The importance of introducing electronic administration in the training of public administrators: experiences in the Degree of Public Management and Administration of the University Jaume I

Abstract

In Europe, Spain and Italy are almost the only countries where there are specific studies of Public Management and Administration (PMA), with a heavy load of contents in law, mainly public administrative law in Spain, although contents of law and economy of the European Union are also introduced. In the rest of the countries, an Anglo-Saxon model is more followed in which the training of future public officials is shared between studies of Political Science and Business Administration and Management. In addition, in Spain, in the period when the PMA degrees were designed, a huge event was starting: the coming of the great digital revolution that would remove the foundations of the public administration, fundamentally at national level, and later at regional ('autonomías') and local levels, known as the Electronic Administration.

The Administration was promoted from the Spanish Administration by the successive governments of Spain, through laws (Organic Law 11/2007 -Plan Moderniza-, and Organic Laws 39/2015, which repealed the 11/2007, and 40/2015) and other lower level regulations, since the second lustrum of the 21st century. Specifically, the 39/2015 Law consolidates the absolute official validation of telematic services and digital certificates and electronic signatures of Spanish citizens with the Spanish Public Administration at every level. But the eAdministration contents was barely taken into account in PMA curricula.

On the contrary, in the PMA Degree of the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) of Castellón, a subject set of New Information and Communication Technologies (ITC) and Information Systems (IS) was introduced. The ITC subject allowed to include a presentation and introduction to eAdministration in the second semester. The IS subject allowed to extend the knowledge of IS based on ITC. This was made following the general philosophy of the UJI since it was founded: to ensure that none of its degrees lack basic ITC training, except for specific degrees in that field or related fields, as Engineering, Computational Mathematics, Video Games and Computer Science degrees. Moreover, both grades make intensive use of the digital and telematic resources of the UJI for the development of their teaching, such as the virtual classroom, where, in addition to publishing the teaching materials, tasks for the delivery of memories and exercises are opened, Non-personal communication between students and teachers is managed through forums, and even knowledge tests are done with the platform. In this way, the zero paper principle is achieved. In the practical part students work with office automation tools and also with the processes of request and use of real digital certificate and electronic signature in front of a public administration.

The objective of this work is to describe the experience obtained from the 2012/2013 course, when PMA started, and even some experiences from the previous equivalent studies (from 1994/1995 to 2013/2014), in the second semester subject where the eAdministration is introduced, as well as the presentation of the evaluation of the methodologies used along these years.