Conference Updates

I was recently at two international conferences. The first was the meeting of CAFRAD - The African Training & Research Centre in Administration for Development which is based in Tangiers, Morocco. The conference included delegates from approximately 36 African countries as well as observers such as IPAC. The conference was quite interesting & involved a full day for the Board Meeting (went till past 22h00) as well as two days of presentations and discussions on different topics. I will be writing more about this conference in the next while. IPAC and CAFRAD are in the process of finalizing an MOU that will involve the exchange of information, research and knowledge in public administration.

The second conference I attended was the Annual Meeting of IIAS - the International Institute of Administrative Sciences. The conference took place in Helsinki and was attended by approximately 250 delegates from around the world. The theme of this conference was:"History and future of nation-building, The role of public administrations, civil servants and public finances in nation-building." It was a very interesting conference with a number of great keynote presentations, for example by Jocelyne Bourgon, former Federal Clerk on the new framework for public administration. I will be writing about this in the next week or so as it is very interesting and thought provoking. It is in line with my thoughts about the evolution of public administration from the "New Public Management" model that was espoused in the 1980's and 1990's. There were a number of very interesting workshop presentations, including one by Geraldine Fraser-Molekti and Demetrios Argyriades on the state of Democratic Governance. Also noteworthy was the presentation by the Egyptian Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Administrative Development, Mr. Ashraf Abdelwahab. Egypt has made tremendous strides in e-government. I will be writing about all these presentations in future posts

I should note that IPAC is the Canadian "national section" of IIAS and we are reinvigorating our relationship with IIAS.

To those who have Monday off (it is Simcoe Day in Ontario), have a great long weekend.