American University’s online Master of Public Administration and Policy (MPAP) is led by faculty members who are influential scholars in the fields of public administration, policy, and management. Instructors have contributed their valuable expertise and practical experience to the program’s success since its inception – beginning with Professor Emeritus Dr. Robert Durant, the visionary behind AU’s MPAP program.

Today, Dr. Durant's impact continues through the online MPAP program and each transformative public service leader it produces. His numerous publications go on to shape public service, including his 2014 book Why Public Service Matters: Public Managers, Public Policy, and Democracy, whose fully revised edition is forthcoming.

In 2015, he synthesized his work for The Public Purpose Journal, a magazine published for and by School of Public Affairs’ graduate students. In a piece entitled, “Why Public Service Matters—and What It Means for You,” Dr. Durant lays out enduring challenges and opportunities for public servants, which are as salient as ever.

Below is a selected excerpt from “Why Public Service Matters—and What It Means for You.”¹

Challenges and Opportunities for Public Servants

Dr. Durant begins his article by outlining seven “challenges, choices, and opportunities” he believes all public servants face during their careers. His list, which he calls “the seven ongoing, powerful, and interrelated pressures for organizational change and development,” includes:

• Reconceptualizing organizational purpose refers to calls for many agency and program missions and policies to be rethought in light of changing circumstances, needs, and political priorities. These include downward global economic pressures on the visible size of government, structural budget shortfalls, aging workforces, a spiraling national debt, and the rise of so-called "wicked" policy problems such as global warming where compromise has proved elusive internationally and in Washington.
• (Re)connecting with citizens and stakeholders. Reconnecting to create a "coproduction service" ethic impels managers and analysts to stop seeing policymaking and implementation as a one-way flow of expertise from their organizations to a largely passive, malleable, and receptive public.
• Redefining administrative rationality pressures stem from the alleged shortcomings of conventional bureaucratic structures. Critics claim that bureaucracies are too focused on processes and procedures, too remote from the citizens they serve, too centralized to be effective, and too inflexible to adapt on their own to be effective. Others argue that these "pathologies" are exaggerated or are actually functional in offering procedural protections for citizens. Your organization will be expected to become priority-based, customer-focused, information-driven, results-based, learning organizations.
• Reengaging financial resource pressures stem from downward pressures on tax revenues in a global economy, structurally induced budget deficits, the shifting purposes of organizations, and our evolving understanding of what works and does not work in addressing public problems.
• Recapitalizing human asset pressures are also likely to drive agency and nonprofit dynamics for years to come at all levels of government and in nonprofit organizations. This is largely because of the accelerating rate of "baby boomer" retirees [...], but it also reflects the difficulties of recruiting top-notch experts to government. Regardless, policy and program success depend critically on hiring and retaining persons with the right kinds of skills, in a timely fashion, and with credible retention plans. Equally important is ensuring that the public and nonprofit personnel performing these tasks reflect the sociodemographic characteristics of the clients they serve and the societies from which they come.
• (Re)aligning organizational subsystems refer to pressures to consider how well existing agency resources are "aligned" with—that is, support—present and future mission needs and policy priorities. What has to be aligned are administrative systems dealing with human resource management, financial management, capital investments and acquisition, IT management, and contract management. The greater number of these systems that are not aligned with policy or program goals, the less likely organizational, policy, or program success.
• Revitalizing a sense of common purpose informed by democratic constitutional values should be a constant concern for you during your public service career, regardless of your choice of sector. This means that your agency, consulting firm, or nonprofit organization must think about more than efficiency and effectiveness.

Dr. Durant goes on to emphasize the meaningful difference public servants can make in society when they are prepared to face these seven challenges, choices, and opportunities. He encourages those in public service to seek out continuous growth in six ways of thinking, which he calls our graduate program’s “ASSETS”:

• Analytically
• Systemically
• Synthetically
• Ethically
• Technologically
• Strategically

In closing, Dr. Durant stresses the necessity of thinking strategically but ethically, explaining that acting strategically to implement policy without consideration to political complexity or shifting goals will not result in a public service career of significance. He points out that a sense of ethics is a necessary addition to a public servant’s thorough understanding of the law, stating, “history is replete with examples where what was legal was not ethical and where public servants used noncompliance to correct policy and societal wrongs.”

If you are excited by the opportunities discussed by Dr. Durant in his article and want to learn more about American University’s online Master of Public Administration and Policy, request more information or call us toll free at 855-725-7614.

About the Author

Dr. Robert F. Durant is the visionary behind the Online Master of Public Administration and Policy program and is professor emeritus of public administration and policy at American University's School of Public Affairs. Among other awards, he is the recipient of the Dwight Waldo Award from the American Society for Public Administration for distinguished contributions to research in public administration and the John M. Gaus Award and Lectureship from the American Political Science Association for a lifetime of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration.

Dr. Durant’s published books include Building the Compensatory State: Business, the Social Sciences, and the Political Economy of American Administrative Reform (Routledge, 2019-2020), Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices, and Opportunities (2nd ed.) (MIT Press, 2017), and Why Public Service Matters: Public Managers, Public Policy, and Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).