Celebrating 25 years

 

2017 sees the 25th anniversary of SIGMA, the result of a successful long-term partnership between the OECD and the European Union (EU). In that period, SIGMA has developed into a recognised centre of excellence of public administration reform (PAR) and has worked with more than 30 partner countries to help them to establish professional public administrations, effective financial management and economic development.

SIGMA assists countries in planning and delivering their priority reforms through bi-lateral technical assistance projects, regional events and horizontal initiatives to support the European Commission (EC) in further developing its focus on PAR, including public financial management. Drawing on all of its experience and with senior advisors who have all worked in their own national public administration, SIGMA worked closely with the EC in 2014 to develop the Principles of Public Administration, to provide countries with a tangible framework for what a good public administration should look like and what they should strive for, to better serve their citizens and businesses.

Throughout SIGMA’s 25th year we will be showcasing the Principles and how they impact on people’s lives. The characters above represent people at different stages of their lives and they each will explain the relevance of a good public administration for them.

 

Service delivery   Service delivery represents good governance at a tangible level: citizens and businesses view the public sector as a provider of services, which they pay for through their taxes. Public administration must therefore be citizen and business orientated. Services need to be first and foremost accessible to all; they also need to be efficient and effective as well as assured in a continuous and consistent manner. Depending on the country, the public sector provides a wide array of services to citizens throughout their lives. The public increasingly compares public sector services to those provided by the private sector, and expects these services to be of equal quality. Changing demographics and budgetary constraints means that service delivery has to stay up to date in a rapidly changing world to meet these expectations and still remain affordable. A government must provide its citizens with certain services, this is a legal provision of most constitutions, but beyond that the services provided need to be of high quality and succeed in saving citizens and businesses time and money.

For more characters, please click here.

What is service delivery?   Credit to the TEN network and WeBER project

Wall of quotes

 For the complete wall of quotes, click here.

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