The New Public Service was established at around 1980s with its main motivation being a belief in efficiency and efficacy in the market, government failure, a belief in rationality in the economy and a push away from centralized large governmental agencies toward privatization and devolution. In the new public service, public managers are encouraged to steer rather than rowing. Although it was created to eliminate shortcomings registered by the old public services, it also presented nits own shortcomings and benefits (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015). This paper focuses on analyzing the new public service shortcomings and benefits.
New Public Service Shortcomings
The new public service is structured to eliminate the shortcomings of the old public services. However it also has its own shortcomings. Some of these shortcomings include that it is highly swayed by the private sectors with regard to values terms. This creates conflict between the imposed values and the state welfare where public values should be regarded. Private sectors influenced values are likely to focus on promoting capitalism and other aspects that would promote private growth, without considering how it affects the public. The New public service also fails to offer a clear cut of accountability concept and hence making it hard to implement the concept. It also allocates minimum duties to bureaucrats and offer more significance to managers. In addition new public service allocates greater responsibility to market in allocation of resources and it fails in offering the bureaucrats role in dominant market system (O’flynn, 2007).
The above identified shortcomings bring hitches to the new public service application. However, they do not make it unrealistic since it has so many benefits especially due to the fact that it was designed to resolve some serious shortcomings that were recorded in the old system. The new public service focus on the engagement of citizens in policy development to create high level of efficiency and efficacy and this has been found to pay off in various ways. Thus, a few shortcomings do not make it unrealistic, though it would perform much better if these shortcomings were to be addressed (Bryson, Crosby & Bloomberg, 2014).
The Benefits of New Public Service
The new public service also presents a number of benefits compared to the old. The new public service engages the public in policy formation which results in creation of more successful policies that focus on problems solving from all perspectives. However, this only happens when there is two-way form of communication such that, citizens get answers or responses to their concerns and the policy structuring considers citizens feedback. This two way communication assists in conflict resolution, informing and educating the public, and building public trust to the government administration (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015). Another benefit is that the new public value engages other stakeholders resulting to the development of a model that caters for the needs of all in the market. It therefore gives value to all as the government ensures public values through extensive deliberation and inclusion of members of the public (Bryson, Crosby & Bloomberg, 2014). However, despite of all these advantages, new public service cannot be regarded as a general positive movement since its success is highly influenced by implementation efficiency. Poor implementation which can include the government officials inability to create two way communication, or lack of enough time to engage all may result to poor policy formation just like in the old system. In addition, lack of a balance in involving the stakeholders may result to development of policies that favors some such as the private sectors at the expense of the public (Rezende, 2008).
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