What do bureaucrats do all day in those hives of activity with the alphabet names? What policies and programs will those agencies like Health and Human Services, Education, Transportation, and Commerce be initiating or changing next?
Every facet of our daily lives is impacted in some way by the actions of the federal, state, or local bureaucracies that manage and organize the public life of the country and its citizens. Public administration trains the policy analyst who brings analytical skills to the task of advising public servants on the merits of particular public policy issues and evaluates programs as to which would best serve the interests of the constituents in the most cost-effective way, and the public manager who implements public policy programs and oversees or directs the operation of the program on a day-to-day basis.
Public administration is the study of public entities and their relationships with each other and with the larger world: how public sector organizations are organized and managed; how public policy structures the design of government programs that we rely upon; how our states, cities, and towns work with the federal government to realize their goals and plan for their futures; how our national government creates and changes public policy programs to respond to the needs and interests of our nation.