The Nature, Content and Scope of Public Administration PUB1501 Semesters 1 and 2

The purpose of myUnisa is to support your learning, more specifically in the online environment. If you make a regular habit of checking your module webpage, you can take full advantage of the following features: • The Official study material tool, where you will find PDF files for your tutorial letters and your study guide. Any other documents provided by your lecturer will be available in the Additional resources tool. • Announcements: Your lecturer may use the Announcements tool to inform you about important module-related issues. When a lecturer puts an announcement on the website, you may also receive an e-mail reminding you to check the website. • The Discussion Forums tool includes General subject-related discussions where you can talk to your fellow students about the module. The lecturers may include other topics and forums for you. • Lessons: Valuable information about the structure of the module as well as the module content are added under Lessons. • Lessons: The new myUnisa tool, “Lessons”, will have similar content to what was previously covered by “lessons”. Here you will find all the lessons based on the study units in the study guide. • Glossary. For additional support we provide you with a glossary of the key concepts and terms used in this module. • FAQs: Frequently asked questions that relate to the content of the module as well as the scope of the examination, have been added. You will find the frequently asked questions under FAQs. • Assessment info: Your submitted assignments are routed to your lecturer who will mark it. • The Schedule tool will show you your official assignment and examination dates. We hope that you will take full advantage of these additional features to make your studies more exciting and successful. Tutorial offerings Please be informed that, with effect from 2013, Unisa offers online tutorials (e-tutoring) to students registered for modules at National Qualification Framework (NQF) levels 5, 6 and 7, which means qualifying first-year, second-year and third-year modules. Once you have registered for a qualifying module, you will be allocated to a group of students with whom you will be interacting during the tuition period as well as an e-tutor who will be your tutorial facilitator. Thereafter you will receive an SMS with information about your group, the name PUB1501/101/3/2021 9 of your e-tutor and instructions on how to log onto the myUnisa to receive further information on the e-tutoring process. Online tutorials are conducted by qualified e-tutors who are appointed by Unisa. These tutorials are offered free of charge. All you need to be able to participate in e-tutoring, is a computer with internet connection. If you live close to a Unisa Regional Centre or a Telecentre contracted with Unisa, please feel free to visit any of these to access the internet. E-tutoring takes place on myUnisa where you are expected to connect with other students in your allocated group. It is the role of the e-tutor to guide you through your study material during this interaction process. To get the most out of online tutoring, you need to participate in the online discussions facilitated by the e-tutor. There are modules that students have been found to fail repeatedly. These modules are allocated face-to-face tutors and tutorials for these modules take place at the Unisa Regional Centres. They are also offered free of charge, but students are required to register for them at the nearest Unisa Regional Centre. Study groups Many students have found that they benefit from joining a study group consisting of students that are all enrolled for the same module(s). If you would like to find out whether there are other students near you who are also doing this module, ask your fellow to join your group via the myUnisa Discussion Forums. Please note that students are only allowed to submit their own work for assignments. No group efforts will be accepted. 6 STUDY PLAN You need roughly between four and eight hours of study time per week for each lesson. To help you master the new knowledge and concepts, the study guide has been divided into four themes. The themes represent the learning outcomes of this module. Each theme focuses on a specific part of the module. Theme 1 starts with the question: What is public administration? In Theme 2 we look for the reason why public services are necessary. Theme 3 then elaborates on the clients who receive public services, and Theme 4 deals with a very topical issue, namely why it is the government who has to provide public services. The recommended study/assessment plan follows below: SEMESTER 1 (2021) SEMESTER 2 (2021) PROGRAMME 23 January 21 July Welcome and getting started 30 January 24 July Receive study material. Read Tutorial Letter 101/3/2021. Start reading online through the lessons. 10 SEMESTER 1 (2021) SEMESTER 2 (2021) PROGRAMME 06 February 31 July Lesson 1: The needs in a society 13 February 07 August Lesson 2: Society 20 February 14 August Lesson 3: What is a state? 27 February 21 August Lesson 4: Services to society 06 March 25 August Submit compulsory Assignment 01 if you submit it via post 16 MARCH 25 AUGUST CLOSING DATE FOR SUBMITTING COMPULSORY ASSIGNMENT 01 15 March 08 September Lesson 5: The government 20 March 11 September Lesson 6: The “good life” 24 March 18 September Lesson 7: Needs and public services in South African society 27 March 21 September Lesson 8: The nature of public administration accompanied by examples 03 April 22 September Submit compulsory Assignment 02 if you submit it via post. 10 April 25 September Lesson 9: The milieu of a society 15 APRIL 23 SEPTEMBER CLOSING DATE FOR SUBMITTING COMPULSORY ASSIGNMENT 02 24 April 06 October Lesson 10: Contractual obligation 27 April 9 October Lesson 11: From purely public services to purely private services 01 May 10 October Lesson 12: Distinguished criteria 05 May 16 October Revision for the examination To assist you further in reaching the module outcomes, your lecturer will create the following discussions in the Discussion Forums tool on myUnisa: DISCUSSIONS TOPIC Lesson 1 Discussion 1: The needs in a society What is public administration? You will soon see that it is not as easy to answer this question as it may seem. There are different answers to this question, and each answer usually provides only a part of the complete answer. One of the answers is that public administration is about providing for the needs of society. PUB1501/101/3/2021 11 DISCUSSIONS TOPIC Use the Discussion Forums to share and gain knowledge and skills regarding the following: • Needs in a society. • What is public administration? Lesson 2 Discussion 2: Society In the previous lesson we identified a number of different needs in a society. You have probably noticed that the meaning of needs as discussed in lesson 1 is determined by the way in which we understand the term “society”. We should now ask the question: Who or what is a society? Use the Discussion Forums to share and gain knowledge and skills