1.) Productivity is defined as the relationship between resources used and results achieved¹. Improvement in this area means either obtaining more and better program output from a given level of resources or using fewer resources to maintain or improve a certain level of output. The federal government has a vital stake in improving the productivity of state and local governments for two primary reasons: (1) the national economy is strengthened as a result of improvements in the productivity and fiscal prospects of this key sector; and (2) the effectiveness and efficiency of the multitude of federal grant and regulatory programs using state and local governments to implement federal policies are directly related to the management capacity of those governments².
The productivity in state and local governments is lower than it could be, resulting in higher costs and/or lower levels of public services. State and local government operations do not have the profit incentive to improve productivity that exists in the private sector. However, substantial fiscal and performance benefits have been achieved by innovative state and local governments which have initiated productivity improvement programs. Productivity improvement has been used as a strategy to relieve growing fiscal pressures faced by state and local governments, but most state and local governments do not have significant, comprehensive productivity improvement programs. Major barriers preventing or limiting state and local improvement programs include internal resistance, the large initial investment needed to start a program, and the limited capacity of organizational systems. The most important impact of the federal government on state and local government productivity ...
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Works Cited
Florida Center for Public Management. (2006, September). Is Productivity More Than a Slogan in Your Organization? www.fcpm.fsu.edu.
2 Statts, Elmer. (1978). State and Local Government Productivity Improvement: What is the Federal Role? GGD-78-104. Washington. http://archive.gao.gov/f0902c/107983.pdf.
3 Milakovich, Michael E., and George J. Gordon. "Performance Management in the Public Sector." Public Administration in America. Tenth ed. Boston: Clark Baxter, 2009. 468-469. Print.
4 Stevenson, Richard W.. "The Nation; Breaking Up Is Hard. Merging Is Harder.." New York Times 23 June 2002: 1. Week In Review. Web. 18 Nov. 2011.
5 Landay, Johnathan S., and Shannon McCaffrey. "Chertoff Delayed Federal Respose, Memo Shows." Common Dreams. N.p., 14 Sept. 2005. Web. 18 Nov. 2011. .
Municipal control or an alternative delivery method? This is the question that has intrigued all levels of local government and created intense debates between taxpayers across municipalities. The services that municipalities provide are often vital to the existence of a local area. The issues of accountability, cost savings, quality of service and democracy often arise when choosing the best options to deliver services to a municipal area. In recent years the concepts of privatization, alternative service delivery and public-private partnerships are often promoted as ways cut down on overburdened annual city budgets and promote a higher quality of service to citizens. Municipalities have historically always provided basic services such as fire protection, water purification/treatment and recreational facilities. However, would private companies or another municipality be able to better deliver the same services more efficiently or at a lower cost? The city or town often provides a political grass roots approach to most local problems. Municipalities are better positioned and have a wider scope to provide services to their constituents in order to ensure quality of service that does not erode accountability and transparency, or drive the municipality deeper into debt.
This helps to ensure that the residents get the services they need in a more effective way since they can make the local leaders accountable. This would be more difficult if the local leaders were handling large counties with many residents. However, in the case of Texas, it has too many branches of local government. This brings about more challenges to service delivery than benefits. One of the ways this happens is through increasing the bureaucratic processes. The addition of an extra layer of government such as through local governments only increases the hurdles the citizens have between them and service delivery. Another problem arises with regards to the ability of the many branches to handle specialized services. Some of the commonly needed services by residents include water provision, garbage collection, sewage management, flood prevention, among others (Flores et al.). These require resources that may not be available to the smaller branches of the local government. Therefore, consolidation of some of these local governments would help to improve efficiency in the service
Setting the stage for our national and state government, Federalisms, looked to be a solution to these issues. By focusing on a strong state government, Federalism, shifted power away from the national government. Two strengths of these changes are and increase access to government, and tailored policy that fits the local government’s needs. Two weaknesses of American federalism are that local interests can hinder nationally supported policies, and a conflict of authority.
