NPM is dead. Long live digital era governance. Comment

[PUB AD- Answer writing]

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[McGregor]

The NPM model of governance which came at the backdrop of failure of NPA wherein the the state became so over burdened with the welfarist measures that it started facing the crisis of credibility. However, NPM model itself could not bring desirable governance due to inherent weakness of equating market principles in public administration. Ideas like privatization, agencification, contracting out , customer orientation etc resulted in increased cost of service delivery and reduced the citizen to the logic of customers. For eg, passport services in UK became costlier after Thatcherism was imposed., this reduced accessibility of service to the common man.

The failure of NPM put forward a renewed model of the administration in the form of digital era governance which led to renationalization of service delivery, citizen charter, single window clearance, ICT applications, social audit etc. All these measures were a means to overcome weaknesses of NPM by fostering people oriented responsive governance. The current models of networked governance, multistakeholder approach etc  are nothing but an extension of the same digital era governance.