A number of concepts which are used in the field of public administration and government lack clear and unambiguous definitions in the administrative practice and theory and sometimes also in legislation. This also seems to be a non-negligible obstacle for reform efforts and for the comparison of our and foreign administration systems and experience. You will find below only basic meanings of some ambiguous or inconsistently understood concepts so as to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding.
Bureaucracy: (in our context) either neutral - a group of persons performing the administration and management, or pejorative - (also bureaucratic, bureaucratism etc.) denoting excessive, formal, empty red-tape.
Decentralization (principle and process): the opposite of centralization which is necessary to a certain extent (defence, foreign affairs, macroeconomic policy etc.). A democratic process in which part of governance is transferred to self-government or to non-state (private) entities.
Devolution: the transfer of power to lower-level authorities or specialised bodies at the same management level (vertical or horizontal devolution). This results in a more rational division of labour and organization of work inside administration authorities. Unlike decentralization, this does not entail the transfer of political power, de-etatization.
Delegation of authority: the transfer of decision-making to a lower management level.
Effectiveness: (in our context) a comprehensive criterion for evaluating public administration. It consists in comparing costs and results of administrative activity. Stress is laid on the external effectiveness, i.e. the results of the performance of public administration in fulfilling its social tasks and aims.
Related (narrower) concepts - economy, usefulness.
Modernization of public administration: Modernization was understood earlier as the application of new means and methods for reaching a qualitatively higher level and the adjustment to new present-day conditions. Now the modernization of public administration is often understood as a process of gradual steps and changes which should secure higher effectiveness without any radical and dramatic changes, such as e.g. an extensive privatization of public services.
Public administration reform: This term is mostly used to denote bigger, more basic and comprehensively understood system changes of public administration or its individual parts. There are a number of expressions to denote changes or the introduction of new approaches and means in public administration without any clear generally valid distinctions, such as e.g. transformation, modernization, rationalization, optimization; some expressions are taken over directly from English without being translated, such as "new public management ", "total quality management", "reingeneering" etc. Their meaning must be deduced from the concrete context. Public administration reform is often narrowed in a distorted and harmful way to a change in territorial government and the Civil Service Act.
Government authorities: constitutional term denoting ministries and other central and local government authorities securing the execution of public administration. Older as well as some new laws basically use the expression "government bodies" in a similar sense.
Subsidiarity: a principle demanding that problems should be solved at the level at which they arise; that powers transferred to higher levels of government should only be those which lower level bodies cannot apply. This is the basic guideline for defining the powers of the individual levels of a democratically arranged public administration (from municipalities to the state and supranational groupings, such as the EU).
Civil service: this denotes both government employees and the specific legal status of civil servants. There is a tendency to narrow the personnel range of civil servants, i.e. to subordinate to this special, mostly public-law regime only those officials who are entrusted with powers in government authorities or participate in the preparation and implementation of decisions.
State administration: central and local government in the
organizational sense.
The concept of state administration does not exist in many countries (Anglo-Saxon or
Scandinavian countries etc.). The term they use is "central government".
Public administration: either a certain kind of activity (i.e.
administration) or institutions which perform public administration.
The basis of the organization of public administration is formed by the government, local
government authorities and self-government. There are also other entities authorized to
execute public administration, such as public funds, public foundations as well as private
persons if they were entrusted with some tasks of public administration.
It is not possible to give an exhausting universally valid definition of public
administration / government and a complete enumeration of its subjects, which is sometimes
demanded in practice. Moreover, the issue is complicated by categories of budgetary and
contributory organizations surviving from the past as well as of newly formed entities in
the case of which the public-law or private-law position and links to the State are not
clear (e.g. some health care facilities).
According to the local, time and professional contexts, public administration is denoted in English as the government, governance, public management, public administration etc.
If these terms are not defined clearly in legislation, there is nothing else left than to reach their clarification through the interpretation of the respective act or other legal regulation (cf. e.g. the Liability for Damage Caused within the Execution of Public Authority By Means of Decision or Incorrect Official Procedure Act No. 82/1998 Sb.). Binding interpretation of an act can be given only by a court in the Czech Republic.
Public sector: simply: all public services, including public administration, financed from public budgets.