparency. It can also be defined as incorruptibility,
an unimpaired condition or soundness and is synonymous to honesty.

IRON TRIANGLE:
Term given to a coalition of interest groups, agency personnel, and
members of Congress created to exert influence on a particular policy
issue.

JURIDICAL DEMOCRACY:
The restoration of the rule of law and the requirements of administrative
formality in which a corps of professional administrators would implement
detailed legislative policies through formal administrative procedures
instead of receiving broad delegations of power and developing
governmental policy themselves in conjunction with special interest groups.

JURISDICTION:
In bureaucratic politics, the area of programmatic responsibility assigned to
an agency by the legislature or chief executive; also, a term used to
describe the territory within the boundaries of a government entity (as a
local jurisdiction).

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Knowledge management refers to how an organization gathers, organizes,
produces, shares, and analyzes its knowledge in terms of resources,
documents, and people skills. Strategies and processes designed to
identify, capture, structure, value, leverage, and share an organization's
intellectual assets to enhance its performance and competitiveness. It is
based on two critical activities:

(1) capture and documentation of individual explicit and tacit knowledge,

and

(2) its dissemination within the organization.

LACK OF EXCLUSION:
Characteristic of public goods making it difficult of impossible to restrict the
enjoyment of benefits to any individual.

LEARNING ORGANIZATION

Learning organization is one that places considerable emphasis on

developing strategies and techniques for sharing Information and creating
new Knowledge in order to gain a competitive advantage.

LEGISLATIVE INTENT:
The purposes and objectives of a legislative body, given concrete form in
its enactment (though actual intent may change over time); the
bureaucracy is assumed to follow legislative intent in implementing laws.

LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT:
The process by which a legislative body continually supervises the work of
the bureaucracy in order to ensure its conformity with legislative intent.

LEGISLATIVE VETO:

A statutory provision that gives legislature the authority to approve or

disapprove certain executive actions.
LIBERAL DEMOCRACY:
A fundamental form of political arrangement, founded on the concepts of
popular sovereignty and limited government.

LIBERTY:
The idea that individual citizens of a democracy should have a high degree
of self determination.

LIMITED GOVERNMENT:
A central concept of American politics, holding that because government
poses a fundamental threat to individual liberties, it must be carefully
limited in its capacity to act arbitrarily; the Founders of American
government believed it was to be achieved through separation of powers,
checks and balances, federalism, and judicial review.

LINE-ITEM BUDGET:
Budget format for listing categories of expenditures along with amounts
allocated to each.

LOAN GUARANTEES:
Loans guaranteed by the public sector.

LOCAL GOVERNANCE

If we understand governance as a multifaceted compound situation of

institutions, systems, structures, processes, procedures, practices,
relationships, and leadership behaviour in the exercise of social, political,
economic, and managerial/administrative authority in the running of public
or private affairs, then “local governance” refers to the exercise of authority
at the local community level.

 What determines whether governance is local or not is the extent to

which the local population is involved in the steering, i.e., in
determining the direction according to their local needs, problems,
 and priorities and the level to which they are the beneficiaries of the
governance.

 In this sense, governance ceases to be a matter of government only.

It is a situation of multiple inter-linkages and relationships in which
different and various actors in the public and private sectors as well
as civil society at the local, national and international levels play
different roles, sometimes mutually conflicting and sometimes
mutually reinforcing and complementary focusing on satisfying the
interests and needs of the local community.

 What is local about local governance need not be the actor but
rather the needs, interests, priorities, participation, control and well-
being of the local population. It is important to have this in mind.
Otherwise, we will remain in the structural constraints of equating
local governance to local government. For the sake of argument, we
will recall that not all local governments work in the interests of the
local populations. Some local governments can become dictatorial
and exploit the local populations to serve the interests of local
leaders

LONG-LIVED RESOURCES:
Assets with a useful life of one year or more.

LUMP SUM TAX:

A tax that does not vary with units of goods purchased or sold.

MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES (MBO):

A management technique designed to facilitate goal and. priority-setting,
development of plans, resource allocation, monitoring progress towards
goals, evaluating results, and generating and implementing improvements
in performance.
MERIT PAY:
Increases in salary and wages that are tied to actual quality of work
performed.

MERIT PRINCIPLE:
Concept that selections of government employees should be based on
merit or competence rather than personal or political favoritism.

