In continuing efforts to promote and support innovations in public service delivery worldwide, the United Nations is calling for nominations to its 2010 Public Service Awards
The 2011 United Nations Public Service Awards (UNPSA) is the most prestigious international recognition of excellence in public service and is open to local or national public organizations, and to public-private partnerships involved in essential service delivery to citizens. Contestant from public institutions cannot nominate themselves. Instead, interested institutions will have to be nominated by Governments and civil society organizations for their achievements and performance.
More specifically, the Awards aims to discover innovations in governance, rewards excellence in the public sector and motivates public servants to further promote innovation. In addition, the Awards also enhances professionalism in the public service, raises the image of public service, enhance trust in government, and collects and disseminate successful practices for possible replication.
Nominations can be made online until 31 December 2010. The 2011 Awards are given in 5 categories: Preventing and combating corruption in the public service; Improving the delivery of public services; Fostering participation in policy-making decisions through innovative mechanisms; Advancing knowledge management; and Promoting gender responsive delivery of public services.
New Awards category on Promoting gender responsive public service delivery
DESA’s Division for Public Administration & Development Management (DPADM) and the United Nations Development Fund for Women – UNIFEM (part of UN Women) have signed an agreement to collaborate and jointly manage a new UNPSA category on “Promoting gender responsive delivery of public services”.
An efficient public administration that delivers services for all citizens is central to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It is equally apparent that the achievement of gender equality remains a great challenge in many parts of the world and negatively impacts progress towards all of the MDGs. Women’s enjoyment of rights, resources, and voice are shaped by governance systems.
While there has been notable progress in ratifying conventions and improving legislation, adequate design and delivery of gender-responsive services have lagged behind. For this reason, there is hope that this award will serve as a token of recognition for all those public servants who are working untiringly to improve the delivery of services to women and serve to spur others to learn and replicate from their good examples.
New Awards category on Preventing and combating corruption in the public service
DPADM and the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) have agreed to collaborate in the establishment and management of a new category on “Preventing and combating corruption in the public service”. This foresighted and important partnership, which aligns DPADM and UNODC’s missions in the area of integrity, accountability and transparency, will help to collect, document, share and possibly replicate good practices in the area of anti-corruption.
It will also encourage higher standards of public conduct and promote greater awareness of the importance to act against corruption in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. As it is well known, corruption hurts the poor disproportionately by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a Government’s ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice and discouraging foreign aid and investment. Corruption is a key element in economic underperformance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development (United Nations Convention against Corruption).
Thus, promoting integrity and anti-corruption preventive practices is of the utmost importance to ensure that the State’s funds are used to improve people’s quality of life through the delivery of basic services and the establishment of a good business environment. Partnering with the above organizations will ensure that the project is carried out building upon and integrating in a coherent way the knowledge, expertise and experience of the various partners to the advantage of Member States.
For more information: http://www.unpan.org/unpsa
Regarding the new category on Promoting gender responsive public service delivery: http://unifem.org/news_events/story_detail.php?StoryID=1184
Endorsing recommendations for energy statistics
Second Meeting of Expert Group on Energy Statistics will be held in New York from 2-5 November
DESA’s Statistics Division is organizing this Expert Group Meeting to review and endorse the provisional draft of the International Recommendations for Energy Statistics (IRES) prior to its submission to the United Nations Statistical Commission for adoption at its 42nd Session (22-25 February 2011).
The Expert Group will review the results of the worldwide consultation on the provisional draft of IRES that took place during the period from July to August 2010 and advise on their incorporation in the final draft. During this meeting a number of issues relevant to the preparation of the Energy Statistics Compilers Manual (ESCM) and to the development of the implementation programme of the revised recommendations will be discussed.
The meeting will gather experts from countries and international/regional organizations active in energy statistics.
For more information: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/energy/Workshops/EGM-IRES.htm
Improving environment statistics systems
Expert Group Meeting on the Revision of the Framework for the Development Environment Statistics will take place in New York from 8-10 November
DESA’s Statistics Division, in collaboration with Statistics Canada is organizing this meeting to revise the United Nations Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics, published in 1984, on the basis of improved scientific knowledge about the environment and new cross-disciplinary requirements created by emerging environmental concerns and their management.
The main objective of this EGM is to agree on the conceptual framework that best supports an integrative approach to environment statistics and helps countries to establish and improve their national environment statistics systems.
For more information: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/fdes/fdes_egm.htm .
