M.P.A.

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PUBLIC SYSTEM MANAGEMENT
ASSIGNMENT SOLUTIONS GUIDE (2011-2012)

Disclaimer / Special Note: These are just the sample of the Answers/Solutions to
some of the Ques- tions given in the Assignments. These Sample Answers/Solutions
are prepared by Tutor for the help of the student to get an idea of how he/she can
answer the questions of the Assignments. Sample answers may be Seen as the
Guide/Reference Book/assignment Guide. Any Omission or Error is highly regretted
though every care has been taken while preparing these Sample Answers/Solutions.
Please consult you Teacher / Tutor before you prepare a Particular Answer.

Q. 3. Define the concept of governance and explain its models.

Ans. The term ‘Governance’ is synonymous with different terms such as ‘seat of
government’, manner of governing its office or power, the term government itself,
implies to governance. In simple terms governance is a process of exercise of
authority to govern people or regulate public affairs. Governance relates to effective
at all levels, guaranteeing its territorial integrity and ensuring safety and overall
welfare of the people. Harland Cleveland was the first person to use the term
‘governance’ as an alternate to public administration. He opined that people want
more of governance and less of government. He said that instead of vertical
hierarchy, it is better to have lateral control which is more inclusive. Governance no
longer means government, it means, apart from maintaining law and order, it is a
participating system in which those who are governing, are motivated enough to
work for the people to the best of their abilities, solving their problems and making
people’s lives comfortable. Governance also involves focusing on the people and
formulating ways and means to ensure their satisfaction and happiness all the time.
World Bank defined governance as “.... The manner is which power is exercised in
the management of a country’s economic and social resources for the government.
Governance, in general, has three distinct aspects:
(a) The form of a political regime;

(b) The process by which authority is exercised in the management of a country’s

economic and social resources; and

(c) The capacity of governments to design, formulate and implement policies and in
general to discharge governmental functions. The terms usually describe conditions
in a country as a whole.” OCED defines governance “the use of political authority
and exercise of control in a society in relation to the management of its resources for
social and economic development”. The key factors of governance according to
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are:

(i) Legitimacy of government.

(ii) Accountability of political and official elements of government.

(iii) Ability of government in policy-making.

(iv) Respect of for human rights and the rule of law.

The United Nations Development Programme (1997) has viewed governance as “the
exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a nation’s
affairs at all levels. It is the complex mechanisms, processes and institutions through
which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights and
obligations, and mediate their differences”. UNESCO (1997) defines governance as
“..... A process whereby citizen’s needs and interests are articulated for the positive
social and economic development of the entire society and in the light of a perceived
common good. Governance means more than government: it refers to a political
process that encompasses the whole society and contributes to the making of
citizens, active contributors to the social contract that binds them together. Their
sense of political efficacy is one of the indicators of democratic governance”.
FORMS OF GOVERNANCE

(a) The Hierarchical Model: This is the traditional model of vertical governance
where the state is at the nodal point exercising and controlling the policies and
where communication is through vertical and horizontal modes, with its bureaucratic
controls.

(b) The Rational Goal Model: Here, though there is centralised approach, change
forms a basic characteristic of this model. It emphasises on efficiency, economic
rationalism and managerial authority.

(c) The Open Systems Model: This model encapsulates multiple inputs and
reflexive processes of development in which decisions can be altered with change in
time. Therefore, the line between policy formulation and implementation is not rigid
making feed-back a very important aspect.

(d)The Self-governance Model: This model is based on interactive governance and is

more participation in nature. It involves the citizens in the decision-making process.
Governance in the traditional way has been looked at as the exercise of power by the
executive, legislature and the judiciary. As time progressed, the informal sector is
gaining importance, and co-existing with the public sector.

Q. 4. Write a note in brief on important approaches to budgeting.

Ans.Budget,in plain words, is a statement of revenues and expenditures forecasted

over a period of one year. Preparing a budget is a humungous task on the part of the
Ministry of Finance, Government of India. It takes into consideration well in
advance, the spending plans of various ministries and departments and arrives at an
arbitrary figure.There are various approaches involved in the budgetary process,
some of them are:

(i) Planning Programming and Budgeting: This is basically a system which helps in
allocation of resources by the people involved in decision-making. Planning looks
into the aims and objectives and also choices of alternatives available. Programming
acts the link between planning and budgeting. Budgeting involves putting into action
the goals planned to the annual budget format. This approach puts across the fact
that planning, programming and budgeting are inter-related and, therefore, cannot to
looked into singularly.

