Semarang (1/9) – The first session of the Summer Course program of the Department of Public Administration was held on Thursday, September 1, 2022, at 19:00 GMT+7 with the theme “Ethics or the Right Thing? Corruption And Care in the Age of Good Governance. This session presented two speakers who were experts in their field. They were Sylvia Tidey, PhD (Virginia University, USA) and Gabriel Lele, PhD (Universitas Gadjah Mada). The Summer Course program of the Department of Public Administration will be held in 10 days carrying the theme Toward SDGs: Improving Digital Government In Post-Pandemic Recovery Era.

In line with the theme of this summer course program, the vice dean II, Ika Riswanti Putranti said in her speech that now we were facing many challenges, disruptions, and massive development of digital governance after the pandemic era. However, it demanded a lot of adjustment from various sectors. Thus, SDGs helped us to prepare for the next challenges that continue to develop.

Moreover, Sylvia explained more about her book called Ethics or the Right Thing? Corruption And Care in the Age of Good Governance, which also became the topic of discussion in this session. She conducted her research within 12 months in Kupang. It was between the years 2007 – 2009. In her presentation, she pointed out one of the important messages she put in the book. It was that the failures of these anti-corruption efforts were due in part to a lack of recognition of the centrality of care to the vision of a governmental good as proposed in the good governance initiative.

Besides, Gabriele in his presentation gave his comments on Sylvia’s book. He mentioned some merits of the book. It was that the book gave a critical perspective and description of corruption and good governance both ontologically and axiologically. According to him, the book also described rationality/individualism vs relationality/communitarianism, how corruption was globally framed (governmentality) but locally strategized, and how it supplemented the “grand research” trend with a more nuanced and rich description.