Public Administration Books - Page 15

Measuring the Performance of the Hollow State (Public Management and Change)

David G Frederickson, H. George Frederickson

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Politics -> General AAS

Editorial Review:

This book provides the first in-depth analysis of a major federal management reform under the most difficult conditions for measuring performance and accountability: when government functions are contracted out to third parties. The authors systematically examine the workings of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993, with consideration of the later Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) of 2002 in five agencies in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. These programs represent much of the range of federal government organizational structures and a diverse array of third-party arrangements, including states, native American tribal leaderships, scientists, medical schools, and commercial and non-profit health intermediaries and carriers. The authors explore the development of performance measures in light of the mandates of each program, conflicting statutes, political considerations and obstacles, and conditions of intergovernmental relations (where applicable). Their findings illuminate two major questions in public management today: the uses and limitations of performance measurement as a policy and management tool in government and the management of third-party government.

Reforming Bureaucracy: The Politics of Institutional Choice

J. Knott, C. Miller

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Subjects -> Law -> Administrative Law -> Federal Jurisdiction

Financial Management in the Public Sector: Tools, Applications, And Cases

Xiaohu Wang

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Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Public Finance
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Finance -> General AAS

Editorial Review:

Thoroughly classroom tested, this comprehensive text provides a step-by-step guide on how to use financial management and budgeting tools in the public sector. The book features a practical, case study approach and includes numerous exercises and examples. It is designed as a core text for instructors who want to introduce students to hands-on tools and techniques in courses on Public Financial Management or Public Budgeting. The book covers all the cornerstone topics in the discipline, including Financial Planning, Financial Implementation, and Financial Reporting and Analysis. Each chapter is carefully structured as a self-contained learning module, and includes learning objectives, key concepts, easy-to-use Excel spreadsheet models, a case study, and detailed exercises with answers provided in an appendix.

Performance-Based Budgeting: An ASPA Classic

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Government -> Federal Government

Editorial Review:

Classics of Public Budgeting is the next volume in the ASPA Classics series. It covers the most influential, paramount research articles published on public budgeting and finance. The book will surely be of great interest and use to anyone concerned with public budgeting, and anyone enrolled in, or teaching, a course on this topic in an MPA program.

Government 2.0: Using Technology to Improve Education, Cut Red Tape, Reduce Gridlock, and Enhance Democracy

William D. Eggers

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Business & Culture -> Government
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent research, enjoyably told 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

I am half way through this book, but I cannot wait to comment. It is a fascinating piece of research and a marvelous work of story telling. It reports on real people and their problems with government, and on real people with exciting solutions. It is hard to believe, but this is a book on government that is vivid, memorable, and enjoyable. That's why I think it Government 2.0 will have a genuine impact. The book is a gold mine of ideas, but readers don't have to dig out the nuggets. They just fall into our laps. Frankly, this book could be the basis for a television series of exciting discussions on innovation. The scope of issues reported is quite amazing. Finally, although this is about the use of technology to improve government, it is written for policy makers and the general public.

Editorial Review:

A well-written, lively, optimistic book that calls for the transformation of technology in government from lipstick on a bulldog to total information awareness. This book is proactive in nature (see what these governments are really doing), does not call for a wholesale and costly transformation, and employs a subtle shaming of those governments that have not yet joined the 21st century. William Eggers's argument, conservative in nature, states that the world of politics would quickly and markedly benefit from this digital transformation in terms of a fiscal payoff, but a more profound change would result as governments become more transparent, more democratic, and more efficient.

Government Performance: Why Management Matters (Johns Hopkins Studies in Governance and Public Management)

Patricia W. Ingraham, Philip G. Joyce, Amy Kneedler Donahue

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Editorial Review:

Scholars and practitioners of public management have stressed the importance of such varied concepts as efficiency, process, systems, and capacity as key to running effective government programs. While acknowledging the usefulness of each of these criteria, the authors of Government Performance argue that one quality above all is crucial to the overall performance of government: effective management. Examining government performance at the federal, state, and local levels, the authors present analyses of public management systems in all fifty states, the thirty-five largest cities, forty large counties, and a number of federal agencies. They examine systems for financial management, human resources management, information technology management, capital management, and systems for managing results. While acknowledging the political context of all public administration systems, they argue that effective management of these systems nevertheless provides the key to good government performance.

