Fostering New Public Management Through Learning Innovations: The International e-Academy for Leadership Model

(October 27– November 03, 2006)
by Francisco A. Magno

Francisco A. Magno

It was a great privilege and learning experience to be a participant in the 2006 International seminar on New Public Management (NPM) organized by the International e-Academy for Leadership – Friedrich Naumann Foundation. The seminar was unique for its innovative approach to executive education. This opened up rich opportunities for learning with the use of multiple platforms.

The international seminar commenced with an online discussion phase with over 90 participants. In this phase, the key concepts, issues and challenges surrounding NPM were discussed. Based on the quality of inputs in the online seminar, 24 representatives from 11 countries were chosen to attend an intensive one-week seminar at the Theodor Heuss Academy in Gummersbach, Germany from October 27 to November 3, 2006.

The serene and scenic location of the academy provided a perfect backdrop for reflecting and developing new insights on public management. Lectures on NPM theory and practice were complemented with small group discussions, meta-card exercises, role-playing and site visits. Participants were also asked to develop NPM strategies and action projects to be implemented in their own countries.

The seminar also provided an avenue for cross-cultural exchange. Aside from the evening sessions at the bar where participants got to know more about each other’s culture, formal sessions were also allocated for participants to share basic information about their countries and regions, including their system of government, economy, geography and cultural artifacts. In the process, meaningful discoveries were made. One participant from Turkey, who aside from being a key adviser of the Istanbul city government, turned out to be not only a great debater on the challenges of building a performance-oriented government, but also a master poet with the right words for every occasion. Another participant, from the Philippines, exhibited his creative talents by composing songs especially for the seminar even if his main work revolves around building the capacity of rural communities to participate in development planning and management.

I especially liked the discussion concerning one of the key tenets of NPM, “the customer is king.” It is the new service orientation where the satisfaction of citizen’s needs and demands form the basic linchpin that links democracy and performance-based governance. Democracy is based on the assumption that citizens are empowered to choose their representatives as well as programs of governance from a menu of choices. As taxpayers, citizens have rights to have access to quality public services. In practice, however, the effective provision of public goods and services to citizens by governments does not happen automatically. In many cases, strengthening citizen services is a goal that should be integrated as part of a governance reform agenda and process.

In the Philippines, electoral choices are usually divorced from programs of action offered to citizen-voters by candidates running for public offices. Electoral competition is often pursued as personality-oriented contests rather than seen as avenues to choose officials who will enhance the quality of citizen services. Nevertheless, elections provide a strategic window for improving the lives of citizens. Within the context of the coming elections in May 2007, I have proposed to the Filipino participants in the Gummersbach seminar a common project that will utilize the elections as a platform for promoting performance orientation and accountability, especially in local governance, among the candidates and citizens.

The project seeks to develop a process and mechanism for the preparation of an NPM performance accountability agreement to be signed by rival candidates for mayor in a pilot local government unit (LGU). In broad strokes, the performance pledge will contain a checklist of citizen services that need to be addressed by the candidate upon being voted into power. The specific outline of services will be determined through a multi-stakeholder workshop. In this workshop, citizen leaders from various stakeholder communities and networks will be invited to provide inputs in crafting the NPM performance pledge. The pledge will highlight the need to foster a new service attitude among local chief executive candidates that views the centrality of the citizen-customer in results-oriented governance. The performance pledge will be developed as a major NPM accountability tool. The whole process will be documented and will be published as a knowledge product that will guide NPM reformers in their advocacy and action projects.

The second project concerns the organization of an international conference focusing on the role of the chief information officer (CIO) in promoting NPM reforms. Decentralization and market-based reforms have resulted in the transfer of responsibilities for delivering an increased array of public goods and services from the central state to local governments and private companies.

The holding of an international conference is important to promote discussions on the emerging role of the CIO, and the use of information and communications technology to improve both public and corporate governance in the context of a decentralized world. The conference will gather leaders from academe, government, civil society and the private sector to exchange ideas toward designing strategies to strengthen capacities for e-Leadership to foster innovation, transparency, accountability, efficiency and effectiveness in public and private sector governance.

The project aims to organize an international conference to highlight the e-Leadership skills and competency levels required for government and corporate CIOs to function effectively in the context of decentralized systems and processes. It will showcase leading practices in CIO development in key local governments.

The conference will provide a platform for networking among practitioners and researchers in the field of CIO development. It will also foster the establishment of institutional linkages to facilitate learning exchanges and the production of knowledge products to enhance the role and capacity of CIOs in exercising e-Leadership for effective and accountable governance.

The papers to be presented in the conference will be reviewed and published into a volume of conference proceedings dealing with CIOs in a Decentralized World. This will be divided into two major sections. The first section will focus on CIO roles and e-Leadership challenges in government and business. The second section will feature case studies, evaluation tools and best practices of local government CIOs and e-Municipalities. The volume will be a valuable knowledge product that can be used as a learning tool in CIO and e-Leadership capacity-building programs. It will serve as a guide in identifying the tasks of the CIO in fostering new public management.