New Public Management

New Public Management

Introduction

First, I would like to emphasize the surprise I had when I discovered the theoretical governance line and supposedly implemented reforms in my country over which I had noidea. Understand the surprise, because for a student of fifth and final year of Law and Public Administration and Management is shocking that such important terms and concepts are beyond the knowledge accessed in the University.

The fact that NPM is not included in the curricula of Public Management reveals how little impact it has in the country, because so far, once discovered the term and its objectives, I had realized that Spain had undertaken measures based on NPM.

This is because the study of management in Spain is traditionally dominated by Public Law, also by Administrative Law. Only public finances and budget are recognized as serious alternatives. Only from the 1990s there was a qualitative change with the rise of policy analysis and management and organization science. The study of Public Administration and Management in Spain is currently wanted by Law, Political Sciences, Economics and Sociology. It is an interdisciplinary approach and therefore ill-defined field.

New Public Management

The NPM aims to create an efficient and effective administration; in other words, an administration that meets the real needs of citizens at the lowest cost, with the introduction of competition mechanisms that enable customer choice and promote the development of higher quality services. All surrounded by control systems that give full transparency of processes, plans and results, so as to perfect the system of choice, and to facilitate citizen participation.

NPM has four general methods:

- The delegation of decision-making at lower ranks as operational agencies, regional, subnational governments as they are closer to the problem and have clearer objectives.

- A performance orientation starting from inputs and legal compliance through incentives and products.

- Increased customer focus on strategies to inform and listen to the client to understand what people want and respond with good services.

- Increased market orientation, building markets or quasi-markets (through management contracts and personnel), competition between public agencies, collection among agencies and out sourcing, improve performance oriented incentives.

New Public Management in the Spanish public sector

According to Pollitt and Bouckaert (2000), comparisons between countries are often based on the comparison of reforms in three specific areas:

- Policies (selection procedures, compensation, promotion, etc.)

- Changes in the organizational structure (decentralization, reducing bureaucracy, etc.)

- Improvement of financial and control techniques (budgeting, accounting, auditing, management indicators, etc.).

Analysing these actions, Verheijen classifies the reforms on governance in three types:

a) Radical reform, based on the theory of new public management. Overall assumes that private management techniques are superior to the public, and of course, can be imported into governance. Reforms in countries like the UK, New Zealand and Austria.

b) Incremental reform, based on a tiny modification of traditional governance. Small changes such as administrative self-management would be a clear delineation of the politicians in the administration, high stability in the civil service, and promotion systems based on merit. Models of public administration and private management are still significantly different. One example would be the reforms occurred in France.

c) Managerialism moderate, positioned between the two extremes. This type corresponds to the changes made in Ireland or the Netherlands.

While in Finland the actions were likely:

- “Hands on professional management” in the public sector.

- Explicit standards and measures of performance.

- Greater emphasis on output controls.

- Shift to disaggregation of units in the public sector.

- Stress on private-sector styles of management practices.

- Stress on greater discipline and parsimony in resource use.

These are the most important actions taken in Spain:

TRANSPARENCY

EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION

Lists of Services:

Introduced by Royal Decree 1259/1999, of 16 July, in order for citizens to know the services provided by public organizations and quality that are entitled to receive.

CITIZEN PARTICIPATION

Book of Complaints and Suggestions:

Along with the virtual mailbox-tips allows citizens to direct questions and comments to the agencies. Regulated by Royal Decree208/1996.

RULES AND CULTURAL RATIONALIZATION

CULTURAL RATIONALIZATION

Managementby objectives:

General Comptroller of the State Administration states that 'it is implementing a culture of management by objectives with responsibility for results, in which these are evaluated in terms of the resources used..."but the reality is different. Although Spain has advanced in the use of the strategic direction and management by objectives, the trend-based budgetary incrementalism and still maintainance of the traditional model of discussion in various parliamentarians’ forums prevent further development of these directives techniques.

SYSTEM Method:

Designed for performance the evaluation of the administrative units. This method is based on the analysis of endogenous factors of each center manager and allows flexible adaptation to each function, giving this body a support service manager and technical collaboration.

Programme budget:

Program budgeting was introduced in 1984in order to provide rational public spending, but there is no real implementation for the reasons described in the management by objectives.

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