Key Terms in Public Administration and Technology

Posted on Dec 18, 2024 in Economy

Technology and Public Administration

• Big Data: Huge, complex datasets that are hard to manage with normal tools.
• CIO (Chief Information Officer): Person in charge of managing an organization’s technology and data security.
• Cyber Hacking: Breaking into computer systems or networks.
• Cybersecurity: Protecting data and systems from attacks or theft.
• Digital Democracy: Using technology to support democratic processes.
• E-Gov: Using technology to provide public services and communicate with citizens.
• GIS (Geographic Information System): Tool for mapping and analyzing locations (like roads, water pipes, etc.).
• GPS (Global Positioning System): System that tracks locations (e.g., cars, assets).
• Internet: Global network of connected computers for sharing information.
• Smart Cities: Cities using technology to improve services and living.

Public Finance and Economics

• Adverse Selection: When one party hides risks, leading to unfair decisions (e.g., risky driver buying full insurance).
• Block Grant: Grant funding that gives the recipient general discretion over how to spend the money.
• Categorical Grant: Grant funding that is conditional in that it is given to fund specific activities and programs.
• Efficiency: Getting the most done with the least amount of resources.
• Externalities: Consequences resulting from an activity (positive or negative) that are not accounted for in the market price of what is produced by that activity.
• Fiscal Federalism: Relating to the notion that different levels of government are better suited to fund and deliver certain types of services.
• Fiscal Policy: Policy used by governments to influence the economy through changes in government revenue and expenditure.
• Horizontal Equity: The notion that similarly-situated parties should be treated similarly even when the parties make different economic choices.
• Information Asymmetry: Refers to when one party has more complete information about a market transaction than the other party involved in the transaction.
• Market Failure: This occurs in the free market when there is a failure of the pricing system to promote desired outcomes and to maximize social well-being. Primary sources of market failure include public goods, externalities, natural monopolies, and information asymmetry.
• Matching Grant: Grant funding that is tied to the level of spending, or resources raised, by the recipient.
• Monetary Policy: Policy enacted by a country’s central bank that alters the availability of money through the banking system.
• Moral Hazard: Refers to the risky behavior that is incentivized by being protected from the full cost of the consequences of that behavior (for example, with insurance).
• Natural Monopoly: A monopoly that occurs in industries in which high initial infrastructure investment and scale economies make competition wasteful. In a natural monopoly, a single firm is the most efficient outcome (for example, public utilities).
• Public Goods: Nonrival goods and services from which no member of society can be excluded. They are typically provided by the public and nonprofit sectors.
• Redistribution: The process of dividing resources in a different way, as with the redistribution of wealth with a progressive tax system.
• Tax Expenditure: Taxes that are foregone, or not collected, due to intentional policy decisions.
• Vertical Equity: The notion that parties with greater levels of resources should shoulder a higher tax burden than those with lesser resources.

Financial Management and Accounting

• Accounting Basis: The set of rules that determines when and how financial transactions are recorded.
• Activity Statement: The document showing an organization’s revenue and support earned over the course of the year minus the expenses required to operate.
• Assets: Property or anything of value that an organization possesses.
• Balance Sheet: A snapshot of an organization’s finances as of the last day of the reporting period (typically a fiscal year).
• Board-Designated Funds: A portion of unrestricted net assets, designated by a nonprofit’s board of directors as “quasi-endowment”; usually set aside for specific purposes.
• Cash Flow Statement: Statement that adjusts the change in net assets found on the activity statement to reflect cash, rather than accrual, accounting.
• Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR): Serves as an annual report for state and local governments and includes, among other things, an organization’s audited financial statements for the previous year.
• Donor Intent: A philanthropist’s expectations for the use of donated funds, large or small, by an organization.
• Endowment: Assets invested to produce a stream of income for the organization; in other words, a pot of money whose growth and earnings are used to support an organization’s activities.
• Financial Ratios: Comparison formulas that allow for a range of financial questions to be addressed from an organization’s financial statement information.
• Fund-Raising: Broadly, this refers to the solicitation of external funds from private contributors to support an organization.
• IRS Form 990: Form filed by most tax-exempt nonprofits to report financial information; primary source for nonprofits’ annual financial data.
• Liabilities: Claims against the organization or what the organization owes external parties.
• Operating Reserves: Surplus funds set aside to provide resources for new investments, special projects, or a cushion for unexpected events like an economic downturn or natural disasters.
• Philanthropy: The charitable act of giving to help others, typically in the form of financial donations.
• Proprietary Funds: Government funds that exist for the businesslike activities of government.
• Rainy Day Fund: Reserve funds maintained by governments that have relatively well-defined policies, including rules on target reserve levels and spending.
• Donor Restrictions: A philanthropist’s formally-established rules for the use of donated funds by an organization.
• Statement of Revenues, Expenditures, and Changes in Fund Balances: For government funds, a statement that presents revenues and expenditures by fund.
• Tax-Exempt Bonds: Bonds in which the interest paid to debt holders is untaxed as income at the federal and, in most cases, state levels.
• Third-Party Watchdog Organizations: Groups that monitor the financial activity of public or nonprofit organizations.

