Governing Competencies of Public Servants: Perspective of Sustainable City
Hsiu-Chuan Tsai
Abstract
A city has to strengthen her governing ability in order to meet increasing challenges brought by globalization, competition and crisis. From the perspective of sustainable development, this paper discusses three issues. First, the capacity of public servants is the most important factor to enhance city governance. Second, sustainable city has to manage and integrate multiple and diverse issues. Third, four characters of sustainable city governing: promoting city democracy, understanding and integrating diversity, previewing uncertainty and developing future development map, and handling risk and crisis. Based on these characters, this paper suggests four governing competencies that city civil servants should have to meet the need and challenges of sustainable city. The four competencies are transparent and open government, governance of cross sectors and partnerships, scenario policy planning, and risk management.
Keywords: sustainable development, city governance, competence theory, public servants, scenario policy planning