Tom 9 (2019): Zeszyt 2 (December 2019)

In an increasingly smarter world, where increasingly more areas of social life are encompassed by “smart solutions”, public administration cannot remain on the outside or in opposition to this process. The scholars of the Section of the Public Administration System at the Institute of Administrative Sciences of Faculty of Law, Administration and Economics at the University of Wrocław, have decided to devote a collective publication to the matter of smart administration. The articles comprising this volume present a rich array of topics related to the issue of smart administration, as each of the authors has chosen a different area of administrative activity.

Homelessness is a phenomenon for which the scale is growing at an alarming rate in Europe. It leads to the exclusion of people affected by it, to the denying of human dignity, and it constitutes a threat to human health and life. It is a multidimensional phenomenon in its substance and causes that lead to it. Therefore, it is necessary for the European states to take steps to prevent and reduce its scale. This requires thoughtful, sometimes innovative activities that bring with them a serious financial outlay for their implementation. It also concerns Poland, where the basic form of assistance to the homeless people is still a shelter, which is far from the level of assistance provided to the homeless people in the countries of Western Europe, especially in countries such as Finland, Denmark or Norway. The aim of the article is a theoretical overview of the notion of smart practices in public administration to end homelessness in selected Scandinavian countries and its state affair in Poland, using relevant scientific literature. The article provides the reader with information about the homelessness strategies implemented in Finland, Denmark and Norway, and refers them to the Polish conditions.

This article presents four interpretations of the term smart city, which are not competitive with each other, but even so, municipal authorities knowingly choose the so-called strong preference, as well as shows the conditions for implementing Smart City Projects, which is treated as one of the mechanisms of implementing the idea of the smart city. We also draw attention in the article to the logic of preferences, which is rooted in every decision-making process of municipal authorities, which were forced to make constant choices in conditions of conflicting expectations of stakeholders.

Smart public administration (hereinafter: smart administration) is understood primarily as the application of modern technologies that increase its effectiveness. However, not only modern techniques and innovative communication solutions define this concept. They should be considered in a broader sense because smart administration has many dimensions. The article presents just such an approach and discusses five dimensions of smart administration (technological, political, legal, subjective and structural).

The article is devoted to smart integration taking place on the Polish–German borderland and, more precisely, the border between the Lower Silesian Voivodeship and the Saxony Länder, which, according to the author, is the result of an evolution of forms of transfrontier cooperation of territorial self-government units. It will analyse the conditions for the emergence of forms of cooperation in the transfrontier area and their evolution in European experiences to date and, after 1990, also with the involvement of Polish territorial self-governments.

The cross-border cooperation of local authorities, taken up based on the administrative law of each of the states, is marked by both integrating factors that refer to the similarities of the applicable system of law and separating factors arising from the principle of territoriality of administrative law. The frame agreement is a smart solution (a smart tool) of cross-border cooperation, because it enables cooperating territorial self-government units to conduct a unique operation of ‘recompensing’ separating factors with integrating factors.

Public administration is constantly changing, with the objective of keeping up with the social, economic and technological developments of the modern world. It is opening up to modern technologies, introducing ever newer innovations and attempting to satisfy the needs of the citizens. It is no longer seen to such a large extent as an archaic structure that is blind to reforms and modernization; as a result of which, it can start to be perceived as a smart organization. New instruments are being introduced in many areas of administration, one of them being the fiscal administration. The changes related to the ability to communicate electronically with the tax authorities, submit electronic tax returns or pay stamp duty electronically are certainly aspects that have a positive impact on the whole image of administration, enabling it to be referred to as ‘smart’. The paper provides an overview on the fiscal administration system in Poland and e-services provided thereby.

The study is aimed at emphasising the selected aspects of smart education with regard to the school perceived as an intelligent knowledge-based organisation challenged by state-of-the-art civilisational and technological educational solutions. The study focuses on school and education with respect to the structure and function of public administration perceived as an intelligent organisation. School and educational services will determine and influence future generations of public administration staff. Their brainpower as well intellectual resources (knowledge, skills and experience) will serve the welfare of the society. Highly intelligent administration may win the respect for the organisation itself and for its services rendered to the society.

Following study focussed on the perception of the public administration by the international students in the context of implementation of the concept of smart administration. New administrative reality requires that public administration should not only adapt to new conditions, but should also introduce complex plans of change, which in consequence should lead to the creation of a new type of smart administration, which adequately answers the needs and expectations of contemporary and future citizens.

Smart administration should be understood as an effective, well managed organisation with reasonably simplified structure and conduct oriented primarily towards serenity, comfort and well-being of the recipient of its service. Important feature is easy, two-way communication, which is a gateway for active participation of citizens in public affairs in both local and nationwide level.

For the purpose of this study, various dispositions expressed towards public administration were classified into the three categories of behaviour models. Models of behaviour in public administration presented in the paper are meritoric-despotism behaviour, efficient-democratic behaviour and anarchist-informal behaviour and were created for this study on the basis of approaches already present in the field.

Main objective of the paper is to provide preliminary analysis of how the international students perceive changes in the behaviour models in public administration and what is the role of smart administration in this. This paper is based on the data collected during the interviews, conducted face to face, with four students from different part of Europe and who are following exchange programmes. Questions concerned the experience in contact with public administration, its role, performance and how should it be changed. Research results showed that regarding behaviour changes in public administration, interlocutors speak in favour of a centralised model of public administration rather than decentralised, which is interesting in the context of smart administration, because this mean that there is still a common perception that the base of classic approach to public administration should be maintained even if modified by new concepts.