Reforms and Breakthroughs of Post-new Public Management Presupposed Rational Construction Brought by ICT

Wang Kai(Zhou Enlai School of Government　Nankai University,Tianjin　3003553)



Reforms and Breakthroughs of Post-new Public Management Presupposed Rational Construction Brought by ICT

Wang Kai
(Zhou Enlai School of GovernmentNankai University,Tianjin3003553)

From different perspectives,major components of a new public management after creation are discussed,and the significant role and representations of the ICT application in the post-new public management are elaborated.Finally,from the three “re-” rational establishments of the new public management,the great importance of moderate centralization and reverse privatization of in government public management is emphasized.

post-new public management;ICT application;rational constructing;resource integration

Ⅰ.Reasons for the rise of post-new public management

1.The upcoming risky society

Since classless risks differently come along with every human activity,it requires evenly delegating powers to every individual with risk awareness in the society full of risks.The fuzzy,borderless features and non-selection of impacting objects are likely to make everyone involved in the event be risk management entities.However,the scattered risk management of individual governance objects is inadequate to respond to risks,leading to develop a coordinated risk governance relations which engage various stakeholders to share weal and woe in the division of labor and delimitation of different sectors.The public management institutions get the government and social stakeholders involved to dispose of separate management of governments,and on the other hand,to undertake common governance after the reform of new public management,so as to develop netted cooperation and communication relations to respond to challenges posed across the board.

2.Development of ICT

All nations worldwide get engaged in improving their government portals,reducing service costs by the application of technological development,and receiving public response in a timely manner.Annular and star-like information circulation patterns are,on the one hand,favorable to spread information in a divergent way to accelerate information transmission and extend its affecting range,on the other hand,annular information expansion is helpful for the authorities to receive feedback from the general public within the shortest time.〔1〕In so doing,it will help local governments to adjust the ways of providing services with specific targets,so as the ICT application to permeate into the daily lives of the people,and become a new tool for them in the new Internet age.That’s exactly what western scholars proposed,the post-new public management breaks the obstructs of the theoretical foundations of the new public management,and brings about epoch-making transformations of government services,in the wake of leading theories adapting to the ICT applications.

3.Trend of political thoughts and ideological upgrading

Apart from the neoconservatism and neoliberalism,“the third way” referred to a new developing route,which was raised by the U.K.to decrease the impact of the global financial crisis on its economy in 1990s,and gained popular support and initiative practices in the United States and other western economies.The British post-new public management emphasized to weaken the government control,and re-adjust the proportion of power,responsibility,and benefits of the government,the society,and individuals in the public service sector.That’s how the post-new public management reduced the workload of governments,authorized citizens for self-management within a proper range,and encouraged them to share social responsibilities,making the new management pattern enjoy great significant in the west and even in the wider community and hold the key for nations to carry out the post-new public management.

Ⅱ.The ways and impacts of ICT application in the post-new public management

The role of ICT application in the post-new public management can be demonstrated from the two aspects as below:firstly,ICT application can ensure stakeholders to be well-informed.In the course of public management,the symmetric information access of stakeholders lays the basic foundation for properly dealing with public issues.If the authorities inform the general public of the event development and processing properly and give guidance to social media,it will conducive to the harmonious and stable social development and increasing the trust of the people to the governments.As governments are the manager of the public events and information holder,the information itself and the ways of processing information will determine how the general public evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the government to exercise their duties.Secondly,the ICT application provides technical foundation for resource integration and sharing.And information interactivity endows the resource holders to make full use of shared information resources with constraints of time and space,and the openness of information make it possible for the general public and governments received peer information without distinction.Under ICT technical conditions,every step of information processing is possible to share resources,thereby,all members in the process of public management are not only the information providers,but also act as information transmitters and sharers.The post-new public management focuses on fundamental improvements of the current government administration with the existing ICT application,make comprehensive plans to give full play of the current technical strengths,and break the deadlock of networking in the new public management.

Ⅲ.The three “re-” rational construction in the post-new public management

1.Reconstruction of the authority:seeking power balance among different levels of governments from power division to moderate centralization

In the traditional public management,the upper authorities enjoyed the absolute control over their subordinates,so that local governments had to get approval from the central government in the decision-making,giving rise to slow information flow and low work efficiency to impede the well-organized government public services.In the early period of the twentieth century,a group of people favoring public administration proposed to implement new public management,suggested to alleviate various social issues caused by bureaucracy by thorough separation of powers,while replacing longitudinal hierarchy with horizontal organization structures.〔2〕However,political awareness deviation of administrative departments and the weakening control of the central government on the local affairs,brought about various negative effects against the society with more risks,which called for demands for the central government control and coordination.

