United Nations Public Service Awards Winners, 2003-2011

Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Division for Public Administration and Development Management

Innovations in

Public Governance

Genesis, Purpose and Scope of the United Nations Public Service Awards

This chapter provides an overview of the rationale for establishing the United Nations Public Service Awards, and it outlines the objectives, the categories and criteria of its annual competition, and its selection process.

1. What is the United Nations Public Service Awards Programme?

The United Nations Public Service Awards Programme is the most prestigious international recognition of excellence in public service. It rewards the creative achievements and contributions of public service institutions to a more effective and responsive public administration in countries worldwide. Through an annual competition, the United Nations Public Service Awards Programme promotes the role, professionalism and visibility of public service. It encourages exemplary public service and recognizes that democracy and successful governance are built on a competent civil service.

2. Why was the United Nations Public Service Awards Programme Established?

Governments from around the world are required to respond to increasingly complex demands from their citizens and significant changes in their global environments. At the national level, they are grappling with several difficult social and economic issues; including poverty eradication, unemployment, poor education systems; health epidemics (including HIV/AIDS and the avian influenza), and environmental degradation. At the same time, they are attempting to readjust their policies and skills to integrate effectively into the world economy. 

Overall, governments face three main challenges:

• First, they must operate and provide more far-reaching and higher-quality services with reduced resources and limited operational capacities. That is to say, governments must use their resources and build capacities not only more effectively but also more creatively by, for example, enlisting the support of the private sector and civil society in service delivery. 
• Second, they must make public institutions more accountable, responsive, and effective by promoting a more citizen-oriented public administration. 
• Third, and most importantly, they must respond more adequately to citizens’ demands for greater participation. 

Although government still plays a central role in society, it is now widely recognized that civil society and the private sector also have an important role to play in this sphere. Citizens no longer perceive themselves as passive “consumers” of government services but as part of the solution to handle emerging issues more effectively. Deepening democracy to provide opportunities not only for improved representation but also for more active participation and engagement in public affairs requires innovative institutional mechanisms, processes, and policies. 

As a consequence, several countries around the world are attempting to revitalize their public administration and make it more proactive, more efficient, more accountable, and especially more service oriented. To accomplish this transformation, governments are introducing innovations in their organisational structure, practices, capacities, and working on how to mobilize, deploy, and utilize the human, material, information, technological, and financial resources for service delivery to remote, disadvantaged, and challenged people.

While there are efforts all over the world to find innovative ways to improve the performance of public administration and to empower it to effectively initiate, plan and implement national development policies and programmes as well as international and regional agreed development strategies, including the Millennium Development Goals; there is, also, a strong need to acknowledge and share them at the international level. 

In light of the above, the United Nations Public Service Awards Programme was launched to promote and support Member States’ efforts to improve public sector performance. The importance of this international recognition has later been recalled in 2005, when the United Nations General Assembly “agreed that the United Nations should promote innovation in government and public administration and stressed the importance of making more effective use of United Nations Public Service Day and the United Nations Public Service Awards in the process of revitalizing public administration by building a culture of innovation, partnership, and responsiveness” (UN/2005, A/60/L.24, para.7). To capitalize on existing knowledge on how to achieve development and the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations General Assembly in 2003 also recommended in Resolution 57/277 that the exchange of experiences related to the role of public administration in the implementation of internationally agreed goals, including those contained in the Millennium Declaration, be encouraged (United Nations, 2003, A/RES/57/277). 

3. When and How was the UNPSA Established?

The United Nations Public Service Awards Programme was launched as a result of the deliberations of the fifteenth meeting of the Group of Experts on the United Nations Programme in Public Administration and Finance (GA Resolution 49/136). During this session, the Group of Experts recommended that an annual event be organized by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat through its Division for Public Economics and Public Administration (now the Division for Public Administration and Development Management) to recognize and encourage excellence in public administration. This recommendation was subsequently reflected in the report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Group of Experts on the United Nation Programme in Public Administration and Finance at its fifteenth meeting (E/2000/66) and endorsed by the Economic and Social Council in its decision 2000/231 of 27 July 2000.

