SUMMARY NOTES: FIRST ANNUAL MEETING
OCTOBER 27, 2003 – PANAMA CITY, PANAMA
(Draft; not yet approved)

The following notes summarize the discussions and conclusions of the First Annual Meeting of the Inter-American Network for Public Administration Education (INPAE) held on Monday, October 27, 2003 at the Hotel El Panama in Panama City, Panama. The meeting was called to order by Allan Rosenbaum, Chair of the INPAE Steering Committee, and Jo Ivey Boufford, NASPAA Past President, who was representing NASPAA and its Executive Director.

Twelve institutions from Latin America and the U.S.A., plus CLAD and NASPAA, were represented at this meeting; a list of participants is attached at the end of these notes.

1. Presentation of the New INPAE Officers.

INPAE’s new officers were introduced by the chair of the INPAE Steering Committee. They are: Oscar Oszlak, Universidad de Buenos Aires, President; Patria de Lancer Julnes, Utah State University, Vice-President; and the elected Board of Directors: Cristina Díaz, Universidad de Rosario, Argentina; Cristian Pliscoff, Universidad de Chile, Chile; Leticia Orces, Universidad Casa Grande, Ecuador; Sonia Ospina, New York University, U.S.A.; David Gómez, ITESO, Mexico; Jonathan Molinet, FLACSO, Mexico; Eduardo Marques, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Brazil; and Allan Rosenbaum, Florida International University, U.S.A.

2. Presentation of the New President’s Program.

A. Strategic Guidelines

• The research and study of Public Administration, Public Management, and Public Policy must be open to all professionals.
• The operative plans must be implemented by different formats, including programs, study groups, workshops, and committees, according to the objectives for the network.
• In addition to the three substantive programs (education and training, policy research, and technical assistance), a program of institutional strengthening should be part of the first phase of the INPAE institutionalization process.
• The strategic and operative plans must cover the period of the Board of Directors (2 years), and at the end of the term should be revised.

B. Proposal for INPAE Programs

• Education

The education program will work on the improvement of the design, content, and methodologies for the teaching of undergraduate and post- graduate programs in public administration, public management, public policy, and state reform, and on all the topics included in INPAE Bylaws.
These are the proposed areas:
o Curriculum design of undergraduate and post-graduate programs, according to the area of specialization.
o Roles of the different participants in the education process: academic secretaries, tutors, accreditors, evaluators.
o Quality of the thesis at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels.
o Long distance and online education.

• Research

The research program should promote new programs and research topics in the areas related to the institutional objectives of the network. The research working team will be integrated by institutions of different countries, regions, and disciplines. Special attention must be given to the areas where drastic changes had occurred, for example: e-government, management by outcomes, regulation of the public utilities privatization process, effective citizen participation, and comparative analysis and research.

• Technical Assistance

The main objective of this program is to create the adequate conditions to create the technical assistance capacity in the region, to collaborate in the design and implementation of the state reform and modernization of state on the countries where there is a lack of the professionals on these areas.


• Institutional Strengthening

3. INPAE Business Meeting

Two institutions made their presentations as candidates to serve as the location for the INPAE Secretariat Office: Fundacao Getulio Vargas from Brazil, and Universidad de Buenos Aires from Argentina. The presenters left the room to allow the group discussion. There was a discussion of how the Secretariat Office should be selected. It was agreed that, because there a quorum of members was lacking, dissemination electronically of a write-up of the presentations by the two candidate institutions and the discussion held by those present, along with a matrix of the questions asked in the request for proposals and also their answers, would be done to permit comparison of the two proposals by the INPAE Board of Directors. Virtually all INPAE institutional representatives present in this meeting recommended that the Board make the decision, but some representatives expressed a preference for a vote by the full voting membership of INPAE.