Vietnam is in the process of accelerating administrative reform and extensively integrating into the world economy. For successful integration, in addition to political determination, Vietnam needs to build up an effective governance model by itself. Public administration and public management are both science and art of governance. In many documents across countries, public administration, public management, national administration or state administrative governance are identical in many cases and used interchangeably. Therefore, in a general understanding, public administration is an institution that exercises executive power, brings policies and laws to daily life. In a broad sense, public administration is also understood as the administration of a country. Administration is a general concept, including various elements such as the institutional system; law; administrative procedures; functions, tasks, organizational structure, and operating mechanism of the state administrative apparatus at all levels; the contingent of cadres and civil servants; financial resources and physical and technical conditions to ensure effective public service performance.

A developed administration must coordinate and harmonize individual aspirations with the interests of the community and the country towards the goals of a democratic society. According to this approach, public administration is considered as public management or a model of new public management. The development administration must coordinate and harmonize individual aspirations with the interests of the community, the country towards the goals of a democratic society. It is the administration, supervision, and management of various subjects in the society in order to better serve the legitimate needs of citizens. Therefore, public management is a new approach to traditional public administration, aiming to reform the quality of the state governance towards a more dynamic and flexible administration.

In the process of socio-economic development, Ho Chi Minh City has always been a major center of economy, culture, education, training, science, and technology. However, Ho Chi Minh City still has to deal with many challenges. One of them is the relatively low score of the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) of HCM City compared with other provinces across the country (47/63 provinces) (PAPI is a policy monitoring tool that reflects citizen experiences with the performance of central to local governments in governance, public administration and public service delivery). The contingent of cadres and civil servants is the person who directly formulates and implements the policies and plans of the public agency as well as who conducts the communication between the state agencies with each other and between businesses and citizens. As a result, the capacity of policy formulation, policy implementation, and supervision of cadres and civil servants is an important factor affecting the effectiveness of public governance, even deciding the success or failure of the organizations’ policy. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to training and fostering the contingent of cadres and civil servants on working capacity, professional skills, modern governance knowledge, and a solid knowledge base, which are ready for changes in the process of international integration and the spirit of responsibility and service. This is a part of the overall program of the state administrative reform.

Ho Chi Minh City is the economic locomotive of the country, with nearly 320 administrative units (wards, communes, and towns) and many departments; however, compared with other cities in Asia as a worth living place and a movement towards to a smart city, Ho Chi Minh City has to invest more heavily in fostering public administrative governance capacity for the contingent of cadres and civil servants.

The Master of Public Administration training program is the only program designed to be taught in Vietnamese at the International University to meet the training requirements for the grassroots level staff in Ho Chi Minh City in terms of economic and social governance capacity, capacity to formulate and implement policies, leadership capacity, and solid political bravery. Through this program, they are able to undertake and work well in leadership positions in the public sector and state governance, contributing to improve the PAPI of Ho Chi Minh City at the regional level. In particular, the target subject of the program is the contingent of cadres and civil servants who are doing the governance tasks not only at the district and department level, but also extended to the commune and ward level. In addition, the program also expands to people working in businesses of all economic sectors and non-governmental organizations who want to improve their understanding of the field of public administration and its application in their current job. The training program is designed to help students:

• To attain solid knowledge of modern public management, and know how to apply knowledge of economics, finance, communication, scientific research methods, and so on to the formulation and implementation of policies of the Party and State.

• To possess leadership skills and human resource management skills in the public sector.

• To gain strategic vision and knowledge in effectively formulating and implementing public policy.

• To understand the psychology of the citizens, be able to carry out communication programs in accordance with the state policy guidelines and the citizens’ expectation, as well as to have the ability to handle crises.

• To be able to identify and evaluate ethical issues at work and in related fields. 

• To be good at communication skills and able to read and understand English in the working and social environment.

• To have the opportunity for experiencing the training program of the public administration in foreign countries.

• To have the opportunity to participate in the international conferences in order to improve the ability in the scientific research and publication in the field of public administration of Vietnam to the world.

• To attain soft skills such as teamwork, presentation, communication and public speaking.