MERIT SYSTEM:
A professional system of personnel administration, free from political
interference, in which selection and progress in the service are based upon
the performance, expertise, and technical qualifications of each employee,
measured objectively, (often through open, competitive examinations),
accompanied by the development of a position classification and salary
standardization system and administered through offices of personnel
administration and a central civil service commission.

MERIT SYSTEM

The system of appointing and promoting civil service personnel on the

basis of merit rather then on political affiliation, loyalty or patronage.

MODERN ORGANIZATION THEORY:

A body of theory emphasizing empirical examination of organizational
behavior, interdisciplinary research employing varied approaches, and
attempts to arrive at generalizations applicable to many different kinds of
organizations.

MONOPOLY GOVERNMENT:
A public sector characterized by a single government.

NATIONAL CONSUMPTION TAX:

Federal taxes levied on the consumption of goods and services.

NATIONAL DEBT:
The sum of all unpaid public debt.

NATIONALIZATION

Nationalization is the alteration or assumption of control or ownership of

private property by the state. It is historically a more recent development
than and differs in motive and degree from “expropriation” or “eminent
domain,” which is the right of government to take property for particular
public purposes (such as the construction of roads, reservoirs, or
hospitals), normally accompanied by the payment of compensation.

NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES:
When private markets fail to allocate resources on the basis of full social
costs.

NEGATIVE INCOME TAX POLICY:

Provides a minimum amount of income for all members of society.

NET FEDERAL DEBT:

Gross federal debt minus debt held by federal agencies.

NEW PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:

A general movement inspired mainly by younger scholars who challenged
several tenets of public administration, primarily the emphasis upon value-
neutrality in administrative research and practice, and appealed to scholars
and practitioners to take a more proactive role, guided not only by the
search for efficiency, but by a sensitivity to the forces of change, the needs
of clients, and the problems of social equity in service delivery.

NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

According to Osborne and Gaebler (1993), new public management calls

on Government to focus on achieving results rather than primarily
conforming to procedures and to adopt market-like competition, innovations
and entrepreneurial strategies. In order to be market-like, Government and
public administration generally is called upon to be customer-driven and to
rely on market-based mechanisms to deliver public services. New public
management is a global public management reform movement that
redefines the relationship between Government and society that originated
in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland. Spurred by citizen dissatisfaction with government
performance, endemic fiscal problems and seemingly successful
restructuring in the private arena, calls for public sector reform and
reinventing Government became rampant. According to some authors, new
public management calls on public administration to change its culture and
be flexible, innovative, problem-solving, entrepreneurial and enterprising,
as opposed to rule-bound, process-oriented and focused on inputs rather
than results. The contention expressed by supporters of new public
management that public administrators should be conceived as
entrepreneurs, seeking opportunities to create private partnerships and
serve customers has come under criticism. Denhardt and Denhardt argue
that “this perspective of the public administrator is narrow and is poorly
suited to achieve democratic principles such as fairness, justice,
participation and the articulation of shared interest”

NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS:
Organizations prohibited by law from distributing surplus revenues to
individuals.

NONCASH TRANSFERS:
Transfer policies that provide goods or services, such as housing or food,
rather than money.

OFF-BUDGET POLICIES:
Credit and insurance policies that do not directly show up on the
government budget; versus

ON-BUDGET POLICIES:
in which spending and tax policies show up directly on the government
budget.
OLIGARCHY:
Government by the few.

OMBUDSMAN:
Permanent office that receives complaints and acts on behalf of citizens to
secure information, request services, or pursue grievances.

OMBUDSMAN

Ombudsman is a term of Scandinavian origin, then adopted in many

countries and in international organizations. The term indicates a public
body charged with vast powers, including the control on public
administration acts and the redress of complaints against
maladministration.

OPEN SYSTEMS THEORY:

A theory of organization that views organizations not as simple, "closed"
bureaucratic structures separate from their surroundings, but as highly
complex, facing considerable uncertainty in their operations, and constantly
interacting with their environment; assumes that organizational components
will seek an "equilibrium" among the forces pressing on them and their own
responses to those forces.

OPERATING GRANTS:
Grants for use in development and operation of specific programs.

ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT:
A theory of organization that concentrates on increasing the ability of an
organization to solve internal problems of organizational behavior as one of
its routine functions; concerned primarily with identification and analysis of
such problems.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE:
A theory of organization that focuses on those characteristics of an
organization that promote or hinder change; assumes that demands for
change originate in the external environment, and that the organization
should be in the best position to respond to them.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE:
Basic patterns of attitudes, beliefs, and values that underlie an
organization's operation.

ORGANIZATIONAL HUMANISM:
A set of organization theories stressing that work holds intrinsic interest for
the worker, that workers seek satisfaction in their work, that they want to
work rather than avoid it, and that they can be motivated through systems
of positive incentives (such as participation in decision making).

PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY:
A political and philosophical belief in direct involvement by affected citizens
in the processes of governmental decision making; believed by some to be
essential to the existence of democratic government; related term is citizen
participation.

PARTICIPATORY AND PRO-POOR BUDGETING

It is a budgetary process that mainstreams citizens’ participation more

directly in the: budget formulation; budget implementation; budget
monitoring; and budget control and associated with or enabled by the
following:

(i) Enabling environment for participatory budgeting, which is a set of

interrelated conditions, including legal, bureaucratic, fiscal,
informational, political and cultural aspects, which facilitates civil
society organizations and other development actors to engage in
budget processes in a sustained and effective manner;
(ii) Pro-poor budgeting, which is a process that focuses budget priority
setting, budget allocation and budget implementation on achieving
pro-poor objectives, such as goals in the health, education, water
 and sanitation sectors. It is a process that involves legislative and
executive branches, civil society, the business community and the
media. Pro-poor budgeting can be a bottom-up approach (when
the initiative starts from the community) or top-down approach
(when the initiative starts from the legislative/executive);
(iii) Gender budgeting, which is a process that focuses in setting
budget priorities and allocation based on well-designed gender
policies and gender-related issues;
(iv) Human rights budgeting, which is a process that focuses in setting
budget priorities and allocation on policies related to human rights
issues. It can be a legislative change/improvement, an institutional
change/improvement, or a policy-setting change/improvement,
involving increased consultations with interest groups;

PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

A political and philosophical belief in direct involvement by affected citizens

in the processes of governmental decision making essential to the
existence of democratic government

PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE

Participatory Governance is the right of every citizen to participate in the

democratic decision-making process, particularly at the level of local
government. More generally, the recent surge of democracy and, indeed,
the emphasis on good governance as a prerequisite to sustained and
equitable development has encouraged greater citizen claims on public
governance; many assume that participation is necessary to promoting the
values of good governance and achieving equitable development.

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL:
Specific evaluation with respect to an individual's progress in completing
specified tasks.

PERFORMANCE AUDITING:
Analysis and evaluation of the effective performance of agencies in
carrying out their objectives.

PERFORMANCE BUDGET:
Budget format organized around programs or activities (rather than the
objects it purchases), including various performance measurements that
indicate the relationship between work actually done and its cost.

PLANNING-PROGRAMMING-BUDGETING SYSTEM (PPBS):

Effort to connect planning, systems analysis, and budgeting in a single
exercise.

PLURALISM:
A social and political concept stressing the appropriateness of group
organization, and diversity of groups and their activities, as a means of
protecting broad group interests in society; assumes that groups are good
and that bargaining and competition among them will benefit the public
interest.

POLICY:
Statement of goals and intentions with respect to a particular problem or
set of problems.

POLICY ANALYSIS:
Process of researching or analyzing public problems to provide policy
makers with specific information about the range of available policy options
and advantages and disadvantages of different approaches.

POLICY ANALYSTS: Persons who provide important information about

public programs through research into the operations and impacts of the
programs.

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
A general political and governmental process of carrying out programs in
order to fulfill specified policy objectives; a responsibility chiefly of
administrative agencies

POLICY ENTREPRENEUR:
A person willing to invest person time, energy, and money in pursuit of
particular policy hanges.

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION:
A general political and governmental process of carrying out programs in
order to fulfill specified policy objectives; a responsibility chiefly of
administrative agencies, under chief executive and/or legislative guidance;
also the activities directed toward putting a policy into effect.

POLITICAL ECONOMY APPROACH:

Focusing on politics and economies as categories for analyzing
organizational behavior.

