Preface
| Date | 01 February 1997 |
| Author | TAN SRI DATO'SERI AHMAD SARJI |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-162X(199702)17:1<1::AID-PAD916>3.0.CO;2-9 |
| Published date | 01 February 1997 |
Preface
TAN SRI DATO'SERI AHMAD SARJI
President, CAPAM
As President of CAPAM, I am delighted to share with you, through this special issue
of PAD, highlights of the CAPAM Biennial conference: The New Public
Administration: Global Challenges, Local Solutions. The conference was held in
Malta, April 1996, under the patronage of the Right Honourable Prime Minister of
Malta, Dr. Edward Fenech-Adami. CAPAM has grown substantially since its
inaugural conference in Canada in 1994 with over 66 countries (including 17 non-
Commonwealth countries) represented in our membership of over 1000 individuals
and institutions. This far-reaching membership network enables CAPAM to draw
on the experience of a wide array of senior public of®cials and academics at meetings
such as the Malta conference. In fact, the 1996 Biennial conference brought together
280 participants from 53 nations, including Prime Ministers, a Deputy Prime
Minister (now on the Board of CAPAM), Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, and
other senior public of®cials, as well as academics and private sector representatives.
The Malta conference, as it has been described, provided a marketplace of ideas
that built on the new public administration paradigm identi®ed at the CAPAM
inaugural conference in Canada in August 1994. A consensus emerged out of the
Malta conference that CAPAM had met its conference goal: to explore the
commonalities of the challenges facing governments while sharing lessons learned
about the distinctiveness and particularities of local application of management
reforms.
Delegates to the Malta conference discussed initiatives to provide high-quality
services to citizens, to apply information technology throughout the Commonwealth,
to increase line agency autonomy from central agency controls, to set demanding
organizational performance targets, and to develop partnerships with the private and
third sectors (Voluntary non-Government organizations). A key element of the
conference dialogue centred around human resource issues, particularly in light of the
low morale resulting from current uncertainties that works against progressive
approaches such as increasing autonomous decision-making and pay-for-performance
initiatives. Through this issue of PAD we bring you a wide selection of the range and
complexities of the papers presented in Malta.
Prime Minister Dato Seri Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia has invited
CAPAM to continue this ongoing international dialogue in our country in 1998.
Thus, the next Biennial Conference will be held in Malaysia in 1998 and will focus on
public management in the next millennium. The Malaysia Biennial Conference
Programme Committee has already met and begun to focus on several speci®c
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, VOL. 17, 1±2 (1997)
&1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Tan Sri Dato'Seri Ahmad Sarji was the Chief Secretary to the Government, Prime Minister's Department,
Malaysia.
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