As reiterated by the General Assembly in its resolution 57/277 in 2003, “efficient accountable and transparent public administration, at both the national and international levels, has a key role to play in the implementation of internationally agreed goals, including those contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, and in that context stresses the need to strengthen national public sector administrative and managerial capacity-building, in particular in developing countries and countries with economies in transition.”

Therefore, in line with the above, 23 June has been designated the United Nations Public Service Day to “celebrate the value and virtue of service to the community.” The Economic and Social Council established the United Nations Public Service Awards to be bestowed on the Public Service Day for contributions made to the cause of enhancing the role, prestige and visibility of public service.”

4. What is the Overall Purpose of UNPSA?

The overall purpose of the United Nations Public Awards is to recognize the institutional contribution made by public servants to enhance the role, professionalism and visibility of the public service (Economic and Social Council decision 2000/231). It can be translated into the more specific following objectives:

• 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;
• To collect and disseminate successful practices and experiences in public administration in order to support efforts for improvements in country level public service delivery;
• Through success stories to counterbalance any negative image of public administration, raise the image and prestige of public servants and revitalize public administration as a noble discipline, on which development greatly depends; and
• To enhance professionalism in the public service by rewarding the successful experiences in innovations and excellence in the public service.

In brief, the Awards aim to:

• Discover innovations in governance;
• Reward excellence in the public sector;
• Motivate public servants to further promote innovation;
• Enhance professionalism in the public service;
• Raise the image of public service;
• Enhance trust in government; and
• Collect and disseminate successful practices for possible replication.

5. Who Manages the UNPSA Programme?

The Programme is managed by the Division for Public Administration and Development Management of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

6. What are the Eligibility Criteria?

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 Programme takes into consideration a geographical distribution of five regions. In order to level the playing field for nominations received from countries with varying levels of development and income, the following five regions have been established:

• Africa;
• Asia and the Pacific;
• Europe and North America;
• Latin America and the Caribbean; and
• Western Asia.

Nominations have to be made by another entity than the institution being nominated, i.e., self nominations will not be accepted. Eligible nominators include: government departments and agencies; universities, non-governmental organisations, professional associations, etc. Purely scientific innovations, e.g., in medical or environmental science, do not qualify for the United Nations Public Service Awards.

7. What are the Categories and Criteria for Selection?

The UNPSA categories and criteria for selection are hereafter described by year. 

2003 Categories:

1. Improvement of Public Service Results
2. Improvement of the Quality of the Public Service Process
3. Initiatives in the Public Service

2004 Categories:

1. Improvement of Public Service Results
2. Improvement of the Quality of the Public Service Process
3. Initiatives in the Public Service
4. Application of Information and Communication Technology in Local Government

2005 Categories:

1. Improving Transparency, Accountability, and Responsiveness in the Public Service
2. Improving the Delivery of Public Services
3. Application of Information and Communication Technology in Government

2006 Categories:

1. Improving Transparency, Accountability, and Responsiveness in the Public Service
2. Improving the Delivery of Public Services
3. Application of Information and Communication Technology in Government
4. Special Award in Innovation

2007 & 2008 Categories:

1. Improving Transparency, Accountability, and Responsiveness in the Public Service
2. Improving the Delivery of Public Services
3. Fostering Participation in Policy-making Decisions through Innovative Mechanisms

2009 & 2010 Categories:

1. Improving Transparency, Accountability, and Responsiveness in the Public Service
2. Improving the Delivery of Public Services
3. Fostering Participation in Policy-making Decisions through Innovative Mechanisms
4. Advancing Knowledge Management in Government.

2011 Categories:

1. Preventing and Combating Corruption in the Public Service
2. Improving the Delivery of Public Service
3. Fostering participation in policy-making decisions through innovative mechanisms
4. Advancing Knowledge Management in Government
5. Promoting Gender-Responsive Delivery of Public Services