POLITICS/ADMINISTRATION DICHOTOMY:
The belief, growing out of the early administrative reform movement and its
reaction against the spoils system, which held that political interference in
administration would erode the opportunity for administrative efficiency, that
the policy making activities of government ought to be wholly separated
from the administrative functions, and that administrators had to have an
explicit assignment of objectives before they could begin to develop an
efficient administrative system.

POLITICS OF THE BUDGETARY PROCESS:

The requirement that administrators act as advocates for their own
programs during the appropriation process by soliciting outside support,
protecting their budgetary base, and inching ahead with new programs; a
budgetary system that deals with complex problems by relying upon
incremental methods of decision making, information drawn from past
experience rather than analysis, and satisfactory rather than optimal
standards of quality.

POSITION CLASSIFICATION:
Analyzing and organizing jobs on the basis of duties, responsibilities, and
the knowledge and skills required to perform them.

PRIVATIZATION:
Use of nongovernmental agencies to provide goods and services
previously provided by government, also known as "contracting out."

PRIVATIZATION

To transfer to private ownership an economic enterprise or public utility that

has been under state ownership.

PROGRESSIVE TAX:
One that taxes those with higher incomes at a higher rate.

PROPORTIONAL TAX:
One that taxes everyone at the same rate.

PRO-POOR POLICYMAKING:

Pro-poor policymaking is a process that focuses the policy design and

implementation on achieving pro-poor objectives (the last of which are
defined in the Millennium Development Goals).

PROGRAM MANGERS:

Persons ranging from the executive level to the supervisory level who are
in charge of particular government programs.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION:
The management and administration of public programs.
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Public administration has many definitions. According to some authors,

public administration is centrally concerned with the organization of
government policies and programmes as well as the behavior of officials
(usually non-elected) formally responsible for their conduct.

According to UNDP, public administration has two closely related

meanings:

(a) The aggregate machinery (policies, rules, procedures, systems,

organizational structures, personnel and so forth) funded by the State
budget and in charge of the management and direction of the affairs of the
executive government, and its interaction with other stakeholders in the
State, society and external environment;

(b) The management and implementation of the whole set of government

activities dealing with the implementation of laws, regulations and decisions
of the Government and the management related to the provision of public
services

PUBLIC-CHOICE ECONOMICS:
An approach to public administration based on micro-economic theory
which views the citizen as a consumer of government goods and services
and would attempt to maximize administrative responsiveness to citizen
demand by creating a market system for governmental activities in which
public agencies would compete to provide citizens with goods and services.
This would replace the current system under which administrative agencies
in effect act as monopolies under the influence of organized pressure
groups which, the public-choice economists argue, are institutionally
incapable of representing the demands of individual citizens.

PUBLIC BODY
A Public Body is a legal entity which has its own legal personality,
established and recognized by the rule of Law. It has a specific and
relevant role in the processes of national governments or institutions, but it
is not a government department or a formal part of one (although it is
supported in whole or part by public funding, often with little interference
from government in day-to-day business). Public Bodies wield public
functions, established by Law and aimed at the achievement of community
public interests, and implement programs for the public. A legal entity,
usually, is a public body if it has been established and organized by Law (in
relation to a subjective point of view) and if it exercises powers aimed at
community interests (in relation to an objective point of view).

PUBLIC SECTOR

Public sector is a notion used in both policy and legal sciences. From a
legal prospective, it means the persons and organizations engaged in the
fulfillment of public tasks, dealing with the delivery of goods and services to
citizens, in response to their needs and problems, under liability and
discretion of public authorities and under public law and/or with public funds
and/or under formalized public control and regulation.

PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE

Public sector governance has been defined as regimes of laws, rules,

judicial decisions and administrative practices that constrain, prescribe, and
enable the provision of publicly supported goods and services. In this
definition, constitutional institutions are linked to the realities of
policymaking and public management.

PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM

Public sector reform consists of deliberate changes to the structures and

processes of public sector organizations with the objective of improving
their performance. Structural change may include merging or splitting
public sector organizations while process change may include redesigning
systems, setting quality standards and focusing on capacity-building.
PUBLIC MANAGEMENT:
A field of practice and study central to public administration, emphasizing
internal operations of public agencies, focuses on managerial concerns
related to control and direction, such as planning, organizational
maintenance, information systems, personnel management, and
performance evaluation.

