Understanding Public Administration Innovation

UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION INNOVATION The word innovation has a number of meanings. As stated by Ancok in his book Psychology of Leadership and Innovation, he defines innovation as a process of thinking about and implementing thoughts, resulting in new things in the form of products, services, business processes, new ways, policies, and so on. Then, according to O'Sullivan and Dooley, innovation is the process of making changes to something that has been established through the introduction of something new that provides added value for consumers. Meanwhile, Anthony defines innovation in a simpler sense, namely as something different that has an impact. From the definitions above, the meaning can be drawn that innovation is the process of thinking about and implementing something original, important and impactful. From this understanding, if it is related to the study of Public Administration, it can be interpreted as the process of thinking about and implementing policies for implementing public interests that are original, important and impactful. This means that the innovation that occurs in the study of Public Administration is one of the strategic studies that aims to accelerate the success of development and improve the welfare of society. Public Administration innovation can be seen from two sides, first, Administrative innovation is seen conceptually as an evolution in the development of Public Administration studies. Second, it is seen practically as a solution or answer to all the problems that occur in Administration. Understanding the two sides of Public Administration innovation as mentioned above is very important because the study of Public Administration innovation is often discussed in various forums, but there is no clarity about how implementation of public administration innovation itself. Public administration has experienced gradual innovation from classical to contemporary perspectives. Since its emergence in the 20th century until now, public administration has had four different orientations, each of which is called old public administration, new public administration, new public management (new public management), and new public services (new public service). Each paradigm development has a different view regarding focus, the role of public managers, values, relationship patterns, and so on. It is also important to understand that Public Administration is not a static entity. Since its inception until now, this science has continued to experience paradigm development. This shows that Public Administration actually continues to develop and dynamize itself. Now, in contemporary times, Public Administration is required to develop further in line with the new challenges it faces. One of these demands comes in the form of a call to make Public Administration an interdisciplinary science. This call is closely related to the need for Public Administration to affirm its identity, both as a science and a profession. If in the early days of the establishment of Public Administration this search for identity was related to the need to gain legitimacy as an independent science, now this is related to the need to reposition identity to obtain a form that is in line with current developments and challenges. By establishing itself as an interdisciplinary science, Public Administration will be able to respond to various recent developments such as democratization, globalization, advances in information technology and climate change. So, Public Administration does not exclusively limit itself to questions and investigations around politics, public policy and public management. Public Administration deals with the public in its broadest spectrum. Apart from changes in the strategic environment, there are two main drivers behind the call to make Public Administration an interdisciplinary science. First, increasing and challenging expectations from the public regarding the quality of policies and performance of Public Administrators. Second, developments from other social sciences that influence Public Administration such as economics, politics, sociology and management. Interdisciplinary ideas, tools and methods will help Public Administration to overcome the contemporary challenges it faces. Integral, forwardlooking multilevel, multimethod, and multisystem analysis provides the knowledge Public Administrators need to manage their work, improve their performance, and achieve their goals. How does this practically work? An important principle that has become a consensus is the need for increasingly close cooperation between the government, private and community sectors to fulfill common interests by utilizing all available knowledge. Then, what is the relevance of the multidisciplinary nature of Public Administration to efforts to innovate Public Administration? Multidisciplinarity implies the search for as many sources of knowledge as possible, stretching from conventional boundaries that have been previously understood. This applies especially to innovation, which deals with the search for new, useful things. Novelty will not be obtained if innovators only circle around in places they have explored so far. To initiate, implement and manage Public Administration innovation, innovators must realize that adequate understanding and mastery of various skills and knowledge is a prerequisite. For example, when carrying out technological innovation in the form of adopting e-government, the innovator must not only pay attention to aspects related to Public Administration such as how to plan, manage, coordinate and collaborate, but must also have knowledge that is at least basic and general. regarding technological devices and technological systems. In the scope of Public Administration, especially the government sector, innovation is felt to be still lagging behind compared to the business sector. This of course cannot be separated from the very strong bureaucratic culture that reduces the level of creativity of bureaucratic actors. Even though many civil servants intend to innovate, they still question why, what, how, who and where to innovate. There are also those who have started trying to initiate and run innovations, but have difficulty managing them effectively or running them sustainably.