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Local Service Delivery
Local service delivery is the delivery of public services at the local level and is a distinct domain of public policy. Local governments can be more reflective of local needs and interests and a prime driver of innovation in government practices; at the same time, local service delivery deals with some challenges, such as expertise concerns, steering problems, and the presence of economies of scale. Local service delivery is a key topic of discussion for academics and practitioners in the wake of the decentralization and corporatization that occurred under New Public Management and in the wake of local austerity following the 2008 Financial crisis. Types Local service delivery can take place in many ways. Local services can be delivered directly by the municipality’s bureaucracy, by municipal corporations, by public-private partnerships, by inter-municipal cooperation, and by private organizations through contracting or privatization. Since switching between the multiple opti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Public Policy
Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public policy can be considered to be the sum of government direct and indirect activities and has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. They are created and/or enacted on behalf of the public typically by a government. Sometimes they are made by nonprofit organisations or are made in co-production with communities or citizens, which can include potential experts, scientists, engineers and stakeholders or scientific data, or sometimes use some of their results. They are typically made by policy-makers affiliated with (in democratic polities) currently elected politicians. Therefore, the "policy process is a complex political process in which there are many actors: elected politicians, political party leaders, pressure groups, civil servants ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economies Of Scale
In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables an increase in scale. At the basis of economies of scale, there may be technical, statistical, organizational or related factors to the degree of market control. This is just a partial description of the concept. Economies of scale apply to a variety of the organizational and business situations and at various levels, such as a production, plant or an entire enterprise. When average costs start falling as output increases, then economies of scale occur. Some economies of scale, such as capital cost of manufacturing facilities and friction loss of transportation and industrial equipment, have a physical or engineering basis. The economic concept dates back to Adam Smith and the idea of obtaining larger production returns through the use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Decentralization
Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Concepts of decentralization have been applied to group dynamics and management science in private businesses and organizations, political science, law and public administration, economics, money and technology. History The word "''centralisation''" came into use in France in 1794 as the post-French Revolution, Revolution French Directory leadership created a new government structure. The word "''décentralisation''" came into usage in the 1820s. "Centralization" entered written English in the first third of the 1800s; mentions of decentralization also first appear during those years. In the mid-1800s Alexis de Tocqueville, Tocqueville would write that the French Revolution began with "a push towards decentralization...[but became,] in the e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corporatization
Corporatization is the process of transforming and restructuring state assets, government agencies, public organizations, or municipal organizations into corporations. It involves the adoption and application of business management practices and the separation of ownership from management through the creation of a joint-stock or shareholding structure for the organization. The result of corporatization is the creation of state-owned corporations (or corporations at other government levels, such as municipally owned corporations) where the government retains a majority ownership of the corporation's stock. Corporatization is undertaken to improve efficiency of an organization, to commercialize its operations, to introduce corporate and business management techniques to public functions, or as a precursor to partial or full privatization. History The move towards neoliberal economic reform and New Public Management public service reform in the 1980s led to privatization of public ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Public Management
New Public Management (NPM) is an approach to running public service organizations that is used in government and public service institutions and agencies, at both sub-national and national levels. The term was first introduced by academics in the UK and Australia to describe approaches that were developed during the 1980s as part of an effort to make the public service more "businesslike" and to improve its efficiency by using private sector management models. As with the private sector, which focuses on customer service, NPM reforms often focused on the "centrality of citizens who were the recipient of the services or customers to the public sector". NPM reformers experimented with using decentralized service delivery models, to give local agencies more freedom in how they delivered programs or services. In some cases, NPM reforms that used e-government consolidated a program or service to a central location to reduce costs. Some governments tried using quasi-market structures, s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Financial Crisis Of 2007-2008
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of financial economics bridges the two). Finance activities take place in financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into personal, corporate, and public finance. In a financial system, assets are bought, sold, or traded as financial instruments, such as currencies, loans, bonds, shares, stocks, options, futures, etc. Assets can also be banked, invested, and insured to maximize value and minimize loss. In practice, risks are always present in any financial action and entities. A broad range of subfields within finance exist due to its wide scope. Asset, money, risk and investment management aim to maximize value and minimize volatility. Financial analysis is viability, stability, and profitability assessmen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bureaucracy
The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected officials. Today, bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution, whether publicly owned or privately owned. The public administration in many jurisdictions and sub-jurisdictions exemplifies bureaucracy, but so does any centralized hierarchical structure of an institution, e.g. hospitals, academic entities, business firms, professional societies, social clubs, etc. There are two key dilemmas in bureaucracy. The first dilemma revolves around whether bureaucrats should be autonomous or directly accountable to their political masters. The second dilemma revolves around bureaucrats' behavior strictly following the law or whether they have leeway to determine appropriate solutions for varied circumstances. Various commen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Municipal Corporations
A municipal corporation is the legal term for a local governing body, including (but not necessarily limited to) cities, counties, towns, townships, charter townships, villages, and boroughs. The term can also be used to describe municipally owned corporations. Municipal corporation as local self-government Municipal incorporation occurs when such municipalities become self-governing entities under the laws of the state or province in which they are located. Often, this event is marked by the award or declaration of a municipal charter. A city charter or town charter or municipal charter is a legal document establishing a municipality, such as a city or town. Canada In Canada, charters are granted by provincial authorities. India The Corporation of Chennai is the oldest Municipal Corporation in the world outside the United Kingdom. Ireland The title "corporation" was used in boroughs from soon after the Norman conquest until the Local Government Act 2001. Under the 2001 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inter-municipal Cooperation
Inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is a generic term for all joint provision of public services between municipalities, who are normally but not necessarily neighbours. Municipalities are elements of administration and have a history of several hundred years in Europe. One speaks of IMC when two or more municipalities work together to provide a public service, where cooperation ranges from coordinated behaviour to joint ventures. As territorial consolidation often fails because of political resistance, inter-municipal cooperation is a way to keep public services efficient and effective without territorial consolidation. However, IMC can have high failure rates when coordination problems between municipalities in steering and monitoring cannot be resolved. Unfortunately, coordination can be hard to achieve due to the multiple principal problem that exists in inter-municipal cooperation. In addition, its cost-efficiency can be limited. History Cooperation of municipalities is a conte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contracting
A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to transfer any of those at a future date. In the event of a breach of contract, the injured party may seek judicial remedies such as damages or rescission. Contract law, the field of the law of obligations concerned with contracts, is based on the principle that agreements must be honoured. Contract law, like other areas of private law, varies between jurisdictions. The various systems of contract law can broadly be split between common law jurisdictions, civil law jurisdictions, and mixed law jurisdictions which combine elements of both common and civil law. Common law jurisdictions typically require contracts to include consideration in order to be valid, whereas civil and most mixed law jurisdictions solely require a meeting of the minds be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Privatization
Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when a heavily regulated private company or industry becomes less regulated. Government functions and services may also be privatised (which may also be known as "franchising" or "out-sourcing"); in this case, private entities are tasked with the implementation of government programs or performance of government services that had previously been the purview of state-run agencies. Some examples include revenue collection, law enforcement, water supply, and prison management. Another definition is that privatization is the sale of a state-owned enterprise or municipally owned corporation to private investors; in this case shares may be traded in the public market for the first time, or for the first time since an enterprise's previous nationaliz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
