The Director of the Crawford School of Public Policy, Professor Janine O'Flynn, was invited by the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) to deliver the 2025 Donald C. Stone Lecture at their annual conference in Washington, DC late last month.

In addition to her role as Director of the Crawford School, Professor O'Flynn is a public administration scholar whose most recent book is Pathways to Positive Public Administration: The International Experience (open access), published in 2024.

In her lecture, ‘Human(e) Government: Charting a Positive Path in a Hostile World’, Professor O'Flynn argues that in a time of increasing negativity towards the public sector globally, we need to recalibrate our focus on how governments create public wealth and value.

Drawing lessons from "how and when government gets it right", she believes, is key to developing a more holistic assessment of public administration that can help counter the hostility that has been directed against the public sector in many countries across the world.

Weaving together a conception of public administration comprised of "positivity, complexity, humility and empathy", Professor O'Flynn argues, will help us "navigate a hostile world and chart a course forward towards a more human and humane public administration."

"Negativity pervades public service discourse, psychological biases, political opportunism, and relentless negative media fuel this", she says.

"We are much better at finding faults and assigning blame than we are at actually recognizing success, understanding its underlying factors and learning from it. Positive public administration, or PPA, offers a counterbalance to that negativity bias", O'Flynn explains.

Established in 1995, the Stone Lecture is one of ASPA's annual conference's most celebrated sessions. It honours the legacy of ASPA's charter member and past president, who served as the deputy budget director of the United States, and played an integral role in developing the Marshall Plan following World War II.