The Middle East and North Africa group for Public Administration Research “MENAPAR” Chose the Kingdom of Bahrain to be its permanent residence, this took place when the group decided to form its Board of Directors, chaired by the Kingdom of Bahrain and the membership of the State of Kuwait, represented by the Arab Institute for Planning (AIP), the State of Palestine represented by the General Personnel Council (GPC), the Moroccan Kingdom represented by the National School of Administration (NSA), the Republic of Tunisia represented by the Arab Institute for Governance (AIG), and the Lebanese Republic, represented by the Basil Flayhan Institute for Public Administration. This was revealed by the head of the Civil Service Bureau (CSB) Ahmed Al-Zayed during chairing BIPA’s board of directors meeting, which was held recently at the Institute's headquarters in Seef district.
The meeting began by Ahmad Al-Zayed, head of CSB, praising BIPA’s experience in the organization of conferences through recently organizing the International Conference on Public Administration, which is considered one of the largest international conferences in this area, whereas this experience has contributed in reducing expenditures on conferences through managing without companies’ services that work in the field of organizing conferences and rely solely on BIPA’s staff in running and organizing this conference, Mr. Al-Zayed also praised BIPA’s tendency to instill a culture of research within its training programs.
During the meeting, the Board discussed also a number of important issues, mainly the role and objectives of the MENAPAR group in building research agenda that contributes into serving government policy-making in the Middle East and North Africa countries, in addition to the publication of a scientific journal specialized in the field of public administration, the board also discussed the inclusion of the proposed trainers list to provide a number of leadership and specialized programs, as well as endorsing the final communiqué for 2013.
On a related matter, the Board of Directors discussed during the meeting, the latest developments in the ISO 9001 project, which its first phase has already been completed and its findings were presented to the senior management, which was represented into focusing on spreading the culture of quality, strengthen the mechanism for communicating with employees and activating Institute’s functions with respect to consultations and research, furthermore; currently the work is ongoing to complete the second phase of the project, as meetings were held with all departments of the Institute to review and tot up services (where the institute is offering 90 different services) in coordination with the CSB to begin the process of documenting them and writing a quality manual.
It is worth mentioning that BIPA has adopted a revival publication of the scientific journal (IRAS), which is considered the largest scientific journal specializing in public administration and affiliated to (IIAS) organization, where the publishing of the Arabic version of the journal has stopped many years ago, and the publishing headquarters and the supervision will be carried out by BIPA, in cooperation with some Arab countries and the (IIAS) organization, whereas this journal will help in the building of the civil service on a scientific and international basis through scientific research-oriented and connected with the culture of the Arab countries, which is considered an add-on to the achievements of the Institute and bringing it into view at the forefront of the international and global institutions in the field of public administration.