Transparency and Information Access

• Active Transparency: Exists when an organization makes information accessible to the public in the absence of any specific request.
• Exemptions: With regard to the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), these refer to the categories of information for which agencies can deny fulfillment of FOIA requests.
• Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA): Law requiring the more than 1,000 federal advisory committees giving advice to the executive branch to hold open meetings.
• Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): Law that provides a legal framework within which the public can request access to existing government records, requires federal agencies to regularly disclose certain information in the Federal Register, and requires agencies to maintain reading rooms that house a set of prescribed documents.
• Fund-Raising Disclosure: Refers to when nonprofit organizations accurately disclose fund-raising expenses and practices to the public.
• Government in the Sunshine Act: Law requiring the executive branch agencies that fall under the FOIA to hold open meetings.
• Inward Transparency: Represents the ability of outsiders to view the activities occurring within an organization.
• IRS Form 990: Form filed by tax-exempt nonprofits to report financial information; primary source for nonprofits’ annual financial data.
• Leaks: Intentional releases of information that had previously been maintained with secrecy.
• Open Meeting Laws: Laws requiring various organizations to hold meetings that are publicized and open to the public.
• Passive Transparency: Exists when an organization is reactive and requires an outside request for information to be provided from the organization.
• Privacy Act: Law that protects individuals from invasions of privacy related to the collection, maintenance, usage, and disclosure of personal information by federal agencies.
• Public Notice: Notice providing details of an upcoming meeting in the Federal Register in accordance with the applicable open meeting laws.
• Real-Time Transparency: The continuous and timely release of information to the public, particularly when there is urgency in the need to disseminate information.
• Targeted Transparency: Refers to mandated disclosures of information, usually driven by government regulation, that are made to alleviate potential information asymmetries.
• Transparency: In organizations, refers to the presence of open processes, actions, and documents that are subject to public scrutiny.

Contracting and Public-Private Partnerships

• Bid Protests: Claims filed by a contractor against a government organization to dispute a contract awarded to a competitor.
• Contract: An agreement that is legally enforceable and reflects the relationship between two or more parties for a specific period of time.
• Contracting-Out: In government, refers to the decision to forego producing a good or service internally, instead opting to contract with a private/nonprofit sector entity while maintaining government oversight; see outsourcing.
• Cooling-Off Period: A time frame during which a former government employee cannot be employed as an industry lobbyist in the private sector after leaving a government job; put in place to reduce any unfair influence or insider knowledge that persists.
• Cost-Reimbursement Contracts: Contracts that agree to pay a contractor based on the actual costs; these contracts can use incentives to further align the contractor’s behavior with the government’s needs.
• Fixed-Cost Contracts: Contracts that agree to pay a contractor a set amount; these contracts are used when little uncertainty exists about the specifications or requirements of the contracted activity.
• Make-or-Buy Decision: The consideration of whether to produce a good or service in-house or to contract out; influenced by cost, required expertise, and commercial nature of the work.
• Outsourcing: In government, refers to the decision to forego producing a good or service internally; instead, opting to contract with a private/nonprofit sector entity while maintaining government oversight; see contracting-out.
• Principal-Agent Theory: Describes the problematic scenario in principal-agent relationships in which the agent (e.g., a contractor) can potentially take advantage of the principal (e.g., the government) due to information asymmetries between the parties.
• Privatization: The complete transfer of a function from the public sector to the private sector, often establishing a formal, regulatory relationship with government.
• Production: Refers to the actual generation of a good or service.
• Provision: Refers to the obligation to deliver a good or service.
• Public-Private Partnerships (P3s): Contractual relationships between government and private firms to deliver either existing or newly-developed public services.
• Relational Contracting: Refers to the central role of relationships in supplementing the formal contract as the public sector cedes authority to third parties.
• Request-for-Proposal (RFP): In contracting, refers to the document that formally solicits proposals/bids from potential contractors.
• Revolving Door: Refers to the relative ease with which government employees move to private industry lobbying positions, and industry lobbyists move to government positions.
• Set-Asides: Specific shares of the available contracting activity that are earmarked for smaller businesses and those that are owned by traditionally disadvantaged groups; also referred to as “bid preferences.”
• Sole-Source Contracting: A noncompetitive process in which there are negotiations with only one contractor; in government contracting, this process is common during wartime, natural disasters.

