2. New Public Management (NPM) is the label given to a
series of reforms from the 1980s onwards, to improve the
efficiency and performance of western governments
and/or public sector organizations.
NPM points to the failures and inadequacies of public
sector performance over time, and locates the problem in
the nature and processes of public sector activity and
public administration.
3. Key public change in public sector ethos.
Basis of NPM has been an emphasis of efficiency and cost
cutting and general assumption the government should
deliver more for less.
Ideas borrowed from private sector can improve
experience and serve of those who use the planning
system.
4. NPM seeks to reshape public interactions with the
government.
Customer oriented public service.
At the core of these changes has been a fundamental
and ideological transformation of public sector ethos
collectively referred to as New Public Management.
5. According to Kickert, the characteristics of NPM
are the following eight aspects:
Strengthening steering functions at the center.
Devolving authority, providing flexibility.
Ensuring performance, control and
accountability.
6. Improving the management of human resources.
Optimizing information technology.
Improving the quality of regulation.
Providing responsive service.
Developing competition and choice
7. Emphasis on increasing adoption of managerial
practices of private sector in public administration.
Promotion of competition within public sector.
Greater
use of contract arrangements within the
government as well as outside it.
Emphasis on results rather than procedures.
8. Formulation of explicit or definite standards and
measures of performance.
Emphasis on separation of administrative units.
A shift away from policy to management .
Encouragement of lack of wastefulness in public
expenditure.
9. ThePublic choice perspective in public administration
was increasing in the early seventies.
Various Authors criticised public bureaucracy in their
books.
David Osborne and Ted Gaebler made a proposal for
re-inventing the Government in their book.
Itwas soon adopted by the United States Government
via Al Gore’s (Vice-President) Report of the National
Performance Review (1993).
10. 1. Government must promote competition among
service- providers.
2. It must empower citizens by pushing control out of
the bureaucracy into the community.
3. It must measure the performance of their agencies
focussing on outcomes, not on inputs.
4. It must be motivated by goals , not by rules and
regulations.
11. 5. It re- defines its clients as customers , and offers
them choices.
6. It must prevent problems before these emerge,
rather than simply offering them services afterwards.
7. It must direct its energy towards earning money not
simply spending it.
8. It must decentralize authority and promote participative
management
12. 9. It must prefer market mechanisms to bureaucratic
mechanisms.
10. It must focus on providing public services but on
catalyzing all sectors in the society-public , private ,
voluntary-into action to solve the community’s
problems.
13. Economist Ha-Joon Chang claims that "increased NPM inspired
reforms have often increased corruption, creating new
opportunities for bribes and future, direct or indirect, employment
in the private sector.
The reform strategy of the Australian government failed in two
important respects:
1. The reform techniques were expensive and have increased costs
in the short term.
2. An attempt to save costs has damaged the organizational capacity
to maintain quality services and innovation.
15. NPM – Result oriented and objective focused.
Flexible arrangements in organizations, conditions of
employment etc.
Driving motives : Three E’s –Economy, Efficiency ,
and Effectiveness.
Change in the governing style : From rowing to
steering.
