Participation in public administrations in the context of strategic planning and a research on participation in central public administrations

After the 1980s, with the emergence of the new public management understanding, many countries have started to realise reforms in public managements and adopted pieces of legislation in that framework. One of these of legislation is strategic planning.In Turkey, strategic planning in public management has been adopted with the aim of providing services in a planned way, of determining goals and objectives in a participatory way in conformity with the policies adopted and in line with users? demands, of monitoring and evaluating implementation effectively and of ensuring accountability.In this context, the aim of the study is to provide feedback to the public administrations by evaluating the participation in the context of strategic planning in public administrations and to contribute to the increase in quality of participation in the strategic planning processes to be prepared for the following terms by giving proposals.Methodologically, this study comprises a literature review, the examining of strategic planning and participation concepts and, research on central public administrations? approaches to the participation in the context of strategic planning. In the framework of the research six public administrations have been interviewed and a survey has been made in 70 public administrations.As the result of the research it has been observed that goals of participation in the context of strategic planning has been set in general, public servants approach to the participation has been seem sceptical and ownership of the top management to the participation process has insufficient.It is important to explain civil servants the benefits of engagement explicitly in strategic planning process in public administrations, to ensure ownership of the engagement process by civil servants including top management, to increase the capacity of the public administrations about engagement and to built networks between public administrations, to ensure transparency of the engagement process by informing stakeholders accurately and to get right people involved so as to be able to increase the quality and efficiency of the engagement in terms of strategic planning.