Program Evaluation From an External

Program Evaluation

From an external evaluator perspective, the following is a protocol to ensure excellence in compliance monitoring. First, the assumptions must be tested to ensure that they are in place for the monitoring program. The external evaluator should ensure that an objective standard is set, without any biases relating to the objective. The presence of an internal compliance officer must be ensured. The compliance monitoring program should be formative and ongoing in nature.

The main purpose of the compliance program should be to fight corruption on a wide scale. When acting as an external evaluator for the Master of Public Administration program, my focus will therefore be on both students and personnel. Students need to maintain academic integrity at all times. Systems, such as online plagiarizing scans, should be in place to ensure this. It is the responsibility of both students and lecturers to ensure that no academic dishonesty occurs. From an external perspective, I will make regular random selections of students' work to ensure that academic integrity occurs.

In terms of lecturers, the protocol should focus upon their work ethic. Students' work should be returned on time, with helpful and performance enhancing notes. They should also comply with the state standard of education when preparing students for a career in public administration. The full support of upper management in the form of university sponsored funding and grants should be ensured.

The most important focus from an external viewpoint is the relationship between the compliance of students and lecturers. Each has his or her role to fulfill towards the attainment of eventual academic and professional goals. The external evaluator will work with top management to construct the protocols, which will be further refined with the help of the public administration department.

From an internal perspective, the head of the Public Administration Department should be in charge of constructing and enforcing compliance protocols. The first step is to communicate with the external evaluator in order to construct an assessment of needs and requirements.

After the initial communication, the head of department can meet with top management to ensure that the protocol is acceptable in terms of the overall university standard. One this has been done, it should be communicated to the other personnel within the department, and finally to students.

As mentioned above, one example of the compliance protocol is academic honesty. All lecturers within the department should understand what plagiarism is, for example, as well as how to detect it and what disciplinary measures should be upheld when it is detected. Students should also be made aware very specifically of these protocols.

The head of department should furthermore ensure that all academic personnel are aware of their duties, including certain office, lecture, and research output hours. Lecturers must maintain a professional relationship with students at all times, providing them with the best education possible to fulfill their duties as public administrators in the future.