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UN Public Service Day tomorrow :
Innovating governance for sustainable development
By Husna Inayathullah
The United Nation Public Service Day is celebrated on June 23 of
every year after being designated by the United Nations General Assembly
to “celebrate the value and virtue of public service to the community”.
The Overall purpose of the United Nations Public Service Awards
is to recognise the institutional contribution made by public
servants to enhance the role, professionalism, image and
visibility of the public service
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This year the United Nations Public Service Day forum and awards
ceremony will be held from June 23-24, 2014 in Seoul, Republic of Korea
under the theme “Innovating governance for sustainable development and
well-being of the people.”
The United Nations Economic and Social Council established that the
Public Service Awards be bestowed on Public Service Day for
contributions made to the cause of enhancing the role, prestige, and
visibility of public service.
The United Nations Public Service Award is the most prestigious
international recognition of excellence in public service. It rewards
the creative achievements and contributions of public service
institutions that lead to a more effective and responsive public
administration in countries worldwide. Through an annual competition,
the UN Public Service Awards promotes the role, professionalism and
visibility of public service.
Establishment of the UNPSA
In 2003, the United Nations General Assembly, in its resolution
selected June 23 as the United Nations Public Service Day to “celebrate
the value and virtue of public service to the community”.
The UN Economic and Social Council established that the Public
Service Awards be bestowed on Public Service Day for contributions made
to the cause of enhancing the role, prestige and visibility of public
service.
The UN Millennium Declaration emphasised the role of democratic and
participatory governance in assuring the rights of men and women to
“live their lives and raise their children in dignity, free from hunger
and from the fear of violence, oppression, or injustice”.
It also noted that good governance within each country is a
prerequisite to “making development a reality for everyone and to
freeing the entire human race from want”.
Experience demonstrates that without good governance, nationally or
internationally, and an efficient, competent, professional, responsive
and highly dedicated public service, sustainable development and
livelihood are jeopardised.
The World Youth Forum has also stressed the importance of public
service by encouraging youth to enter this field which emphasised the
necessity of the changing world of new challenges, the need, for more
than ever before, dedicated and talented individuals to enter public
service. More than ever before, the world requires young people to make
the choice of service to humankind.
The overall purpose of the United Nations Public Service Awards is to
recognise the institutional contribution made by public servants to
enhance the role, professionalism, image and visibility of the public
service (Economic and Social Council decision 2000/231). It can be
translated into the following more specific objectives:
(a) To reward service to citizens and motivate public servants
worldwide to sustain the momentum of innovation and the improvement of
the delivery of public services;
(b) To collect and disseminate successful practices and experiences
in public administration to support efforts for improvements in country
level public service delivery;
(c) Through success stories, to counterbalance any negative image of
public administration, raise the image and prestige of public servants
and revitalise public administration as a noble discipline on which
development greatly depends;
(d) To promote, encourage and facilitate networking among
institutions and organisations relevant to public administration and
strengthen the networks of the UN program on public administration and
development;
and
(e) To enhance professionalism in the public service in rewarding the
successful experiences in innovations and excellence in the public
service. All Public organisations/agencies at national and sub-national
levels, as well as public/private partnerships and organisations
performing outsourced public service functions, are eligible for
nomination. The United Nations Public Service Awards take into
consideration a geographical distribution of five regions. To level the
playing field for nominations received from countries with varying
levels of development and income, the following five regions have been
established:
(a) Africa (b) Asia and the Pacific (c) Europe and North America (d)
Latin America and the Caribbean (e) Western Asia UN Public Service
Awards Ceremony
UN Public Service Awards’ winners are recognised annually during UN
Public Service Day at a high-level event held in New York at UN
Headquarters. UN Public Service Day intends to celebrate the value and
virtue of public service to the community; highlight the contribution of
public service in the development process; recognise the work of public
servants, and encourage young people to pursue careers in the public
sector. Since the first Awards Ceremony in 2003, the UN has received an
increasing number of submissions from all around the world.
In Sri Lanka the Public Services are a series of services groups that
render specialised professional services to the Government.
These are employees who carry out public duties, although not elected
officials.
The most senior of these is the Sri Lanka Administrative Service
which is the country's permanent bureaucracy.
Members are selected by competitive examination and promotions are
made by the Public Service Commission. |