As governor, Wendell Ford masterfully raised money for the state by creating a severance tax on coal, a two-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline, and an increased corporate tax. To balance these tax increases, Ford exempted food from the state sales tax. With the large budget surplus, Ford proposed several construction projects and sharply increased funding for higher education, the public schools, and human resources. By reorganizing and combining several executive departments, creating “super cabinets,” Ford saved the state more money and made these departments more efficient. In addition, he added to the general assembly’s agenda the creation of a state...
Modern Bureaucracy in the United States serves to administer, gather information, conduct investigations, regulate, and license. Once set up, a bureaucracy is inherently conservative. The reason the bureaucracy was initiated may not continue to exist as a need in the future. The need or reason may change with a change in the times and the culture needs. A bureaucracy tends to make decisions that protect it and further it’s own existence, possibly apart from the wishes of the populace. It may not consistently reflect what might be optimal in terms of the needs and wants of the people. Local governments employ most of the United States civil servants. The 14 cabinet departments in the U.S. are run day-to-day by career civil servants, which have a great deal of discretionary authority.
National, Local, and State governments work together cooperatively to solve common problems rather than making separate polices. They work more on an equal level to get things fixed. This type of federalism is hard to tell where one type of government ends and the next one begins. National and state governments are independent and interdependent with an overlap of functions and financial resources. It is difficult for one to accumulate absolute power with this type of federalism.
State and local governments influence the federal legislature by: All state governments are modelled after the federal government and they comprise of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Most state and local government officials usually seek to influence the content of national policies especially in generating intergovernmental lobby (Steier, 1985). There is increase of professionalism in state and local governments which give units the basic knowledge and ability to meet with the legislators and provide information which may influence legislation. Also, the growth in federal grants to state and local governments enables programs to have potential for the federal government to regulate the behavior of the state and local governments. In addition, many regulations and requirements that federal programs impose on the states and localities are sometimes open to modification, give discretion, and power to state and local officials.
When states try to find ways to restrain from non-essential areas, unfunded federal mandates are at the top of the list. These mandates often force state and local governments to spend much more than necessary on everything from medical care to welfare to road building. A complex web of federal programs bind together the tree treasuries of the local, state, and federal government. As much as 25 percent of state budgets now comes from the federal government, and up to 60 percent of some state budgets is spent on joint federal-state programs.
When reading the book The Goal written by Eliyahu Goldratt, there were many lessons that I learned in order to have a clear and concise understanding of a positive level of productivity in a company. To have a positive level of productivity there are may components that are taken into consideration. Understanding what it actually means to be productive and how to increase the level of productivity by knowing the actual goal of the company that is trying to be reached and the components that go into the process of being productive. There are many factors that contribute to the level of productivity and being able to identify these factors is the key ingredient to having a successful level of productivity.
Public agencies are state, local, and federal government employers. Through this paper we will be discussing some of the tools and abilities of public agencies and how they influence our public organizations, such as their regulatory process and administrative hearings. Regulations are primary vehicles that are utilized by agencies to implement laws and general agency objectives. The ability to regulate and enforce these standards comes from laws passed by the legislature, which gains its authority through the constitutions of the federal government and the states. It is then the duty of the executive and judicial branches to administer and adjudicate the laws, respectively
Bacal, Robert. Manager's Guide to Performance Management. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.
EFFICIENCY: This simply means making the most out of available resources. Thus in public administration it could be the provision ...
Daniels, A. C. (2004). Performance management: changing behavior that drives organizational effectiveness (4th ed.). Atlanta, GA: Performance Management Publications.
Despite these criticisms, the reforms in public administration have had a widespread impact across this country and around the world. The principles underlying these reforms have enhanced government performance and accountability, public administration has employed various strategies to streamline management and enhance pubic service. It is important to keep in mind that while there may be significant improvement in productivity as a result of technological advances or reform, the most meaningful long-term gains will come about as a result of attention to the humans side of the organization. Successful public administration demands a successful balance between the concerns of the technical side of the agency and paying attention to people.
The claim that bureaucracies are inefficient is the main driving factor for the New Public Management (NPM) come to exist in the 1980s.Though the public sector continues in its inflexibility, bureaucracy, expensiveness and inefficiency, the private sector was obliged to transform itself radically because of the sever competition confronted at the global level and explore new opportunities (Deal and Kennedy,