In This Issue:

• ASPA Conference Call for Proposals Hits Inboxes
• In Memoriam: Joan Ellen Pynes
• Webinars, BookTalks and Student Series on the Horizon
• Focus on Membership: Update Your Profile!
• Do You Feel Called to Serve?
• 12th ICPA Abstracts Due July 31
• NECoPA Call for Proposals Abstracts Due Aug. 1
• Institute for Peace and Dialogue Training Program
• SECoPA Early-Bird Registration Rate Expires Aug. 15
• NECoPA Call for Nominations in the Field
• ZSPA Public Service Awards Call for Nominations
• PAR Update
• Public Integrity Update
• New on PA TIMES Online
• Career Resources—PublicServiceCareers.org

ASPA Conference Call for Proposals Hits Inboxes

ASPA has announced that its 2018 Annual Conference proposal submission process is now open! All proposals are due Sept. 22, 2017.

Join ASPA in presenting a conference that showcases the state-of-the-art practices you are using in modern public and nonprofit administration, while exploring new approaches and opportunities for continued innovation.

ASPA's 2018 Annual Conference will center around the theme: Mission Focused and Service First: Creating Innovative Solutions. Presentation tracks will look to definitively bridge theory with practice, providing opportunities not only for researchers and academicians to demonstrate their work, but also highlight ways practitioners can put that work to use—and have already done so. Far from a theory-only approach, attendees can expect to attend this year's conference and take home hands-on innovations they can put to use in their locality.

ASPA's 2018 Annual Conference will offer 10 tracks, providing you with a variety of choices for where to submit your proposal. They are:

• On a Shoestring: Budget, Finance and Procurement
• Before (and After) the Storm: Emergency and Disaster Management
• An Eye Toward the Future: Environment and Technology
• A Guiding Philosophy: Ethics and the Law
• Diamonds in the Rough: Human Resource Management
• Blurring the Lines: International and Comparative Public Administration
• Winning the War: The Military in Public Administration
• A Fresh Approach: Nonprofits and Civic Engagement
• All Are Not Equal: Advancing Social Equity
• A Perfect World: Public Administration Theory

In Memoriam: Joan Ellen Pynes

Joan Ellen Pynes, a professor at the University of South Florida and a long-time member of ASPA, passed away on July 6, 2017. An active member of the Suncoast Chapter as well as COMPA, SPALR, SPAR, SPPM, SIAM and other ASPA Sections, she was a true public administration advocate. Her research areas included nonprofit management, HR and performance management and public policy. She had taught at the University of South Florida since July 1998, during which time she also served as the MPA program director, and was beloved by students and faculty alike. Find her In Memoriam guestbook online here.

Webinars, BookTalks and Student Series on the Horizon

ASPA's professional development webinars are ongoing throughout the year. Averaging 75 attendees per webinar and free to ASPA members, these e-learning opportunities provide you with valuable insights and information at your fingertips. Visit our website to stay in the loop about all upcoming webinars, BookTalks and Student Series.

Cyber Security
Aug. 2 | 2 p.m. ET
Presenter:
Alan Shark, Rutgers University School of Public Affairs and Administration

ASPA is excited to have sought-after and seasoned speaker Alan Shark provide this webinar about cyber security and public administration. Cyber security and cyber terrorism is a costly and growing problem, affecting government entities, nonprofits, publicly held companies and personal accounts. Shark has presented on numerous cyber security topics and will look at this issue from a public administration lens.




Student Webinar: Landing the Academic Tenure-Track Job: Applying, Interviewing and the Negotiation Process
Aug. 17 | 1 p.m. ET
Presenters:
Sebawit Bishu, Florida International University
Samantha Larson, University of Colorado—Denver
Raymond Zuniga, American University
Andrea Headley, Moderator, ASPA Student Representative and Florida International University

This webinar will provide first hand testimonies from successful job candidates about their experiences and lessons learned. Each panelist will discuss either the application process, interviewing or negotiating. All of our panelists have received tenure-track appointments at various schools (both research and teaching universities) and will be starting in the fall of 2018.




BookTalk: Public Budgeting in America
Aug. 24 | 1 p.m. ET
Presenters:
Thomas Lynch, International Academy of Interfaith Studies
Robert Smith, University of Illinois—Springfield

Plan to attend this BookTalk about a very critical subject, as discussed in one of the most comprehensive and accurate books published about it. Plan now to join us for this event and learn from these authors.

