How ‘smart’ is Public Administration in the Eyes of European Students? - Examining Behaviour Models in the Public Administration

Following study focussed on the perception of the public administration by the international students in the context of implementation of the concept of smart administration. New administrative reality requires that public administration should not only adapt to new conditions, but should also introduce complex plans of change, which in consequence should lead to the creation of a new type of smart administration, which adequately answers the needs and expectations of contemporary and future citizens.

Smart administration should be understood as an effective, well managed organisation with reasonably simplified structure and conduct oriented primarily towards serenity, comfort and well-being of the recipient of its service. Important feature is easy, two-way communication, which is a gateway for active participation of citizens in public affairs in both local and nationwide level.

For the purpose of this study, various dispositions expressed towards public administration were classified into the three categories of behaviour models. Models of behaviour in public administration presented in the paper are meritoric-despotism behaviour, efficient-democratic behaviour and anarchist-informal behaviour and were created for this study on the basis of approaches already present in the field.

Main objective of the paper is to provide preliminary analysis of how the international students perceive changes in the behaviour models in public administration and what is the role of smart administration in this. This paper is based on the data collected during the interviews, conducted face to face, with four students from different part of Europe and who are following exchange programmes. Questions concerned the experience in contact with public administration, its role, performance and how should it be changed. Research results showed that regarding behaviour changes in public administration, interlocutors speak in favour of a centralised model of public administration rather than decentralised, which is interesting in the context of smart administration, because this mean that there is still a common perception that the base of classic approach to public administration should be maintained even if modified by new concepts.