Improving Public Sector Performance in the 21st Century

TARGET GROUP

This two-day seminar is directed at managers and civil servants from EU Member States, candidate countries and the EU institutions and other multi-lateral institutions, as well as auditors, consultants, and other stakeholders who are faced with challenges relating to governance, accountability and performance of public sector organisations.

DESCRIPTION
The seminar will start by elaborating what it really means to create public value for citizens and how different concepts of governance and accountability relate to this. This will enable participants to engage in a “worst practice” performance management case study emanating from the United States. This will then be contrasted with a discussion of the Vanguard Method - derived from E.W. Deming, the originator of modern quality management - and its use in the Dutch police force.

The second day will explain and develop key theories regarding motivation and organisational learning that underpin the Vanguard method. The same theories will be demonstrated to underpin Human Centred Design, a methodology used by public sector organisations such as MINDLAB in Denmark. This method will also be explained using a case study of the Life programme for troubled families in the UK.

Learning methodology
The seminar is based on a range of presentations, three case studies and several exercises to be worked on during the seminar. One case study should be read in advance requiring approximately two hours of prior study.

OBJECTIVES
At the end of seminar participants will understand how performance for citizens can be significantly and sustainably improved in a systematic way without using traditional command and control methods or misuse of target-setting.

PROGRAMME

THURSDAY 23 JUNE 2016

Welcome and introduction to seminar
• How the seminar relates to the European Commission’s ‘Toolbox on quality of public administration’
• Challenges for performance management in the 21st Century
Michael Burnett, Project Leader & Expert, European Public Management, EIPA, Maastricht (NL)

Performance as outcomes within the public sector within Moore’s public value framework: human development and well-being as put forward in the capability approach of Nobel Prize winning welfare economist A. Sen

Governance: from hierarchical, market based and network governance and associated accountability towards meta-governance and accountability for learning

Case study - Chicago Welfare Office performance management: what kind of governance and accountability? (Group discussion based on prior reading of case study)

Lunch

Vanguard methodology for organisational transformation and quality management
• Check-Plan-Do
• Thinking-System-Performance
• Purpose-Measures-Method
• Demand-Value-Flow
• Principles-Practice-Issues

Case study - Vanguard methodology in the Dutch police force

Case study - Vanguard methodology as seen from a (meta) governance and accountability for learning, well-being and human development perspective

End of day one

Reception at Hotel Derlon


FRIDAY 24 JUNE 2016

Theory of motivation
• The real meaning of “SMART”
• Performance objectives versus learning objectives
• Self-determination theory of motivation
• Exercise on motivation

Organisational learning
• Kolb’s learning cycle
• Peter Senge (MIT) on mental models
• Double loop conceptual learning versus single loop operational learning

Lunch

Social learning within and across organisational boundaries
• Otto Scharmer’s (MIT) Theory U
• Public service motivation
• U-lab and the Scottish Government
• Empathy walk exercise

Case study: Human-Centred Design and the Life Programme for Troubled Families
• Empathy in practice
• Prototyping
• Sen’s capability approach operationalised in performance measurement
• MindLab Denmark: a human-centred design public sector innovation unit

End of seminar

 

DATE & PLACE
The seminar will start on Thursday 23 June at 09.00 and end at 18.00 on Friday 24 June.

Seminar venue
European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA)
O.L. Vrouweplein 22
6211 HE Maastricht
Tel.: +31 43 3296 222

LENGUAGE
The seminar will be conducted in English.

PRICE
EIPA members’ fee*: €900
Regular fee: €1000

INSCRIPTION

You can sign up here