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Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 4.2 calls for all girls and boys to have access to high-quality early childhood education by 2030. This global mandate establishes a new framework of accountability to increase access to preprimary education in low- and middle-income countries through measurement and reporting. As with other global indicators, however, the measurement of preprimary education access is more complex and nuanced than may be supposed. This data-oriented chapter delves deeply into the measurement of SDG 4.2 and explores the accuracy of the indicator being used: the adjusted net enrollment ratio, one year before the official age of primary entry. The chapter analyzes data from both education management information systems (EMIS) and household surveys to triangulate information about children’s access to preprimary education before they begin primary school. The analysis concludes that the indicator used to measure SDG 4.2 is overestimating access to preprimary education, because it includes large numbers of children who enroll in primary school before the official age of entry. This suggests that parents “vote for preschool” by sending their under-age children to primary school when access to affordable preprimary is limited. Implications for SDG measurement and preprimary policy are discussed.

In the twenty-first century, data are the world’s most valuable resource. Technological capacities for the collection, storage, analysis and sharing of data are evolving rapidly, and as a result, so too are the possibilities for improving the day-to-day lives of people. However, data use can also result in exploitation and harm; nowhere is this more evident than for Indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, the rapid expansion of technology has not been matched by a sufficiently robust discussion of ethics nor the development of governance frameworks. Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) has emerged as a key consideration for this cause. Beginning with the presumption of Indigenous rights to tribal/nation sovereignty, IDS weaves together Indigenous research ethics, cultural and intellectual property rights and Indigenous governance discourse, with the view to offer solutions to the challenges being presented in an open data environment. This chapter will expand on this existing literature base and consider Māori data sovereignty in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. More specifically, it provides the basis for a discussion around how kawa and tikanga drawn from Te Ao Māori might inform approaches to data ethics and data governance.

In the spirit of ‘Europe of the Regions’, local authorities are responsible for responding to the main interests, needs and preferences of the country’s citizens. Regional and local administrative authorities provide citizens with the necessary public goods, which reflect the trend towards ‘glocalisation’ in public administration at the European level, more significantly in the states in which the political system recently became democratic. With this background, the effectiveness of local self-government depends not only on local authorities’ decision-making freedom but also on (financial) support for it through decentralisation, and the member states of the European Union (EU) employ different strategies to achieve the same goal, with varying degrees of success. Within this context, our chapter offers a comparative analysis of the administrative, financial and local self-government decentralisation in member states, which include the southern and eastern regions on the outer edges of the EU. The general goal of our study is to identify the main trends in the present administrations and their challenges, as well as best practices that can offer lessons to other member states which are reforming their administration through decentralisation. In addition to the identified challenges, solutions and best practices, our study reveals a tendency towards consolidation at the level of regional government not only in the terms of legal responsibility but also of administrative budgets, thus generating an assumption of improvement in the general quality of governance in the member states.

This chapter examines one of the most contested issues in Public Administration, namely political–administrative relationships. The first part of the chapter begins with a brief overview of the features of an ideal-type bureaucracy. Next is a literature review of political–administrative relationships. This is followed by an analysis of typologies of political–administrative relationships, with particular reference to developing countries. The second part of the chapter analyses the evolution of political–administrative relationships since the dawn of South African democracy in 1994. It examines the growing politicisation of the public service, the weakening of the powers of public officials vis-a-vis Ministers and the emasculation of the PSC. Data indicate that the government is unable to fill posts at the Senior Management Service (SMS) level and that there are a high number of acting HoDs, an indicator of instability. Finally, it uses Dasandi and Esteve’s typology of political–administrative relationships in developing countries to interpret the South African case.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Public administration as an aspect of governmental activity has existed as long as political systems have been functioning and trying to achieve program objectives set by the political decision-makers. Public administration as a field of systematic study is much more recent. Advisers to rulers and commentators on the workings of government have recorded their observations from time to time in sources as varied as Kautilya's Arthasastra in ancient India, the Bible, Aristotle's Politics, and Machiavelli's The Prince, but it was not until the eighteenth century that cameralism, concerned with the systematic management of governmental affairs, became a specialty of German scholars in Western Europe. In the United States, such a development did not take place until the latter part of the nineteenth century, with the publication in 1887 of Woodrow Wilson's famous essay, “The Study of Administration,” generally considered the starting point. Since that time, public administration has become a well-recognized area of specialized interest, either as a subfield of political science or as an academic discipline in its own right.