Focus on Membership: Update Your Profile!

By now you should have seen messages from us asking you to update your profile, but as of this date, only 550 of you have done so!

This request is for your benefit. ASPA has thousands of members and we reach out to each of you through upwards of 10 messages every week, each detailing its own specific member benefit. Please tell us as much about yourself, your professional role and your communications preferences as possible so we can gear these communications to your personal needs.

The survey is brief and takes less than two minutes to complete—a small investment of time to ensure going forward that you are being contacted the right way with information you want and need.



Questions? Contact us and we will be happy to help!

Do You Feel Called to Serve?

ASPA's annual leadership nomination period has opened and already almost 20 people have been nominated to have their names on the ballot for this fall's election.

Do you know someone (including yourself!) who is passionate about growing ASPA, has a track record of effective leadership and wants to advance our discipline? Nominate him or her by Aug. 18, 2017 to be considered for elected office.

ASPA's National Council can only be as effective as those individuals nominated to serve. Positions on the Council include:

• President
• President-Elect
• Vice President
• Immediate Past President
• District Representatives
• Student Representative
• COMPA Representative
• International Representative

• Vice President (succeeds to president in three years)
• District Representative (represents one of ASPA's five districts)
• Student Representative (represents the leaders of the future)

Want to add an event? Email us with the details!

12th ICPA Abstracts Due July 31

The 12th International Conference on Public Administration and International Symposium on West African Studies will take place Nov. 14-17 in Accra, Ghana. The theme is Managing Across Organizational Boundaries: Innovation and Collaboration. The deadline for submitting an abstract has been extended to July 31, 2017. Click here for more information.

NECoPA Call for Proposals Abstracts Due Aug. 1

The 2017 Northeast Conference on Public Administration (NECoPA), taking place Nov. 3-5 in Burlington, Vt., has issued its Call for Proposals. Focusing on its theme, Public Administration, Policy and Community Development: Managing a Changing Landscape, the conference will look at local communities' ability to thrive amidst political, social, economic and environmental change. Abstracts are due Aug. 1; applicants will be alerted about decisions by Aug. 18. Click here for more information.

Institute for Peace and Dialogue Training Program

The Institute for Peace and Dialogue Training Program invites interested parties for its 7 Days International Training Program and 3 Month CAS-Research Program on mediation, conflict management, leadership, trauma healing and cross-cultural communication. Applications are due Aug. 7, 2017; scholarships are available. Click here for more information.

SECoPA Early-Bird Registration Rate Expires Aug. 15

As you plan your attendance at the 2017 Southeastern Conference for Public Administration, taking place in Hollywood Beach, Fla. Oct. 4-7, make the most of the discounted registration rate that is available through mid-August. Click here for more information.

NECoPA Call for Nominations in the Field

The Northeast Conference on Public Administration (NECoPA) has issued its 2017 Call for Nominations for four leadership positions, including Chair-elect, Secretary, Trustee and Student Representative. Click here for more information.

ZSPA Public Service Awards Call for Nominations

The Zambian Society for Public Administration (ZSPA) has issued its call for nominations for its 2017 public service excellence awards. With awards being given out in more than 15 categories, this is a robust awards program honoring public servants both within Zambia and internationally. The awards ceremony will take place Nov. 24, 2017 in Lusaka. Click here for more information.

PAR Update


The latest articles from Public Administration Review are available in the Wiley Online Library.

Theory to Practice
Hal G. Rainey, Editor

Crowdsourcing Government: Lessons from Multiple Disciplines
Crowdsourcing has proliferated across disciplines and professional fields. Implementers in the public sector face practical challenges, however, in the execution of crowdsourcing. Helen K. Liu (University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) synthesizes prior crowdsourcing research and practices from a variety of disciplines and focuses to identify lessons for meeting the practical challenges of crowdsourcing in the public sector. She identifies three distinct categories of crowdsourcing: organizations, products and services and holistic systems. Lessons about the fundamental logic of process design—alignment, motivation and evaluation—identified across the three categories are discussed. Conclusions drawn from past studies and the resulting evidence can help public managers better design and implement crowdsourcing in the public sector. Link to PAR Early View