Government Is Us: Public Administration in an Anti-Government Era

Cheryl Simrell King, Camilla M. Stivers

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Current Events -> Civil Rights & Liberties

Editorial Review:

While skepticism about government is n enduring feature of American political culture, today's climate of anti-government sentiment has grown aggressive and even violent. Not only do citizens feel distrustful and powerless, but many public administrators too are demoralized, alienated, cynical, and even frightened. Furthermore, proposals to "reinvent government" appear to exacerbate the problems by taking government ineptness and efficiency as a given and offering solutions designed more appropriately for corporate business.

Although the question of the legitimacy of public administration has been widely addressed in scholarly literature, it is often theory-based and fairly divorced from actual administrative practices. And it is mired in the enduring tension between "beaurocracy" and "democracy". This volume, made up of a community of prominent voices in public administration theory and practice, will examine the current anti-government climate and its effect on the working lives of administrators and their relationships with citizens. It will document the sources of citizen discontent with government, explore its effects upon career civil servants' ability to do their work and attempt to understand the implications for public administration practice in an anti-government area.

NASA: A History of the U.S. Civil Space Program (An Anvil Original)

Roger D. Launius

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Editorial Review:

When future generations review the history of the 20th century, they will undoubtedly judge humanity's movement into space, with both machines and people, as one of its seminal developments. Even at this juncture, the complex nature of space-flight and the activity that it has engendered on the part of many peoples and governments, makes the US civil space programme a significant area of investigation. People from all avenues of experience and levels of education share an interest in the drama of spaceflight. This book offers an up-to-date synthesis of the American civil space programme and is designed specially for use as a college textbook. Written by NASA's Chief Historian, it describes the history of this effort from its earliest origins to the early 1990s and offers an analysis of the space programme that merges political, economic, technological, scientific and foreign affairs factors into a powerful story. In common with all the Anvil Series texts, historical narrative is enhanced with material from key documents which shed light on other aspects of the story.

With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power

Kenneth Mayer

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Editorial Review:

The conventional wisdom holds that the president of the United States is weak, hobbled by the separation of powers and the short reach of his formal legal authority. In this first-ever in-depth study of executive orders, Kenneth Mayer deals a strong blow to this view. Taking civil rights and foreign policy as examples, he shows how presidents have used a key tool of executive power to wield their inherent legal authority and pursue policy without congressional interference.

Throughout the nation's life, executive orders have allowed presidents to make momentous, unilateral policy choices: creating and abolishing executive branch agencies, reorganizing administrative and regulatory processes, handling emergencies, and determining how legislation is implemented. From the Louisiana Purchase to the Emancipation Proclamation, from Franklin Roosevelt's establishment of the Executive Office of the President to Bill Clinton's authorization of loan guarantees for Mexico, from Harry Truman's integration of the armed forces to Ronald Reagan's seizures of regulatory control, American presidents have used executive orders (or their equivalents) to legislate in ways that extend far beyond administrative activity.

By analyzing the pattern of presidents' use of executive orders and the relationship of those orders to the presidency as an institution, Mayer describes an office much more powerful and active than the one depicted in the bulk of the political science literature. This distinguished work of scholarship shows that the U.S. presidency has a great deal more than the oft-cited "power to persuade."

Benchmarking for Best Practices in the Public Sector: Achieving Performance Breakthroughs in Federal, State, and Local Agencies (Jossey Bass Public Administration Series)

Patricia Keehley, Steven Medlin, Sue MacBride, Laura Longmire

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Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Management
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Total Quality Management

Editorial Review:

For leading companies in the private sector, benchmarking has become a major catalyst for change and a key tool for gathering information from competitors and process leaders, as well as from within. Benchmarking for Best Practices in the Public Sector is a unique practical guide that shows public officials and administrators at all levels of government how to identify the best practices and implement them in their organizations. Using real case examples from federal, state, and local governments, this book displays how benchmarking methods have been adapted to the unique needs of the public sector and describes the tangible benefits gained by public agencies that have applied these techniques. Offers detailed how-to advice along with checklists, flowcharts, sample forms, a resource directory, and other tools to help managers take action quickly.