Public Administration Report

This report analyzes two case studies related to public administration. The first examines the commentary of Mr. Price, a former CIA analyst, on public service values and his differing views from the Trump administration. It discusses whether he should have resigned based on these values and their impact on the relationship between public service and democracy. The second case study focuses on the Oroville Dam's instability, identifying contributing factors and exploring the role of public administration in resolving the problem. It discusses strategies for reassuring citizens, building trust, and employing constitutional grounding in problem-solving. The report integrates readings, lectures, and discussions to provide a comprehensive analysis of these issues.

Running Head: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
News article and Web research and analysis
Name
Submitted To
Date

Integration of readings, lecture and discussions.
News Article
1. Cite examples from Mr. Price’s commentary of the public service values you identified.
Answer – Based on the article findings, we come to know that Mr. Price has worked as a CIA
analyst from 2006 and most recently held position as the spokesman for the National Security
Council. Also, we come to know that Mr. Price has always been interested in serving the nation,
and that made him work for CIA.
The first example which illustrated Mr. Price’s commentary of the public service values is his
working with CIA that taught him how to deter and disrupt terror attacks in an attempt to save
the nation.
The another example which illustrated Mr. Price’s commentary of the public service values deals
with the covert action undertaken by him which encompassed a broad range of activities outside
the operations of traditional intelligence collection (Witesman and Walters, 2014).
2. How does his view of the role of a public servant differ from the Trump administration’s
view? What does this difference say about the relationship between the public service and
democracy?
Answer - Mr. Price holds the belief that during his career as CIA analyst in the administration of
George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the efforts of CIA and their inputs were taken seriously and
respectfully. The speech of Donald Trump at CIA memorial risks went disputed with the Central
Intelligence Agency as the statements made by him insulted the credibility of CIA agency.

The relationship between the public service and democracy is very challenging. As the public
service plays a significant role in our democracy, these challenges arise from several attributes of
the public service. Since public service is a responsibility for all Americans, any disputes or
feuds among the citizen due to any rhetorical statement made by an individual can perturb the
relationship between the public service and democracy (Kernaghan and Langford, 2014).
3. Should he have resigned? Why or why not given the values you have selected?
Answer – Mr. Price should not have resigned; instead, he must have stood for the credibility of
his department’s efforts and work. The undermine efforts of CIA as mentioned in the Trump’s
statement was supposed to be opposed to presenting the results and activities that expediently
met the national security standard.
The values I have chosen here stands in favor of the democracy and the public service. Since our
democracy has always remained vibrant, substantial attention must be delivered to sort the
tensions between democracy and the public service. In an attempt to do so an individual must
strongly address and solve the issues instead of committing a wrongful decision (Box, 2015).

Web research and analysis
1. Read background to the problem. Which public agencies are involved in the regulation and
maintenance of this dam?
Answer – The background to the problem refers to the prompt which were given by public
agencies, viz., The Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba Citizens League, 12
years before to the federal government on Oct. 17, 2005, as part of Oroville Dam’s relicensing
process, urging federal officials to require armoring of the dam’s emergency spillway, rather
than let it remaining as an earthen hillside.
2. Name at least three factors/potential causes they may be contributing to the dam’s instability.
Answer – The three factors/potential causes they may be contributing to the dam’s instability
were:-
a) First factor revolves around the water flowing into Oroville dam's main spillway which was
first reported by the trio of environmental groups namely, Friends of the River, the Sierra Club
and the South Yuba Citizens League in the year 2005.
b) The second factor revolves around the prolonged damaged California's Oroville Dam concrete
spillway.
c) The third factor is the overtopping of Oroville dam that resulted in water eroding the
emergency spillway (Schaub et al., 2013).
3. Speculate about what the “common good” is in this scenario. What process would you employ
to create a plan of action given your concern for the common good?