(ii) Performance Budgeting: This approach says that the annual budget is a work
plan emphasising on the goals to be achieved and the ways to achieve this target in
one financial year. This looks into establishing a working relationship between
inputs and the outputs desired. The components of performance budgeting are:

(a) Identifying the objectives

(b) Classification of activities

(c) Standards

(d) Accounting structure

(e) Decentralised responsibility structure

(f) Performance review.

(iii) Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB): ZBB is based on the assumption that only

those facts and figures should be taken into consideration which have occurred in the
current financial year. The steps involved in ZBB are:

(a) Identification of decision units.

(b) Formulation and development of decision packages.

(c) Evaluating and ranking decision packages in order of priority.

(d) Preparation of budget by allocating resources to activities.

But the main limitation of this approach is the cumbersome paperwork involved and
generally spans a long time. It also requires skills and expertise and can only be
handled by well-qualified personnel.

(iv) Outcome Based Budgeting: This approach looks into budget with respect to the
goals achieved. The budget is linked with performance measurement system. It is
more citizen focused and outcome or result base system of budget.

Q. 7. Throw light on key group decision making techniques.

Ans. The advances in technology and the fast moderation of the world, in general,
opened new and very promising avenues of business opportunities not in just
individual’s locale but also abroad. Decision-making is a cognitive process in which
one selects a choice from among many. It is considered as psychological construct
because even though it is not physically tangible, the results can be observed if a
decision has been done. It is basically an activity which calls for a subsequent action
to be done. Management involves the skilful planning and execution of business
strategies. It is concerned with creating important decisions that affect the long-term
goals of an organisation. Normally organisations focus on the external characteristics
of the business environment. Top management usually focuses on their aggressive
competitors and the constant change in supply and demand. However, the internal
area in the organisation should be taken into account. Since it is where they get the
services of products for the consumers. Areas such as human resource planning,
quality assurance and operations management are some of the essential fields an
organisation should be taken into account during decision-making process. There are
many decision strategies that can be used in choosing which of the alternatives to
execute. These strategies make the task of decision-making more organised,easier
and faster.

(i) Brain Storming: This process involves defining and agreement of objectives,
categorising of ideas identifying the effects and results, prioritizing the options,
agreeing on action and controlling and monitoring the follow up.

(ii) Synectics: This process involves making the ‘strange familiar’ and ‘familiar
strange’. Here, the leader plays an important role to ensure that the team members
think ‘out of the box’ for arriving at solutions to the problems. It employs methods
such as role play, analogies and paradoxes to generate creative ideas.

(iii)Delphi:This process involves drawing of experts for a particular problem from

both within and outside the organisation. All the individual experts give their
predictions anonymously. The feedback is given to individual experts and further
predictions are based on the information available and these results are used for the
decision-making process.

(iv) Normal Group Technique: This technique is a highly structured process and tries
to integrate creative thinking through group interaction, in order to solve
organisational problems in a useful manner. In this technique the following steps are
involved:

● There is absolutely no verbal interaction between the members.

● Round Robin feedback from group members to record each idea in a terse phrase
on a flip chart.

● There is discussion of each of the ideas recorded.

● Finally there is voting on priority ideas and decisions are arrived through rating or
rank ordering.

(v) Heuristic Technique: In this technique, the decision-maker chooses from a

selection of alternatives. It is used to simplify complex problem through increasing
the probability that a solution will be found within a reasonable amount of time. An
individual may use a compensatory decision rule which will permit high value on
one dimension of the decision to compensate for the low value of another dimension.

Q. 8. Examine the efforts made in India towards the right to information and
highlight the main features of Right to Information Act 2005.

