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The development of public administration (PA) is a worldwide topic of research, considering its importance in resolving governance issues in contemporary society. Consequently, the question of PA as a scientific discipline arises at both national and broader levels. In order to explore the state of affairs in PA trends in Slovenia and its regional context, an analysis was conducted involving 78 papers published in the leading Slovenian scientific journal -the International Public Administration Review -between 2011 and 2014. Content analysis as a method applied in the research is a widely recognized approach in social sciences and in the field of PA as well. Taking into account the respective analyses of the papers in terms of predominating discipline and mainstream topics, affiliation and collaboration of authors, language, methods of research and other criteria, we examined three main guidelines of editorial policy, namely the journal's interdisciplinary, international and practical orientation. The results reveal that PA in Slovenia is rather multidisciplinary, with a prevailing role of management (HRM in particular), law and economics (the latter even mostly monodisciplinary). International and practical aspects, on the other hand, still offer some room for improvement. In sum, to support PA's progress and its disciplinary evolution in line with global trends and the IPAR mission, a systematic interdisciplinary and allEuropean approach in future theory and practice is inevitable.

This paper presents the results of the content analysis of 139 Web of Science papers focused on collaborative innovation with external stakeholders of public administration, specifically on co-production and co-creation. The analysis included papers published between 2009 and 2018 and was based on a coding scheme consisting of 12 parameters grouped into four groups: paper descriptors, financial support of the research, methodological framework, and co-creation characteristics. The results reveal a considerable increase in researchers’ interest in co-production and co-creation in the context of public administration in the last few years. This is particularly the case in Northern and Western Europe, where Anglo-Saxon and Nordic administrative traditions dominate. Furthermore, the results show that co-creation is most often placed in the contexts of social policy and welfare, as well as health care. Over the selected period, research seldom addressed companies as a target group in the co-creation of public services—in comparison to citizens and internal users. More than three quarters of the papers observed were empirical and less than 20% were quantitative. In general, a lack of conceptual clarity was often identified through the interchangeable usage of the terms co-creation and co-creation and the low level of international comparison—the majority of the papers focused on case descriptions at a national level, even though collaborative innovation is strongly related to administrative traditions dominating in specific regions.

Public policy design and implementation is a complex process, and so decision makers try to monitor all of the policy lifecycle stages in a particular policy domain. However, the question of coherent integration of various policy activities arises, including agenda-setting, ex-ante evaluation, formulation, decision-making, implementation, ex-post evaluation of individual policies, sector-specific ones, and even horizontal ones. Therefore, it is important to investigate and understand the reasons why an individual country, such as Slovenia, does not exploit all potential aspects of carrying out policy activities in a systematic and coherent manner. This article explores and analyzes Slovenian practice in policy design based on an in-depth empirical study among key public policyholders and decision makers. Furthermore, the authors identify the key success factors that facilitate or inhibit the development and progress of public policies, programs, and projects (PPPP) in Slovenia. The key findings indicate a particular lack of a professional policy unit to monitor the process holistically and the absence of ex-post evaluation. A need for a systemic solution in public policy design is established, which would merge different authorities’ efforts, epistemic communities, and the public in developing a structural multilevel model for good public governance.

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The paper presents a contribution to the rapidly growing field of social networks usage in public administration organizations. Despite the increasing volume of research in this field, there is a lack of detailed empirical evidence. To address the issue, we aim here at comprehensive empirical analysis of the usage of Facebook as the most popular social networking site among Slovenian municipalities. The methodology of research is based on 21 indicators measuring usage, engagement, multichannel features, multi-media content, and the existence of a social networks usage strategy. The measurement has been performed in each of the 212 Slovenian municipalities. Their Facebook interaction has been observed in a period of six months, from November 2015 to May 2016. The analysis results reveal that only 36% of the Slovenian municipalities were present on Facebook in 2016, with almost a quarter having a zero interaction rate on their Facebook pages/profiles in the observed six-month period. In particular, one-way interaction was recorded on municipal Facebook pages, leaving considerable room for improvement as regards the usage of Facebook as a social network with the highest potential of reach and engagement in terms of number of its users. The results are useful for information and benchmarking purposes for Slovenian and foreign municipal managers.

Public administration is,

The article presents users' views on the development of e-government, addressing two interrelated questions that have not been sufficiently answered thus far:(1) How to increase the current low level of e-government use, and (2) How to advance the current practice of analyzing data from e-government satisfaction surveys in order to arrive at guidelines for decision-makers when shaping future actions of e-government development. For this purpose, a cause-and-effect model was developed and operationalized by a set of indicators observed by a citizen satisfaction survey carried out in Slovenia between 2005 and 2006. The model was then estimated using the PLS (Partial Least Squares) regression method. Finally, an improvement-priority matrix was applied to prioritize significant factors. The proposed manner of analyzing data from user surveys offers a universal tool for analyzing drivers and consequences of user satisfaction and the use of e-government, and prioritizing them in order to assist decision-makers in preparing future strategies, action plans, or guidelines for further developments.Points for practitioners Methodological implications:G guidelines on how to conduct e-government user satisfaction surveys;G guidelines on how to analyze user survey data in order to formulate guidelines for future development of e-government.