Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

Good Practices and InnovATIONS in Public Governance
Deepening democracy to provide opportunities not only for improved representation
but also for more active participation and engagement in public affairs requires innovative
institutional mechanisms, processes, and policies.
As a consequence, several countries around the world are attempting to revitalize
their public administration and make it more proactive, more efficient, more accountable,
and especially more service oriented. To accomplish this transformation, governments
are introducing innovations in their organisational structure, practices, capacities,
and working on how to mobilize, deploy, and utilize the human, material,
information, technological, and financial resources for service delivery to remote,
disadvantaged, and challenged people.
While there are efforts all over the world to find innovative ways to improve the performance
of public administration and to empower it to effectively initiate, plan and
implement national development policies and programmes as well as international
and regional agreed development strategies, including the Millennium Development
Goals; there is, also, a strong need to acknowledge and share them at the international
level.
In light of the above, the United Nations Public Service Awards Programme was
launched to promote and support Member States’ efforts to improve public sector
performance. The importance of this international recognition has later been recalled
in 2005, when the United Nations General Assembly “agreed that the United Nations
should promote innovation in government and public administration and stressed the
importance of making more effective use of United Nations Public Service Day and
the United Nations Public Service Awards in the process of revitalizing public administration
by building a culture of innovation, partnership, and responsiveness”
(UN/2005, A/60/L.24, para.7). To capitalize on existing knowledge on how to achieve
development and the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations General
Assembly in 2003 also recommended in Resolution 57/277 that the exchange of experiences
related to the role of public administration in the implementation of internationally
agreed goals, including those contained in the Millennium Declaration, be
encouraged (United Nations, 2003, A/RES/57/277).
4