Discussing S'pore efforts in public governance

Singapore's success in public governance and policy, especially in recent years, will be among the topics discussed during a two-day international conference on good governance at the Mandarin Orchard Hotel starting today.

They include a paper on multi-sector collaborative efforts driven by the public sector involving different community groups to carry out national events. These topics related to Singapore are among the nearly 100 papers by academics from 14 countries to be presented at the 2015 Lien Conference titled Good Governance: Global Issues, Local Context. The others, mainly from the United States, Europe, China and other Asian countries, share insights such as whether democracy is sufficient for good governance.

The bilingual conference in English and Chinese is being organised by the Nanyang Centre for Public Administration of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), with over 200 academics attending.

Professor Liu Hong, director of the centre for public administration at NTU, said the conference is timely as governments worldwide are seeking better governance.

"In the past, most governments, including Singapore's, adopted a top-down approach but now they are more consultative and working through greater collaboration with others in their countries."

Prof Liu said a keynote address today by Prof Yu Keping, dean, School of Government at Peking University - titled Good Governance and Good Government - shows even China is concerned with good governance.

This article was first published on November 20, 2015.
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