regarding the following: • Community, public, citizens and society. • How does society affect public administration? Lesson 3 Discussion 3: What is a state? In the previous lesson, you discovered that there is a difference between “society”, “public” and “citizens”. If you understand that clearly, you will realise that there is no great difference between a society and a public. A society, such as the South African society, involves far more than the collection of citizens of the state. The citizens of South Africa are those people who are officially members of the South African state. South African society, however, accommodates both citizens of South Africa and noncitizens. You were probably able to gather from the previous lesson that public administration has to do with satisfying the many different needs of a society within the borders of a country. The purpose of this lesson is to guide you to a better understanding of the concept of “state” so that you will be able to use it correctly. This will eventually enable you to formulate a considered and meaningful definition of what public administration is. A definition of a state has been uploaded for discussion on the Discussion Forums. 12 DISCUSSIONS TOPIC Lesson 4 Discussion 4: Services to society In the previous three lessons we have discovered that public administration has to do with, among other things, the existence of societal needs within the jurisdiction sphere of a state. Needs demand to be satisfied. The purpose of this lesson is to focus on satisfying the needs of society by providing public services. Visit the Discussion Forums to read what other students say regarding “services”. Lesson 5 Discussion 5: The government You may now begin to understand what public administration is. It clearly involves more than the presence of societal needs within the state. In the previous lesson we discovered that it also has to do with the provision of public services in order to satisfy the needs of society. Who is responsible for delivering those services? Use the Discussion Forums this week to discuss the following: • Forms of government. • Spheres of government. • Government as institutions and officials. Lesson 6 Discussion 6: The “good life” Why are public services necessary? The point of departure of this theme and lesson is that the reason for the existence of the state is based on the pursuit of the “good life”. We may now ask: “What is the good life?” The aim of this lesson is to introduce you to different views of the good life and to encourage you to take part in the debate on this topic. As human scientist-in-training it is important for you to master the art of participating in debates within your subject field. Use the Discussion Forums to share and gain knowledge and skills regarding the following: • The “good life” as an individual issue. • The “good life” as a group issue. • The “good life”: Who is responsible? • The “good life” and development. Lesson 7 Discussion 7: Needs and public services in South African society We introduced the needs of society in lesson 1. In the discussion of the concept of societal needs, we saw that it relates to some imbalance in the circumstances. We briefly mentioned different types of imbalances that may occur in society, such as a high crime rate, illiteracy, poverty, epidemics, and environmental pollution. In lesson 6 we identified “development” as a process whereby the imbalances in society may be PUB1501/101/3/2021 13 DISCUSSIONS TOPIC changed into the “good life”. The purpose of this lesson is to take a closer look at the South African society’s • needs (which are the result of such imbalances); and • public services (which form part of the development process). The following points for discussion have been uploaded on the Discussion Forums: • Needs within the South African society. • Public services in South Africa. Lesson 8 Discussion 8: The nature of public administration accompanied by examples You have probably noticed by now that public administration deals primarily with the wellbeing of people. With people as its most important ingredient, public administration inevitably becomes material for intrigues. Every newspaper report on alleged poor public services is a story in itself. The purpose of this lesson is to make you aware that there are stories to be told in public administration that will make it easier to understand a particular project. It will enable you to tell the story of a project that you have planned or in which you have been involved, so that the particular project may be understood more easily. In the work situation, you will notice that a good submission often consists of telling the story of the matter in question in a compelling way. Use the Discussion Forums to share and gain knowledge and skills regarding the need for public services. Lesson 9 Discussion 9: The milieu of a society You have already seen in theme 1 that public services are provided to societies. Societies the world over are surrounded by a rapidly changing milieu which affects them continually. The result is that the society itself is continually changing, and so are its needs for public services. To be effective in providing services, it is necessary to have knowledge and understanding of the milieu of the society. Use the Discussion Forums to share and gain knowledge and skills about some factors in the milieu of a society. Lesson 10 Discussion 10: Contractual obligation The heading of this lesson may have caught your attention. Is the government really under a contractual obligation to provide public services? Does this mean that an individual who does not receive satisfactory public services can take the government to court? More to 14 DISCUSSIONS TOPIC the point: which contract obliges the government to provide public services? The answer is: the social contract. Although you may be relatively unfamiliar with the social contract, it plays a decisive role in the daily relationship between the government and society. Use the Discussion Forums to share and gain knowledge and skills about: • The social contract. • The history of the social contract. • Recent example of social contract. • Reciprocal rights and obligations. Lesson 11 Discussion 11: From purely public services to purely private services By the end of theme 3 you were probably convinced of the reasons for the government to provide public services, namely • its obligation under the social contract; • the unique nature of each state; and • the inability of society. If you page forward to lesson 10 in theme 3, you will see that part of the unique nature of the South African state is its typification as a state with a free-market economy. This means that the government provides only those services that cannot be delivered by the market itself. With this in mind, we may reformulate the question for this theme, “Should only the government provide public services”, to read “Who are the parties involved in providing services to society?” Use the Discussion Forums to share and gain knowledge and skills about providers of public services.