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

A field of practice and study central to public administration, emphasizing

internal operations of public agencies, which focuses on managerial
concerns related to control and direction, such as planning, organizational
maintenance, information systems, personnel management, and
performance evaluation.

 Public management considers that government and non-profit

administration resembles private-sector management in some
important ways. As such, there are management tools appropriate in
public and in private domains, tools that maximize efficiency and
effectiveness.

 Good public management can be conceptualized as managing for

inclusion, with a focus on building capacity to achieve results. This,
managers would encourage employees, as well as members of the
general public and other relevant organizations, to work together
towards results over which they may have little direct influence,
achieved by decentralizing authority, and emphasizing
empowerment, teamwork, and continuous improvement to increase
participation, with management control determined by how they
implement participation.

PUBLIC POLICY:
1. The organizing framework of purposes and rationales for government
programs that deal with specified societal problems;
2. The complex of programs enacted and implemented by the government.

PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP

The term “Public Private Partnership” (PPP) means all the formalized types
of relations between the public and the private sectors which aim to ensure
the realization of goals of general interest, as infrastructures and services,
trough the joint funding and the co-operating of public authorities and
private bodies. Involvement of private enterprise (in the form of
management expertise and/or monetary contributions) in the government
projects aimed at public benefit.

RATIONAL MODEL OF DECISION MAKING:

Derived from economic theories of how to make the "best" decisions;
involves efforts to move toward consciously-held goals in a way that
requires the smallest input of scarce resources; assumes the ability to
separate ends from means, rank all alternatives, gather all possible data,
and objectively weigh alternatives; stresses rationality in the process of
reaching decisions.

REDISTRIBUTIVE POLICY:
Policy designed to take taxes from certain groups and give them to another
group.

REGRESSIVE TAX:
One that taxes those with lower incomes at a proportionately higher rate
than those with higher incomes.

REGULATION

Government activity designed to monitor and guide private economic

competition specific actions (characterized as economic regulation) have
included placing limits on producers' prices and practices, and promoting
commerce through grants or subsidies. Other actions emerging more
recently (termed social regulation) have included regulating conditions
under which goods and services are produced and attempting to minimize
product hazards and risks to consumers.

There are many meanings of the term regulation in legal, economic and
social sciences. Some of them are so wide, that include any kind of public
interference in economics, by planning, granting, negotiating with economic
operators, such as setting bodies of laws, administrative rulings, and
precedents referred to environment protection, labour and sanitary
conditions, etc.

REINVENTING GOVERNMENT

This concept emerged out of a debate on the primary responsibilities of

public managers. It prescribes privatization and business-model for
government. Some groups of people describe public administration as a
business—providing a choice of services to citizens, at the lowest possible
cost. “Others believe that public management’s responsibilities go beyond
this, to the preservation of public values such as equity, accountability and
citizen voice. From this debate stem questions about the nature of
citizenship, and the proper relationship between a democratic government
and its citizens. Some scholars contend that there are considerations that
should come before cost and efficiency, and that citizen participation
should be a major factor in decisions. They see the role of the administrator
as very complex: synthesizing the needs of citizens, interest groups,
elected representatives, etc. Social Capital theories recognize the
importance of norms and networks in determining social, political and
economic relations. There can be a positive synergy between citizen
participation and governmental effectiveness. This is why planners place so
much attention on citizen participation

REINVENTING GOVERNMENT:
1. The title of a book written by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler in 1992.
2. Term referring to ideas used in government that are entrepreneurial in
nature whose purpose is to improve government services.
REGULATORY COMMISSION:
Group formed to regulate a particular area of the economy: usually headed
by a group of individuals appointed by the President and confirmed by the
Senate.

REGULATORY POLICY:
Policy designed to limit actions of persons or groups to protect all or parts
of the general public.

RESCISSION:
Presidential decision to permanently withhold funds.

REVENUE SHARING:
Grant pattern in which the money can be used in any way the recipient
government chooses.

RULE MAKING:
Administrative establishment of general guidelines for application to a class
of people or a class of actions at some future time.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT:
A formal theory of organization developed by Frederick Taylor in the early
1900s; concerned with achieving efficiency in production, rational work
procedures, maximum productivity, and profit; focused on management's
responsibilities and on "scientifically" developed work procedures, based
on "time and motion" studies.

