Foresight of Philippine Public Administration Competencies in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Creators: name: Muñoz, Analiza V.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020
Subjects: governance
foresight
public administration
competency
leadership skills
futures thinking
COVID-19
reverse competency foresight

description: The public administration’s evidence-based strategies and practices have evolved, focusing largely on empirical methods and evaluation of best practices in various fields of public administration. It occupies a strategic position in the public governance system of the country (Gupta, et al., 2018) and plays a major role in governing modern-day society. The government, without the support of able public administrators, is like a vehicle without wheels (Gupta, 2017). Therefore, the role of Public Administration is important in every government and their abilities and competencies are essential to the successful implementation of its functions. With the growing challenges encountered by the Public Administration as a result of the emergence of the novel coronavirus or known as COVID-19, their competencies are being tested with an urgent shift to the digital transformation of the public service that needs to be implemented without further delay. The researcher conducted this study to examine whether the public administration has the capacity and competencies to address the imminent health threats brought by COVID-19 and to evaluate whether foresight of the competencies of the public administration is the best strategy to be more prepared, resilient, and sustainable for the next 30 years. Foresight as future literacy (Miller, 2007) is a technique that builds organizational ability to analyze, explore, and broaden information from the current to anticipate and conceptualize scenarios for "possible, probable, and desirable" future projections (Jones, 2017). This study used an empirical approach to determine whether foresight is the best possible way to equip the Public Administration to develop and strengthen its competencies to be more prepared, resilient, and sustainable in the future. It is an essential process to move the public administration from one risk adversity to analyze the threat, realize the complexity that awaits as it takes a new direction to shape the future.
description: Reverse Competency Foresight (RCF) approach is used to foresee the competencies of the public administration by looking back on the possible effects or outcome of an action, based on phased intervention in the current situation, by re-examining its competencies in addressing the sudden emergence of COVID-19. This is the "what if" foresight. It re-analyzes the step towards achieving the preferred future by asking what if, in the process of achieving the preferred future, a crisis or unexpected obstacle crosses your path, what are you going to do? What action are you going to implement? This approach will help the public administration prepare to resolve future issues and their possible response by applying appropriate competencies to address this problem. Reverse Competency Foresight is not the same as Hindsight, although it can reflect on the past outcome only to determine whether the identified competencies for the desired future is still appropriate and relevant or still usable in case of an unexpected and unforeseen crisis throughout the three horizons of foresight.