Administration

Administration may refer to:

Public administration

Public administration is the implementation of government policy and also an academic discipline that studies this implementation and prepares civil servants for working in the public service. As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its "fundamental goal... is to advance management and policies so that government can function." Some of the various definitions which have been offered for the term are: "the management of public programs"; the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day"; and "the study of government decision making, the analysis of the policies themselves, the various inputs that have produced them, and the inputs necessary to produce alternative policies."

Public administration is "centrally concerned with the organization of government policies and programmes as well as the behavior of officials (usually non-elected) formally responsible for their conduct" Many unelected public servants can be considered to be public administrators, including heads of city, county, regional, state and federal departments such as municipal budget directors, human resources (H.R.) administrators, city managers, census managers, state mental health directors, and cabinet secretaries. Public administrators are public servants working in public departments and agencies, at all levels of government.

Norwegian Public Roads Administration

The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (Norwegian: Statens vegvesen) is a Norwegian government agency responsible for the state and county public roads in the country. This includes planning, construction and operation of the state and county road networks, driver training and licensing, vehicle inspection and subsidies to car ferries.

The agency is led by the Directorate of Public Roads (Vegdirektoratet) that is subordinate to the Ministry of Transport and Communications. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration is divided into five regions and thirty districts, which are subordinate to the directorate. The directorate is based in Oslo.

The Norwegian Public Roads Administration is one of the largest government agencies of Norway in terms of budget. In matters concerning state roads the agency is subordinate to the ministry and in matters concerning county roads subordinate to the county administration.

History

Originally, the Ministry of Justice had the responsibility for public roads. In 1846, Prime Minister Frederik Stang created the position of Roads Assistant in the Ministry of the Interior. The Roads Assistant headed a department for roads engineering. Captain (Engineer) H.K. Finne became the first Roads Assistant. The Directorate of Public Roads was established in 1864, and Chr. W. Berg became the first Director of Public Roads. From 1885 to 1944, the Directorate was subordinate to the Ministry of Labour, and has since been subordinate to the Ministry of Transport.

Federal Highway Administration

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is a division of the United States Department of Transportation that specializes in highway transportation. The agency's major activities are grouped into two "programs," the Federal-aid Highway Program and the Federal Lands Highway Program. Its role had previously been performed by the Office of Road Inquiry, Office of Public Roads and the Bureau of Public Roads.

History

Background

The organization has several predecessor organizations and a complicated history.

The Office of Road Inquiry (ORI) was founded in 1893. In 1905 that organization's name was changed to the Office of Public Roads (OPR) which became a division of the United States Department of Agriculture. The name was changed again to the Bureau of Public Roads in 1915 and to the Public Roads Administration (PRA) in 1939. It was then shifted to the Federal Works Agency which was abolished in 1949 when its name reverted to Bureau of Public Roads under the Department of Commerce.

Common sense

Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things, which is shared by ("common to") nearly all people and can reasonably be expected of nearly all people without any need for debate.

The everyday understanding of what common sense is derived from philosophical discussion, involving several European languages. Related terms in other languages include Latin sensus communis, Greek κοινὴ αἲσθησις (koinē aísthēsis), and French bon sens, but these are not straightforward translations in all contexts. Similarly in English, there are different shades of meaning, implying more or less education and wisdom: "good sense" is sometimes seen as equivalent to "common sense", and sometimes not.

"Common sense" has at least two specifically philosophical meanings. One is a capability of the animal soul (Greek psukhē) proposed by Aristotle, which enables different individual senses to collectively perceive the characteristics of physical things such as movement and size, which all physical things have in different combinations, allowing people and other animals to distinguish and identify physical things. This common sense is distinct from basic sensory perception and from human rational thinking, but cooperates with both. The second special use of the term is Roman-influenced and is used for the natural human sensitivity for other humans and the community. Just like the everyday meaning, both of these refer to a type of basic awareness and ability to judge which most people are expected to share naturally, even if they can not explain why.