On October 28th, 2016, Associate Professor Zeng Jimao, the teaching management director of our MPA Center, together with an MPA postgraduate Gu Zhengkan, attended the Sixth Jiangsu MPA Forum held in Nanjing University of Science and Technology. Prof. Yang Kaifeng, Secretary General of National MPA Education Steering Committee,and committee members Prof. Ma Baobin and Prof. Shi Xiaoping were present as invited. Over 200 people including government leaders such as Hong Liu, Deputy Director of Education Department of Jiangsu Province, and Mei Shicheng, Director of Bureau of Public Servants of Jiangsu Province,experts representativessuch as Prof. Jin Taijun, Dean of School of Politics and Public Administration of Soochow University, and Prof. Kong Fanbin, Dean of School of Government of Nanjing University, teacher and student representatives of 26 MPA training institutions from Jiangsu and Yangtze River Delta Region, and representatives of Jiangsu MPA fellowship participated in the forum.
In the keynote seminar, five experts delivered splendid keynote speeches. Prof. Yang Kaifeng of People’s University titled his speech as “Promoting the Modernization of Governance Capacity and the Development of MPA Education”, and other speeches included“Reflection on Chinese People’s View of Justice” by Prof. Ma Baobin of Jilin University, “Elaboration on the Land Reform of China” by Prof. Shi Xiaoping, “Government Innovation under the New Norm of Governance”by Prof. Jin Taijun of Soochow University, and “How Does National Governance Innovate – Narration Based on the Reform of Government Functions” by Prof. Kong Fanbin of Nanjing University. They addressed the current hot issues of public administration from various angles, which were applauded by the teachers and students present at the forum.
MPA postgraduate Gu Zhengkan reported his paper “Study on the Government’s Purchase of Services in Community Correction and Management” in the No.1 sub-forum, which researched on the government’s purchase of services applied in the community correction work of Jiangshan County and found out that there was an obvious deviation from the original intention of government’s purchase ofcommunity correction services– after purchasing the services, the work load of law enforcement personnel was not reduced and the “service”experience of the prisoners was not satisfactory. Through analysis, he summarized the reasons as: firstly, the content of correction services was not set properly. The content that both violated legal regulations and made negative impacts on execution was included in the purchase scope. Secondly, both the internal management mechanism and external operation mechanism have problems, which led to the low efficiency of management inside the social organization and bad quality of services. Thirdly, the assessment factors were not complete, i.e. theydidn’t take “customer” and “efficiency” into consideration. According to the aforementioned issues, further countermeasures were proposed: firstly, properly deal with the relationship between principal and agency. Set reasonable content of community services, improve the cohesive mechanism of social organizations and office of justice, and enhance the daily examination and supervision on social organizations. Secondly, improve the internal management mechanism and external operation mechanism. Thirdly, perfect the evaluation methodology of government’s purchase of services and differentiate internal and external assessments. The report attracted much attention during the forum.
Associate Professor Zeng Jimao, the teaching management director of MPA education, hosted the No. 5 sub-forum, which gathered the presentations aboutnon-profit organizations and social governance. The sub-forum had 10 reporters, and most of the reports were closely connected to the practices of public management, describing the basic situation and issues of NPOs’ participation in social governance in specific regions. Five professors from Tongji University, Southeast University, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology and Yangzhou University also made valuable comments on students’ theses. At the closing ceremony, Zeng Jimao represented the No. 5 sub-forum to debrief the papers and reports and discussion of the sub-forum. He expressed that, the MPA students had strong problem awareness and aspiration to take initiatives to improve the public administration practices of our country. Their papers and reports were appealing, but the theories and tools applied to the analysis needed to be improved. They tended to put forward small problems but look for macro-solutions. This shortcoming required the joint effort of MPA teachers and students to address.