Por su interés para la Administración Pública y demás organismos y entes del sector público español, desde Calidad y Gestión queremos traer en este nuevo post una breve referencia a la reciente convocatoria del Premio Europeo para el Sector Público (EPSA), promovido por la Fundación Bertelsmann, la Universidad de las Ciencias Administrativas Spire y el Grupo Europeo de Administración Pública (GEAP) contres categorías:

* - Gobernanza colaborativa

* - Seleccionar los objetivos con recursos limitados y

* - Hacer frente al cambio demográfico".

Hemos extraído de supágina Web institucional una breve reseña en su texto original en inglés, a cada una de las categorías en las que se desglosan los citados Premios Europeos para el Sector Público

European Public Sector Award (EPSA)

COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE

The public sector has come to realise in recent decades that it is not alone in its task of improving the quality of life of its citizens. Most public sector organisations can only succeed in their missions if many different organisations, across all sectors, come together to collaborate. The wicked issues faced by the public sector need to be tackled through shared solutions. Moreover, the holistic needs of citizens require seamless services - these needs cannot be met if they are tackled piecemeal by fragmented organisations which only pay attention to their own tasks.

Under this theme, we are therefore inviting applications from innovative and excellent examples of partnership working and joined-up services. Innovations might include, for example, the range of agencies brought together, the range of needs addressed in holistic ways, the type of synergy achieved between services, the focus on joint outcomes rather than processes, the level of sharing (e.g. of staff, expertise, premises, equipment and even of budgets) or the way that the group of organisations presents a common front to service users and the general public (e.g. through a one stop shop or a single public service telephone number).

Good partnership working and joined-up services not only involve finding synergies but also require appropriate ways of working together - what we often label good governance principles for working together. Innovations might include, for example, new ways of demonstrating transparency and achieving accountability, closer interaction with democratic decision makers (at national, state and local levels), more effective ways of addressing the social inclusion and diversity agendas, more imaginative approaches to engagement with citizens and other stakeholders, and a more rigorous approach to sustainability.

TARGETING WITH SCARCE RESOURCES

The need of a sound financial management characterises public administrations all over Europe. They have to achieve their targets with less resources and to use these resources not in a consumptive, but in a sustainable way, so to foster intergenerational equity.

On one side citizens, businesses and other stakeholders tend to increase their demand of high quality services – as well as their volume, which dramatically impacts on public finances. On the other side the awareness arises that efficient processes can – and consequently must – be introduced in public administrations, as a result of reform paths.

The last 20-25 years offer a great number of examples of both phenomena in many European countries and confirm that the pressure on resources has become structural.

The applications we are looking for in this award section come from administrations which have succeeded in meeting the needs and expectations of their stakeholders, and that at the same time have kept a strict control on the financial impact of their decisions. In other words, we invite all those public administrations who can demonstrate to have progressed in the way they work, and who by doing this have created a value for their citizens – a public value.

There may be many ways to do this, and a non exhaustive list comprises actions in following fields:

Strategic Steering and Management by objectives - Public-private partnerships - Organisational solutions, e.g. internal organisation, joined-up-government, shared services, outsourcing - Change management - Human resources management and Performance-related pay - Cost control and Efficiency strategies - Budgeting, accounting and reporting - Financing schemes - Debt control - Asset management, Risk management - Quality assurance and Performance evaluation - Business process reengineering - E-government

Whatever the innovation introduced, a condition must be satisfied: it has to be financially viable, its financial impact must have been weighted and taken into account before the decision.

So the award will not only concern strictly financial innovations; but cost-consciousness and consideration of the potential financial impact must characterise any candidacy, together with a documentation of its actual results.

COPING WITH DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE

Countries around the globe face rapid demographic change. Birth rates are falling sharply in both old industrialised and young developing countries. In Europe this means that populations will start to shrink and get older unless offset by steady immigration. Countries in Europe are not used to either scenario. More older people means more demand for pensions, old age care and health care. This may become a real problem to supply with fewer people at working age. It may either call for raising taxes or cutting back on other public programs. Even so there may be difficulties in staffing important social functions. A steady immigration, on the other hand, calls for supportive integrating programs, whether it concerns jobs, housing, education, culture or other aspects of integration. Also, within countries there will be imbalances, with stagnant parts loosing the young and getting older, which will call for redistributive regional policies and regional development policies.

Countries around Europe will be in different situations and will pursue different policies to cope with these changes. Some will open up for immigration, others will reform pension schemes to motivate old age people to stay on working, still others will try to raise birth rates.

Still many challenges will be the same. The award focuses not on policies but on the public organisations and their partners that help to develop and implement these policies in an efficient and innovative way.

There will be a need for personnel policies that manage to motivate staff to stay on while at the same time attracting young people. If successful in this respect, these organisations will immediately face another challenge: how to handle knowledge sharing, promotions, salary structures and mobility with young newcomers encountering an ever more senior work-force. How to promote and finance life-long learning, how to make one organisational culture out of the many cultures in the work- force?

Making delivery of health care, old age care and pension systems more efficient will be of great importance. What can be done? And what can be done to adjust public services at large to an older population, that hears and reads and moves less well? Or adjusting schools to immigrant children and language training and education for grown up immigrants?

On the next level welfare schemes will have to be reformed to motivate people at large to finish their studies more quickly, to participate in the labour market to a greater extent and to work for more years. Efficiency of the labour market will be crucial. This concerns mobility in general but also avoiding discrimination of sex, race, age, ethnic origin and on other grounds in order to take advantage of the full potential of the work force. We are eager to see how public organisations help to innovate and implement policies that seek to handle these issues.

Editorial: Calidad y Gestión