Track 2 took on the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 16 and how its tenets of transparency, accountability, and participation are essential to building trust in governance in countries around the world. The panel on Accountability, which was chaired by University of Maryland Dean Robert Orr and included former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley and Harvard Kennedy School Dean Doug Elmendorf, talked about how you teach Accountability in the classroom. O'Malley said students are most motivated to study when they see accountability and performance as essential parts of solving big problems and getting things done. He also advised that accountability be taught not in terms of bringing out the whip to punish bad performers, but as a means to raise up leaders and employees by pinpointing good and great performers.   Elmendorf said he teaches accountability as a responsibility, but also a power: in communicating your integrity and quality to Congress, to your expert peers, and to the public, you also gain a power-a power to influence policy deliberations with evidence, and to speak to a broader world about things that matter. 

The Panel on Participation, chaired by the University of New Orleans professor Robert Montjoy, focused on elections as an important means of encouraging citizen participation and engagement with governance around the world.  Harvard Kennedy School's Pippa Norris argued for more attention to educating students for election administration since there has been a significant rise globally in flawed and failed elections that call into question the foundations of governance and trust in government for those populations. It has become a problem in both developing countries and established democracies. After giving specific examples of challenges to good election administration in countries like Indonesia (where officials' use of cheap paper destroyed billions of Rupiah in investment in optical scanning in a recent election), Chad Vickery from IFES noted that the US does not fare particularly well in international comparisons of electrical integrity. He traced the roots of that to gerrymandered voting districts and states not talking to each other about outdated, deceased, or relocated voters. He cited a unique international statistic that whereas 85% of election administration experts outside the US were negative about election processes lacking national oversight or control of election processes, 64% of American election administrators ranked that highly!  The Humphrey School's Doug Chapin argued that Election Administration can be the tip of the spear of public administration education, arguing that voting is the only face to face with government that many citizens encounter. The better their voting experience, therefore, the more trust and engagement in government they may have overall. Panelists felt that election administration, and more broadly, participatory processes, should be increasingly appealing to public affairs students. It used to be that only "politicos" and students interested narrowly in government administrative processes found election administration interesting. Now, it is a home for students interested in design, democracy, the law, government reform, disability rights, data science, and the civil rights of under-represented groups. 

Comparative Perspectives on Trust and Institutional Capacity from the Global South: Implications for Public Affairs Education

The panelists represented different parts of the Global South -- Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh Colombia. They compared and contrasted each region's challenge of building institutional capacity, reducing corruption, increasing accountability and restoring public trust. The panelists eloquently offered their historical and present-day insights into how distrust and lack of capacity often manifest in the forms of violence, corruption, and instability. The extremely bright and ambitious panelists spoke on challenges facing their respective countries. Sebastián Líppez-De Castro, an assistant professor of Political Science at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, and a PhD student of Community and Public Affairs at Binghamton University, SUNY; Abdul Waheed Ahmad, an Afghan Fulbright scholar at the State University of New York in Binghamton; Chaouki Ouadah, an Algerian activist, Fulbright scholar, UN intern, and the Algerian civil society representative at the UN International Human Rights Summit; and, Md. Shahriar Islam, currently pursuing a PhD in the College of Community and Public Affairs at Binghamton University and former professor in the Department of Public Administration at University Dhaka and the University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh.  Access their full presentation and bios in the conference app. 

The panelists presenting at the session title "Global Pandemics and Crisis Management in the 2018 NASPAA-Batten Simulation Competition -and the MPA/MPP Curriculum" shared with us their stories and experiences dealing with public health emergencies such as the Ebola and Zika epidemics -- keeping audience members at the edge of their seats. During this thought-provoking session, panelists addressed key questions that student participants should consider during the 2018 NASPAA-Batten Simulation Competition:

• How should a government strengthen and sustain its core public health capacities?
• What counts as a global health security concern?
• How should public policy and public health officials work together to mitigate the potentially devastating impacts of a global health crisis?