Watkins Completes Second Fulbright Specialist Assignment
For the second time in five years, Public Service Associate Malik R. Watkins won a Fulbright Specialist appointment that extends his work in the Institute's Governmental Services and Research Division.
Watkins collaborated with officials in the Central American municipality of Panama City to draft an efficient service-delivery blueprint during a four-week assignment. The capital city is taking over public services once provided by the Panamanian federal government, and Watkins's role as a visiting Fulbright Specialist was to help create a plan to guide the development of a prototype geographic information system to support service delivery.
"The central government of Panama essentially was providing all the services to the cities of Panama," said Watkins. "The central government cannot deal with these responsibilities like the local governments can."
Improved municipal services are a critical component for dealing with an influx of job-seekers who have flooded the area, hoping to secure work on a Panama Canal expansion.
Watkins spent much of September and part of October assisting municipal officials, his second overseas assignment as a Fulbright Specialist. In 2007, Watkins traveled to West Africa to work on a Fulbright project with the Liberia Institute of Public Administration.
The Fulbright Specialist Program, administered for the U.S. State Department by the nonprofit Council for International Exchange of Scholars, promotes partnerships between U.S. experts and academics at host institutions overseas. Selected specialists spend two to six weeks overseas, collaborating on development-related projects with local faculty and technicians.
Watkins' assignment in Panama was to help develop a strategic action plan for a Territorial Planning and Management System that decentralizes the functions of public administration. The project is designed to promote sustainable development in Panama City by strengthening municipal institutions.
At the Vinson Institute, Watkins provides assistance and research to state and local governments in the areas of program development and evaluation, organization and operations, and project management.
Assisting Panama City leaders not only is part of the Institute's mission of providing technical assistance to local governments, but it offers a sense of accomplishment as well.
"It's really good to feel that you can do something that matters," Watkins said.
