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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
- Design an INPAE website
- Create a members’ data base
- Recruit and expand the INPAE membership, particularly from U.S.A.,
Canada, and the Caribbean
- Design a house organ
- Create a journal
- Design and implement an accreditation process for the programs of public
administration, public policy and public management in the region
- Establish contests, particularly in the area of information technology,
with an emphasis on training, research, and technical assistance strategies
- Promote shared post-graduate programs
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.
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