SPAN OF CONTROL:
One of the early principles of administration which states that there is an
upper limit to the number of subordinates any administrator can directly
supervise, generally set at twelve, and advises administrators to eliminate
any violations of this principle by reducing the number of officials reporting
to them by either merging certain offices or stretching out the hierarchy.
SPOILS SYSTEM:
A system of hiring personnel based on political loyalty and connections;
can also extend to government contracts and the like; usually takes the
form of rewarding party supporters with government jobs.

STAFF MANAGERS:
Persons who support the work of a program through budgeting and
financial management, personnel and labour relations, and purchasing and
procurement.

STAKEHOLDERS:
The many different persons or interest groups that are involved in a policy
decision and are affected by the results.

STRATEGIC PLANNING:
Matching organizational objectives and capabilities to the anticipated
demands of the environment to produce a plan of action that will ensure
achievement of objectives.

SOCIAL CAPITAL

Social capital refers to the institutions, relationships and norms that shape
the quality and quantity of a society’s social interactions. Social capital is
not just the sum of the institutions that underpin a society; it is the glue that
holds them together.

(Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital

refers to the properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections
among individuals, social networks and the norms of reciprocity and
trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely
related to what some have called “civic virtue”. The difference is that “social
capital” calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when
embedded in a dense network of reciprocal social relations. A society of
many virtuous but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social
capital. Social capital consists of the stock of active connections among
people: the trust, mutual understanding and shared values and behaviours
that bind the members of human networks and communities and make
cooperative action possible)

SOCIO-ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE

Socio-economic governance refers to institutions, institutional

arrangements; procedures and processes; tools and techniques that help
mainstream citizen’s concerns for formulation and implementation of pro-
poor public policies and programmes.

SUBGOVERNMENTS:
The tendency of bureaucrats to seek political support for their programs by
building informal alliances outside of the official hierarchy with groups that
possess resources the bureaucrats lack, primarily with legislative
committees and organized interest or pressure groups
(also known as iron triangles).

SUNSET LAW:
Provision that sets a specific termination date for a program.

SUNSHINE LAW:
Provision that requires agencies to conduct business in public view.

SYSTEM:
Set of regularized interactions configured or "bounded" in a way that
differentiates and
separates them from other actions that constitute the system's
environment.

SYSTEMS THEORY:
A theory of social organizations, holding that organizations--like other
organisms--may behave according to inputs from their environment,
outputs resulting from organizational activity, and feedback leading to
further inputs; also, change in any one part of a group or organizational
system that affects all other parts.

QUANGOS

Any administrative body that is nominally independent but relies on

government funding for example, the British Council (1935), the Equal
Opportunities Commission (1975) in the UK, and the Environmental
Protection Agency (1970) in the USA

TASK FORCES:
Groups brought together to work on specific organizational problems.

THEORY X and THEORY Y:

Two opposing assumptions about people at work that lead to opposing
styles of management. Theory X assumes that most people hate work,
avoid responsibility, prefer to be directed, and have to be controlled and
coerced to put out a fair day's work; Theory Y assumes that people will
seek responsibility, demonstrate a high degree of imagination, and exercise
self-direction if they have a creative, challenging job to which they can
become committed.

WELFARE STATE

Political system based on the premise that the government has the
responsibility for the well being of its citizens, by ensuring that a minimum
standard of living is within everyone's reach. This commitment is translated
into provision of universal and free education, universal medical care,
insurance against disability, sickness, and unemployment, family
allowances for income supplement, and old age pensions. 

WHISTLE-BLOWING:
Making any disclosure of legal violations (especially within public
organizations), mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of
authority, or a danger to public health or safety, whether the disclosure is
made within or outside the formal chain of command.

TRANSPARENCY

Transparency refers to unfettered access by the public to timely and

reliable information on decisions and performance in the public sector, as
well as on governmental political and economic activities, procedures and
decisions

ZERO-BASE BUDGETING:
Budget format that presents information about the efficiency and
effectiveness of existing programs and highlights possibilities for
eliminating or reducing programs by assuming that the minimum funding
level for the agency is zero, thereby requiring agency administrators to
justify all expenditures by the same standard of review that normally are
applied only to new programs or increments above the base.