Administrative Law and Procedures

• Adjudicatory Procedures: Relating to the administrative adjudication process, wherein an executive agency’s administrative law judge (ALJ) rules on claims brought before or against the agency, typically pertaining to matters of procedural due process.
• Administrative Law: Body of law that translates constitutional principles regarding the delegation of legislative authority and procedural due process into action; provides a framework for the rulemaking process, hearing grievances, and enforcement of rules and laws.
• Administrative Law Judge: A judge whose function is to hear cases involving laws and regulations pertaining to the agency for which they work; they ensure fairness in administrative proceedings by preserving the due process rights of claimants against the agency.
• Administrative Procedure Act: Passed in 1946 to clarify the rulemaking and adjudication processes of administrative agencies, control their authority to enforce laws and regulations, and make their activities more open to public participation.
• Constitutional Law: Body of law that establishes the powers and responsibilities of government, and the rights and responsibilities of citizens, rooted in the Constitution.
• Delegated Lawmaking: Refers to the administrative process of rulemaking, wherein executive agencies design the implementation of a law by establishing rules and regulations, as delegated by the legislature.
• Public Law: Body of law pertaining to the organization and processes of government, the relations between the state and its citizens, the responsibilities of government officials, and the relations between political jurisdictions.
• Qualified Immunity: A form of immunity that shields public officials from liability for civil damages as long as they do not violate an individual’s rights and the claim arises from the performance of their job duties in good faith and with due care.
• Rulemaking: The process by which executive agencies transform laws into programs by establishing the rules and regulations for their implementation.

Ethics and Values in Public Administration

• Administrative Evil: Refers to inhumane acts that occur when ordinary public administrators perform their duties in a way in which wrong becomes right (moral inversion); this results when an amoral organizational culture overrules individual conscience.
• Ethical Satisficing: A compromise that satisfies ethical parameters at a minimally acceptable level, resulting from a clash of personal and organizational values.
• Friedrich-Finer Debate: A debate regarding the exercise of discretion by public servants; Friedrich argued that well-trained public servants should be trusted to exercise their judgment, while Finer argued that public servants should be closely-supervised and make decisions based on rules rather than relying on their own discretion.
• Regime Values: The set of values—upon which a constitutional order is based—that shape how people think about government and its proper powers.
• Social Equity: Refers to the presence of fairness, justice, and equitable outcomes in public administration.
• Sunshine Acts: Laws designed to open government action to public scrutiny.
• Transparency: In organizations, refers to the presence of open processes, actions, and documents that are subject to public scrutiny.
• Whistleblowing: Refers to when an employee or former employee of an organization discloses evidence of wrongdoing, such as a violation of law, gross mismanagement, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.

Performance Management and Citizen Engagement

• Benchmarking: The act of looking externally to peer organizations to determine what represents average and, perhaps, aspirational performance.
• Cost-Effectiveness: A measure that relates costs to outcome measures.
• Effectiveness: Refers to the accomplishment of intended results or goals.
• Efficiency: A measure that combines inputs and outputs to represent the amount of resources required to complete an activity or provide a service.
• Inputs: Resources used in an activity; used to generate efficiency measures or to measure resource use over time.
• Logic Model: A representation of the relationship between program inputs, outputs, and outcomes; primarily used in evaluation.
• Outcomes: The results produced by public sector outputs; they represent the change in conditions resulting from activities.
• Outputs: The goods/services delivered or produced by an organization or program.
• Performance Management: Refers to the use of performance information by public managers to improve the work of their organizations.
• Citizen Engagement: Citizen participation, inspired by a sense of duty and/or efficacy, and fostered by an open, democratic government.
• Hamiltonian Ideals: Emphasizes the superiority of urban society, centralized government, importance of the executive function, and trust in the elites.
• Insourcing: Regarding public services, this refers to direct provision of services by the government.
• Jeffersonian Ideals: Emphasizes the superiority of rural society, decentralized government, importance of the legislative function, and trust in the masses.
• Learning Organization: Organizations that adapt to changes by identifying problems, self-correcting, monitoring, and making subsequent adjustments, as needed.
• Outsourcing: Regarding public services, this refers to contracting with private or nonprofit providers for production of services.
• Social Equity: Refers to the presence of fairness, justice, and equitable outcomes in public administration.
• Stewardship: Responsible planning and management of duties or resources.