Ans. In India during the internal emergency period in 1975-76 there were a lot of
restrictions imposed on general public with respect to supression of information,
press censorship and abuse of authority which led to a lot of public resentment. The
Janata government in its manifesto of 1977 promised an open government and
declared that it would not misuse the intelligence services and governmental
authority for personal and partisan ends and over a period of time a lot of
governments brought a lot of initiatives in this aspect but nothing concrete came up.
The Right to Information movement was initiated by Aruna Roy in Rajasthan. The
Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan a peoples organisation has been doing considerble
work in making the government answer to the demands of information and
accountability. In 1997, the Government of India set-up a working group on Right to
Information and promotion of open and transparent government. The National
Democratic Alliance Government’s FOI Bill was Introduced in 2000 in the
Parliament. The Bill was under Consideration till recently for Parliamentary
standing committees on Home Affairs. But the Bill invoked a lot of criticism on the
following aspects:
(a) The bill exempts from disclosure “information exchanged in confidence between
the central and state governments or any of their authorities or agenciss.”

(b) It doesn’t provide for any penalties against. officials who violate refuse or dart
with false information.

(c) The most serious eacuna in this bill is that there is provision for appeals only
within the government bodies.

The Right to Information Bill in Parliament was tabled on December 23, 2004. The
National Advisory Council recommended 36 amendments to the Freedom of
Information Act, 2002 and changed its name to the Right to Information Act.

RIGHT TO INFORMATION ACT, 2005: MAIN FEATURES

The key features of Right to Information Act, 2005 are:

(i) This act not only confers right to information, but also covers “information
relating to a private body which can be accused by a public authorities, under any
law.”

(ii) The public authorities, apart from standard provisions, they are also to publish:
the budget allocations of each agency, ways in which the subsidy programmes are
executed and also amounts allocated and the beneficiaries.

(iii) Appointment of Public Information Officers (PIOs).

(iv) Laying down of time limits i.e. thirty days for normal application and to days
where a third party is involved.

(v)The application fee has been kept nominal and for people from economically
weaker sections, there is no charge.
(vi) The Act provides for establishment of new information commission at the centre
and also in all the states comprising Chief Information Commissioner and ten
information Commissioners.

(vii) Penalties can be levied on the PIO for refusing applications, delaying the
release of information without any reasonable cause and also giving incomplete,
incorrect and also misleading information.

Q. 9. Explain the significance of networking and inter-institutional coordination

in governance.

Ans. As governance includes government, markets, voluntary organisations, media

and is mobilising all these concerned stakeholders that networking plays a vital role.
According to new man, the shifts in governance in the present day are in the form of:
(i) Handling of sensitive social and economic tissues are no longer just limited to

the public sector.

(ii) Inclusion of policy network into governance.

(iii) Incorporating responsive policy tools.

(iv) Making decision-making an inclusive process.

(v) Involving the civil society in the process of governance.

As citizens, we all look forward to good governance and most of the times our
expectations are not fully met. Governance basically means the process of decision-
aking and the way in which these decisions are put in practice. Governance is a
broad term and contextually it can be referred to corporate governance, global
governance, national governance and local governance. According to Bovaird and
Loffler (2000) governance includes:

(i) Where issues require co-ordination amongst various agencies apart from the
government itself.

(ii) It is within the framework of formal rules as well as informal ones and the power
to the stakeholders to change these rules if situationally required.

(b) It is not only interested in aims and achievements but give equal importance to
issues such as transparency, integrity, honesty etc.

All stakeholders apart from the government and the military are put in the category
of “Civil society” at different structural levels, different actors assume importance in
the process of governance.

Networking is the process by which all these stakeholders are interconnected in the
form of a system. Networking on its part has the power to bring together micro
efforts into meaningful association in development of civil society.

After India attained its freedom from the British, we as a country chose to build
further on the basics of the existing situations. India over the years has grown from
strength to strength. As in present day is the largest democracy in South Asia.
Despite Galbraith’s characterisation of India as a “functioning anarchy”, it has done
well for itself in sustaining as a democracy. Inspite of all the positives, a lot has to be
done still with respect to the functioning of democratic institutions and the
constitutional system.

Indian government is essentially three tiered-the centre, state and the local
government. There are other coordination agencies such as National Development
Council and Inter-state Council provided by the Constitution of India. In a
parliamentary form of government, the Parliament enjoys legislative powers, but in
reality it doesn’t match up to the mark. The two categories in which the legislature
acts in a parliamentary form of government are:

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