Corruption in Public Sector (Florida Department of Essay

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Corruption in Public Sector (Florida Department of Children and Families) Case Study

The Florida DCF (Department of Children and Families) provides social services for families, children, refugees, adults, human trafficking victims, elderly people, disabled and homeless community. The DCF establishes the Office of Public Integrity to assist in investigating fraud within the organization and programs implemented by the Florida DCF.

Objective of this paper is to investigate corruption in the public sector using the DCF as a case study.

Corruption in the Public Sector (Florida Children and Families) Case Study

Corruption is an abuse of an entrusted public official's posts for private gain. In other words, corruption is the use of the public officials' entrusted power to achieve illegitimate private gain. Form of corruption includes embezzlement, extortion, bribery, nepotism, and influence peddling. Corruption can make public officials to distort policies or distort central state functioning that enables public officials to derive benefits at the expense of public goods.

In the United States, level of corruption is rampant in the public sector among public officials. March (2012) points out that Florida ranks number one state in the United States where government corruption ranks highest. The corruption index among the states in the United States is the strategy to measure level of corruption in the public sector. Typically, the Florida is among the top states with high corruption index. March (2012) reveals that Florida had 781 federal corruption convictions between 2000 and 2010. During the period, 781 public officials were convicted for charges in public corruption.

Wilson, (2013) adds to the argument by pointing out that political corruption undermines societal fabric. A report by the U.S. Department of Justice (2007) revealed that Florida had the highest corruption index within the last 10-year period. In Florida, more than one million children are the victims of child abuse. The corruption that affects the entire state also affects the Florida Children and Families. In essence, the public planning is very critical for the delivery of effective and efficient services to achieve cost effectiveness to the public sector.

Evaluation the Relationship between Public Planning and Efficient Cost Effectiveness to the Public

Public planning is a dynamic strategy designed to improve people and the community to create equitable, convenient, efficient, healthful and attractive places for future and presents generations. Typically, planning assists public officials, and civil leaders to play meaningful role to enrich people's lives. Delivery of efficient and effective services in the public sector relies on public planning, which makes public officials to be free of corruption. Moreover, planning assists in finding right balance, and good public planning creates innovation changes.

Chery (2011) argues that one of the vital components of public planning is good governance. Essentially, governance is power offered to public officials to exercise effective management of social and economic resources. Good governance in a public sector is to encourage public officials to follow professional ethics and regulations so that these officials will avoid in indulging in governmental and political corruption. To enhance public accountability and transparency, government departments are required to develop new laws and policies to prevent corruptions. The first step towards implementing good governance is to communicate a clear organizational goal to the government employees.

Accountability of public officials is another strategy to deliver efficient cost effective public services. Legitimacy goes hand-in-hand with accountability. Legitimacy is a regulation that requires public officials to execute their duties to foster the acceptance of policies to enhance delivery of public goods and services that will be acceptable to the public. Transparency is the extent public service and public functions are open to scrutiny. Through active participation of public officials, the transparent accountability is possible.

The best strategy to enhance accountability, transparency and legitimacy in the public is to implement the principle of check and balance where public officials check on the work of other officials to prevent corruption. Moreover, there is a need to divide the responsibilities among public employees. In other words, there should be a separation of job responsibilities. For example, the same official should not carry out the jobs of both internal auditor and accountant. A separate official should carry out the job public accountant and internal auditor to prevent frauds within the public sector. This strategic planning is cost effective because it only requires training and laid down rules and regulation that public officials should follow.

Complex Decision Making utilizing Best Productivity in the Public and Private Domains

Making a decision is one of the complex important tasks that public administrator and manager often face. Decision making analysis is a method of evaluating the complex alternatives in terms of uncertainty and values.

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In other words, decision-making analysis is the strategy of evaluating different alternatives and chooses the right alternative. In essence, making a right a decision can assist organizations to improve productivity and enhance efficiency of employees. Despite the benefits that organizations can derive from decision-making process, managers and public administrators often face complex issues when trying to make a decision. One of the complex issues relating to a decision making process is the shortage of available resources that can be used complete a project. When making a decision, public managers are often faced with the problems of combining available scarce resources to enhance decision-making. To make a decision, managers require financial resources, technological resources and manpower resources. These resources should be combined in an optimal method to deliver higher productivity. Facing the problem of shortage of resources, managers of private and public organizations often facing daunting tasks when making decisions.

Additionally, public or private managers may face complex tasks in choosing the right project from different available projects. Typically, public sectors often faced challenges when choosing the right project to implement. Within a fiscal year, public sectors may intend to implement hundreds of projects. Given the scarcity of resources, public managers are required to choose the best project that will deliver high quality public goods to the community. Cost-benefit analysis is the strategy that public sectors use to evaluate projects. Using cost-benefit analysis, a public manager will compare the costs of implementing a project vs. The benefits to be derived from the project. Thus, a public manager can use this strategy to make an effective decision and choose a program or project that will deliver higher productivity. Similarly, private organizations also face daunting challenges when making a decision to choose the best project from multiple projects. Thus, some managers of private organizations often choose a capital budgeting technique to make a decision. For example, some managers use the NPV (Net Present Value) to determine whether their organizations can derive profitability from project. If the NPV is greater than 1, an organization can pursue a project. NPV can also be used to make decision when facing challenges of choosing a project from multiple projects.

Defining effective Public Management

Management is defined as "the accomplishment of purpose through the organized effort of others." (Bower, 1977 p 3). The definition can be linked to the concept of public management. A concept public management is defined as the method of accomplishing public sector objectives through organized efforts of public officials. To achieve effective public management, public sectors managers must be able to accept goals set by the organization rather than the goals set by their own. Moreover, public managers must operate structures designed by the organizations other than their structure set by the managers. To accomplish effective public management, public officials must be able to work with people whose careers are outside the management control. The goal of public manager is to get things done in a fashion that when he leaves the office, his works will be more useful in the future. Thus, public sectors should organized training or workshops for public officials to enhance their efficiencies. A secret of better decision is training that makes to public officials to develop analytical mind. Analytics is the method of assisting public officials to unlock value of data to make a better decision, promote good governance and make decision to be less risky. Analytical mind makes public officials to improve productivity, performances and process. The method also makes public sector to increase revenue and achieve cost savings when implementing a project.

Conclusion

This study discusses the level of corruption in the public sector and uses the Department of Children and Families as the case study. Over the past 10 years, Florida is ranked as one of the top corrupt states in the United States. The corruption in the state also affects the DCF because the state public officials manage the department. The paper also discusses different strategies of managing the public sectors to enhance effective and efficient management process. The paper identifies training as the effective strategy that can make public official to be effective in order to run public sector effectively and efficiently.

Reference

Bower, J.L. (1977). Effective Public Management. Harvard Business Review.

March, W. (2012). Study ranks Florida No. 1 in Government Corruption. Tampa Media Group

U.S. Department of Justice. (2007). Report….....

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