Knowledge of Public Administration
My knowledge of public administration comes from years of experiece working within different agencies. The Departments of the Navy, Veterans Affairs, and Interior have all been my employers over the past thirty plus years. I make decisions on a daily basis that affects the public directly, but presently my decisions don’t affect policy. The MPA program has expanded my knowledge base of what public administrators do and how different forms of delivery systems get the service to the public. The program has exposed me to a number of different fields and given me the theory and history of how public administration has developed since Woodrow Wilson. Both the internal organizational behavior and culture and the different external policy actors are needed to create the matrix that promotes change.
I am the chief shop steward for our bargaining unit and as such I deal
with a great mix of human relations issues, so I need to be familiar
with government policies that affect employees. The trend toward
private sector models has a direct effect on the employees and service
delivery, so it is presently a major interest of mine. The
program has allowed me to observe the differences and advantages of one
over the other.
