Instruments for Promotion and Assurance of Public Integrity

“The instruments” for supporting the strategies and programmes of public integrity represent a part of a general public integrity framework, comprising also the issue of ethics and public integrity, the legal framework, training and obviously the best practices used successfully by the public organisations. The current paper comprises the instruments concerning the integrity of civil service or institutional organisations, as well as their audit. The paper represents the fourth section of the book: “Public integrity: Theories and Practical Instruments,” published recently by NISPAcee. The first chapter of the paper refers on a large extent to the civil servants’ career, meritocracy, motivation of the civil servants as well as to Whistleblower. The second chapter is dedicated to the instruments concerning the institutional organisations, risk areas for corruption, indicators and transparency, blacklisting. In the third chapter, the audit instruments are aimed at the governmental mechanisms, comprising the method of audit of taxes, public contracts, electronic data etc. The theoretical approaches are accompanied by relevant examples from different statespublic integrity, legal framework, audit, civil service

Institutional Independence: Lawyers and the Administrative State

The institutional structure where federal government lawyers practice is fraught with political and economic pressures that undermine the ability of lawyers to exercise independent professional judgment. A lack of candid legal advice in this space not only removes a pivotal fail-safe between legal and illegal state action but also precariously imbalances the powerful administrative state, exposing it to undue political influence. For these reasons, this Article argues that structural changes to administrative institutions must be made to support and nurture lawyers’ ability to independently determine the bounds of legality. Previous scholarship has examined the role of professional independence for lawyers generally; however, the legal academy has yet to explore the centrality of professional independence to administrative law or the structural pressures influencing its exercise. This Article joins a body of work that adopts a new institutionalist approach to professional misconduct. In doing so, this Article makes three principal contributions: (1) it outlines why institutionally sustained professional independence is essential to the federal administrative state; (2) it identifies institutional failings that impede government lawyers’ exercise of professional independent judgment; and (3) it proposes institution-based solutions to facilitate professionally independent conduct by government lawyers. By insulating government lawyers from excessive interference on core professional judgment calls, civil society may rely on these lawyers to help protect the basic structure of the rule of law

Current Developments in Services for People with Intellectual Disabilities

[Taken from Executive Summary] This literature review is the culmination of the Saskatchewan Community Living Division jurisdictional study which began in the autumn of 2003. Following a brief survey of developments in providing services to people with intellectual disabilities (hitherto the People) for creating the questionnaire for this study, information was gleaned from the provinces and territories on their services. The CLD Jurisdictional Project was completed in the spring of 2005. Subsequently, a thorough search and examination of pertinent resources for serving this People and for policy development was conducted. From over 800 documents about 350 were selected for this literature review. The material is recorded in the following chapters: Public Consultation and Policy Development; Social Philosophy: the philosophical influence on contemporary social issues; Definition of disabilities; Needs assessment systems; Human Rights; Advocacy; Community services & Deinstitutionalization; Issues and Influences; Citizenship; Inclusion; Self-determination; Person-centered planning; Supports; Respite; Individualized funding; Canadian governmental initiatives; Provincial Services

The Paradox of Performance Related Pay Systems: 'Why Do We Keep Adopting Them in the Face of Evidence that they Fail to Motivate?'

This paper considers one of the paradoxes of incentive pay used in Britain's public services, namely that despite much evidence that it does not motivate employees, it continues to be widely used. It is argued that behind this evidence, there are significant examples in which its use has been associated with improved performance. A good part of this is to be explained by the way performance pay links pay and appraisal, and the pressure this puts on line managers to set clearer goals for their staff. There is also some evidence that the goal setting is the outcome of a form of integrative, or positive sum, negotiation between individual employees and their managers, and that it is not just 'top down'.pay for performance, public sector pay

Do Civil Servants' Perceptions of the Implementation of a Merit System Influence the Personal Growth Initiative?

This study aimed to examine the influence of civil servants’ perceptions about the implementation of a merit system on this personal growth initiative of the Regional Civil Service Agency of South Sulawesi province. The data were obtained using two questionnaires, namely the personal growth initiative scale and the perception scale. The research used quantitative methods and linear regression. The results of the study indicated that the perceptions of the merit system implementation had a significant influence on the personal growth initiative of the Regional Civil Service Agency employees. It was found that the magnitude of the effect of perceptions about the merit system implementation on the personal growth initiative was 0.341. Keywords: personal growth initiative, merit system, civil servant

Governance, Democracy and Poverty Reduction: Lessons drawn from household surveys in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America

Public statistics face quite a challenge when it comes to measuring new dimensions of development (institutions, governance, and social and political participation). To take up this challenge, modules on Governance, Democracy and Multiple Dimensions of Poverty have been appended to household surveys by National Statistics Institutes in twelve African and Latin-American developing countries. This paper presents the issues addressed and the methodological lessons learnt along with a selection of findings to illustrate this innovative approach and demonstrate its analytic potential. We investigate, for instance, the population’s support for democratic principles, the respect for civil and political rights and the trust in the political class; the “need for the State”, particularly of the poorest; the extent of petty corruption; the reliability of expert surveys on governance; the perception of decentralisation policies at local level; the level and vitality of social and political participation, etc. The conclusive appraisal made opens up prospects for the national statistical information systems in the developing countries. The measurement and tracking of this new set of objective and subjective public policy monitoring indicators would benefit from being made systematic.Africa, Latin America, Democracy, Monitoring Mechanism, Household Surveys,