The post-new public management adopts a type of moderate decentralization in-between centralization and decentralization,and retrieves certain power control that should be in the hands of the central government,so as to reduce the drawbacks of power distribution in the new public management.The American scholar Browne noted that,if the government had a prudent control center,it could ensure the public security,and when the sense of insecurity in the high-risk society prompted the general public to seek protection from the authoritative central government,it was worthwhile of reassuring the public,despite sacrificing efficiency.〔3〕The development of ICT application fosters the implementation of moderate centralization,and ensure the unblocked communication and close cooperation among different levels of governments and various departments.

2.Organizational restructuring:achieving streamline operations in-between government departments and institutions by evolving from institutional cracking towards cooperation and integration

ICT-assisted post new public management plays its role in the organization restructure from the following four aspects.Firstly,ICT application can foster the sharing of information resources more effectively.The information sharing platform within an organization is able to bring all team members together to build a new cooperation-oriented mechanism,which improves the cooperation awareness by flexible management and promotion of organizational culture.Secondly,the ICT fosters the interventions of the external forces by establishing networking cooperation system.The single resources within the organization can hardly ever think out of box,while the external structures networking different organizations is able to boost innovation among diversified institutions.Thirdly,ICT application can perform real-time evaluation in the incentive mechanism.In the process of integrating various organizations for cooperation,it requires to conduct perform evaluation and formulate proper incentives measures to achieve the best incentives effects,during which it is possible for ICT application to input their labor output of various parties and develop into final performance evaluation based on preset indicators.〔4〕Finally,ICT application can massively and rapidly introduce new organizational cooperative mode to the mass.ICT application is able to convey the leading principles of the union of the mass and the full involvement of the people to the general public on the web portal in the forms of various activities.

3.Relationship rebuilding:evolving from the third party government into internetized government,from privatization to reverse privatization

The implementation of marketization doesn’t mean the national governing is worse than the market self-regulation.Meanwhile,the popularity of marketing mechanism doesn’t root in the governing drawbacks,but the only dependence on national governance is out of the accord with the times,and immature marketing mechanism are of fully qualified to solve public issues,〔5〕therefore,those public affairs-concerning long-term stability and peaceful and contended life for the people-still require the intervention of the government,that means,the marketization and privatization of new public management are not Jacks-of-all-trades.

The post-new public management corrects the excess privatization in the new public management by means of reverse privatization,and retrieved the powers subcontracting to the third-party service organizations to provide public products and services.The American professor Keitel pointed out that,the outsourcing of public services weakened governments to control service quality and performance,and even diluted the significant obligations of the government for various safety responsibilities.The reverse-privatization of the post-new public management is to establish e-government to get stakeholders involved to public services and share the common responsibilities,and on the other hand,make full use of the strengths of private enterprises to offer quality products and services,and accept the common supervision of their qualities from the government and the people.In the online-governing structure,the government plays a role of creating public values,synergize and mobilize all kinds of resources so as to ensure multiple entities to conduct production,supervision,and supply within the e-networking.

Ⅳ.Conclusion

The post new public management proposes the moderate management form to correcting over marketization and decentralization in the new public management,is the new type of management model emerging from the rapid growth of ICT application amid trend changes of political thoughts in a risky society.The ICT application can help governments to establish coordinated organization,and moderately distribute the proportion and scope of delegated powers among different levels of governments,to achieve the smooth communication and close coordination of different levels and department.The ICT application takes synergizing its internal and external resources as the shared target,advance the public governing relations to the networking of multilateral entities,reduce the information costs,HR costs,and management costs in the government services,and closely link the digital government affairs with the post new public management,so as to provide technical support for public governance networking.

References:

〔1〕Yan Changwu,Niu Meili,Normative Study on the Public Administration,Public Administration Review,2012,pp.42-45.

〔2〕Lan Zhiyong,Chen Guoquan,Reviews on Frontier Theories of Western Public Management,Journal of Public Management,2015,pp.12-16.

〔3〕Tang Jun,Establish Comprehensively Government Public Crisis Information Management System,Information Construction,2013,pp.25-27.

〔4〕Dai Tingting the ICT Application Improves the Construction of Internet Democratic Mechanism of Supervision by Public Opinion,Information Construction,2015,pp.115-117.

〔5〕Yu Jian,Wu Guohua,Surpass New Public Management — Thinking on the Political Level,Journal of Yunnan Administration College,2013,pp.77-80.

About the author：Wang Kai(1984—),doctoral candidate at Zhou Enlai School of Government,Nankai University.