Research Articles

Professional Cities: Accredited Agencies, Government Structure, and Rational Choice
Accreditation, long used to signal quality among hospitals and universities, has been available to police, fire and public works departments since the late 1980s. For public service departments, accreditation is a voluntary process that demands significant organizational resources without a guaranteed outcome. Why would city officials devote scarce resources to such an endeavor? Two explanations are examined. First, accreditation may be a rational response to a history of trouble or the potential for future crisis. Second, municipalities may use accreditation to build a reputation for professional administration of public services. Barbara Coyle McCabe, Branco Ponomariov and Fabyan Estrada (University of Texas at San Antonio) use Poisson regression to test these explanations on a new data set of midsize cities. Link to PAR Early View

Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens?
Voluntary policy compliance is an important yet rarely studied topic in public administration. To address the paucity of research, Gregory A. Porumbescu (Rutgers University—Newark), Meghan I. H. Lindeman, Erica Ceka (Northern Illinois University) and Maria Cucciniello (Bocconi University, Italy) propose and empirically test a conceptual framework that ties policy transparency and policy understanding to voluntary policy compliance intentions. The reasoning is that the extent to which citizens understand a policy contributes to their intentions to comply with that policy. Further, the authors argue that policy transparency indirectly influences voluntary policy compliance intentions through a positive effect on citizens’ levels of policy understanding. To enhance the validity of the findings, the authors assess these relationships across two policy domains. The findings reflect an indirect positive effect of transparency on voluntary compliance occurring through policy understanding. However, this emerged only for one policy domain. These results suggest that the effects of policy transparency on policy understanding and voluntary policy compliance intentions may depend on the policy domain. Link to PAR Early View

Decreasing Improper Payments in a Complex Federal Program
Since the early 2000s, the U.S. federal government has placed increasing focus on combating improper payments. Implementing policies to control improper payments is no easy task. Federal programs are often large, complex, riddled with moral hazard concerns and jointly implemented. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Labor adopted a national strategy to combat improper payments in the Unemployment Insurance program. Robert A. Greer and Justin B. Bullock (Texas A&M University) examine the effect that the Department of Labor's strategic initiative had on lowering states’ improper payments. Findings show that two of its tools—mandatory cross matching of employment records between the National Directory of New Hires and State Directories of New Hires and a communication strategy known as messaging—played a statistically significant role in halting the rise of improperly paid unemployment insurance claims. These results suggest that information technology tools and increased communication among stakeholders can be effective in lowering improper payments and improving government performance. Link to PAR Early View

Perceived Organizational Red Tape and Organizational Performance in Public Services
The claim that perceived organizational red tape hampers public services has become a central theme in public administration research. Surprisingly, however, few scholars have empirically examined the impact of perceived red tape on organizational performance. Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen and Mads Leth Jakobsen (Aarhus University, Denmark) empirically analyze how perceived organizational red tape among managers and frontline staff relates to objectively measured performance. The data consist of survey responses from teachers and principals at Danish upper secondary schools combined with grade-level administrative performance data. Based on theories of red tape and motivation crowding, the authors hypothesize that perceived organizational red tape reduces performance within such organizations. The empirical result is a small negative relationship between staff perception of red tape and performance and no relationship between manager-perceived red tape and performance. Link to PAR Early View

Public Integrity Update



For the latest news on Public Integrity's articles and topics getting international attention, join the Journal's Twitter page: https://twitter.com/PubIntegrity, or our other active sites at:

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The Section on Ethics and Integrity in Governance (SEIGov) and Public Integrity announce the International Conference on Ethical Leadership, a day-long 20th anniversary symposium, taking place just prior to the start of the 2018 Annual Conference, March 9, 2018 in Denver. Additional details will be forthcoming online. Email Richard Jacobs, SEIGov Chair, for more information.

New on PA TIMES Online

PublicServiceCareers.org


Find your next career opportunity at publicservicecareers.org. This online job board is the perfect resource for making a career change or landing your first job in the public service. It lists dozens of positions in academia, government and the nonprofit sector. Below are just a few current listings.

Science Communications Intern – Research!America – Arlington, VA

Economist – Social Security Administration – Woodlawn, MD

Assistant Professor in Child Development and Social Policy – University of Utah – Salt Lake City, UT