Answer – It could be speculated positively from the insider reports that there lies common good
for every farmers and citizens of Oroville in this scenario. It also tends to confirm that the
engineers were successful in restoring the concrete spillway passage and hole that were eroded
originally. The projected rate of flow coming from the next storms is less than the last one, and
since the water level has reached down about 50′ by the time the rain storm hits, so it could be
expected that there is enough capacity to handle the new runoff based on weather predictions.
The process I would employ to create a plan of action given my concern for the common good is
to first evacuate the people from those places posing threat due to water spillway. Later on I
would get along with the task requiring maintenance of dam, with the help of American Society
of Civil Engineers. The plan of action to deal with this crisis situation should be the one of taking
the help from Federal dam inspection officials to monitor the situation and checking to see if the
spillway can handle the strength of about 20,000 cubic feet per second of water, if proper
infrastructure could be provided (Denhardt et al., 2013).
4. In an ideal scenario what role(s) does the public administration have in resolving this
problem?
Answer - The critical role of public administration as defined by John Rohr (a leading scholar of
the US Constitution and its relation to public administration and civil servants) is governing the
society. The current role and functions adopted by public administration in dealing with Oroville
dam is the safety of the dam, and also about solving the issues of affected people. A public
administrator is ought to evacuate people from their homes over concerns that the dam’s
emergency spillway could fail and an onrush of water out of the reservoir could flood nearby
towns and roads. This may happen as the increasing population of the world means tremendous

pressure on the available resources. The role of providing for basic amenities like food and
shelter has therefore fallen into the lap of the Government and hence onto public administration.
Thus, the role and functions of public administration has also become quite dynamic in nature
and is constantly evolving in response to the changing needs and demands. (Klenk and Pavolini,
2015).
5. As an agency head how would you reassure citizens who assume they are being lied to? How
would you build their trust?
Answer - Since, building and maintaining community trust is the cornerstone of successful
policing and law enforcement, as an agency head, I would assure citizens by implementing
community trust-building activities and engaging community leaders in appropriate internal
decision-making and trying to maintain transparency in public safety. In this way I can reassure
citizens who assume they are being mislead. The building and maintenance of trust takes a great
deal of continuous effort. Looking at the whole process from a citizen’s viewpoint, information
on how local law enforcement agencies can be accountable to their citizens by engaging them in
any number of trust-building initiatives, including citizen input for agency’s determinations and
discipline would be paramount. (Henry, 2015).
6. How would the constitutional grounding of public administration inform your actions? How
you went about solving the problem?
Answer - The constitutional grounding of public administration will inform my actions in terms
of actual policy, where most of the action is located in administrative agencies and departments.
The charge of disseminating false information allegation is solved by deliverance of proper
explanation to the public administrator that statements were unintentional and that too with the

knowledge that they were not true. Also, I would provide a proper explanation with facts to the
department regarding the statements that were solely represented as a forged one. (Malatesta and
Carboni, 2015).

References
Witesman, E., & Walters, L. (2014). Public service values: A new approach to the study of
motivation in the public sphere. Public administration, 92(2), 375-405.
Kernaghan, K., & Langford, J. (2014). The responsible public servant. BookBaby.
Box, R. C. (2015). Democracy and public administration. Routledge.
Pisaniello, J. D., Dam, T. T., & Tingey-Holyoak, J. L. (2015). International small dam safety
assurance policy benchmarks to avoid dam failure flood disasters in developing countries.
Journal of Hydrology, 531, 1141-1153.
Schaub, Y., Haeberli, W., Huggel, C., Künzler, M., & Bründl, M. (2013). Landslides and new
lakes in deglaciating areas: a risk management framework. In Landslide science and practice (pp.
31-38). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Denhardt, R. B., Denhardt, J. V., & Blanc, T. A. (2013). Public administration: An action
orientation. Cengage Learning.
Klenk, T., & Pavolini, E. (Eds.). (2015). Restructuring Welfare Governance: Marketization,
Managerialism and Welfare State ProfessionalismQuasi-markets and managerial steering
techniques have spread in the provision of welfare state services and are now a salient feature.
This innovative book explores the introduction and impact of marketization and managerialism
in social policy by adopting a dual perspective–one on regulation and governance, the other on

human resources–covering five fields of social service delivery. Welfare governance (for ....
Edward Elgar Publishing.
Henry, N. (2015). Public administration and public affairs. Routledge.
Malatesta, D., & Carboni, J. L. (2015). The public–private distinction: Insights for public
administration from the state action doctrine. Public Administration Review, 75(1), 63-74.