Public administration at a crossroad: Five enduring challenges

Abstract

The field of public administration has long promised to produce a wide range of services, and for millennia government did so. However, in the course of the last 50 years, public trust has declined precipitously in the US. The public sector faces five crosscutting challenges in reversing that decline. Although the public sector does produce at a high level, there are serious deficiencies in the utilization of human resources, in making the case for government performance to the public, in identifying innovations that could enhance services, in speaking to the agendas of elected officials, in confronting the naïve assumptions of the business model of government, and in empowering bureaucratic resistors to help avoid disastrous decisions.