Hub participated in the 2023 ASPA Annual Conference
On 20-24 March, the American Society for Public Administration held its virtual Annual Conference under the theme “Protecting Democracy for the Next Generation: The Role and Responsibility of Public Administration”. As always, the Astana Civil Service Hub participated in the ASPA Annual Conference by taking part in the International Assembly and organizing its Panel Session, further strengthening its commitment to advancing the field of public administration.
The ASPA International Assembly was held on the third day of the Conference, at which ASPA leadership has extended their greetings, representatives of the partner organisations has shared the major activities and updates, following with discussion on ‘how to be an international civil servant’ and also presenting the 2023 International Public Administration Award.
During the Assembly, Mr. Alikhan Baimenov, Chairman of the ACSH Steering Committee highlighted in his speech that “ASPA have played a major role in the formation and advancement of the ACSH”, and “it was especially important to us to establish strong connections with the ASPA, whose many members have greatly contributed to the Hub’s development and implementation of its mission”. He also spoke about the current activities and recent achievements of the Hub, and noted that “we are now considering the idea of creating Associations of Public Administration in the region”.
On 24 March, the ACSH has held a Panel Session as part of this conference, which was focused on “Public Administration in the New Reality”. Welcoming speeches were made by Mr. Alikhan Baimenov and Mr. William Shields, Executive Director of the ASPA.
Mr. Baimenov emphasizes that “new reality characterized by uncertainty, brittleness, and disruptive technologies requires flexible and proactive public administration”. Moreover, he mentioned “whatever technologies are in place, civil servants remain at the heart of effective public administration. This underlines the critical role that HRM plays today”. Indeed, “to ensure that all civil servants fulfil their full potential it is crucial to consider more adaptive structures which, in new settings, seem to be more viable than traditional hierarchical ones” – said Mr. Baimenov.
In his welcoming notes, Mr. Shields started with extending congratulations with 10th Anniversary of the ACSH and outlined that the growth of the Hub is very considerable and is real reflection of the topic of the panel session. He said that “the only constant is the number of complexity issues we can confront like governmental, economic, societal, technological, political, as well as military conflict, are increasing”. In turn, “the wide variety of those challenges and rapidly evolving changing environment drawn the need for strong, competent, knowledgeable and informed civil service, in which role of professionals is more important than ever.”
Experts and practitioners from government and academic institutions from several countries around the world, e.g., Austria, Kazakhstan, Latvia, North Macedonia, United Kingdom, USA, and Uzbekistan, provided their insights on how public administrations can cope with the new reality, as well as how to carry out their functions effectively and/or what policies and practices public administrations can adapt and provide potential solutions to challenges our world is confronted with.
More detailed information about the 2023 ASPA Annual Conference could be found at https://www.aspanet.org/conference2023/home.
