Public Administration and Civil Service Reform UNDP Cambodia. Case Study - Essay Example

? al Affiliation) PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REFORM Public administration reform has become one of the key issues in public management. Governments everywhere have realized that in order to make public services more efficient, reform is inevitable. In this regard, most governments are hell-bent on integrating innovation and reform in public administration so as to minimize wastage, inefficiency, and excessive bureaucracy. Most public managers profess to an attraction to good managerial performance as well as good government performance. However, if their actual conduct is examined, it will become clear that there are two opposing and distinct perspectives on public reform administration reform. Crusading and free-spirited managers are always searching for better methods, promising designs, new ideas, and innovations. They embrace, and believe in novelty. They assess what others are doing elsewhere and identify what they can adapt or copy, and are ready to take risks just to improve performance. They are so eager for change that they often fall victim to the gimmicks and fads that are often witnessed in public management without reason or rhyme. On the other hand, reactionary managers exhibit too much caution and rarely show willingness to attempt anything new. This paper will discuss the factors that hinder or facilitate public administration reform by comparing two programmes of public service reform and looking at the lessons learned from those programmes in terms of the obstacles and opportunities involved in public administration reform. Key words Public administration reform, public management, public service 1. Case Study on Public Administration and Civil Service Reform UNDP Cambodia In 1993, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) embarked on a program to revitalize public service management as well as improve good governance and create an environment in which peace, justice, and development can thrive. Since 1994, UNDP Cambodia has been an active supporter of public administration reform (Bowman & West 2007, pg. 16). The organization decided to start supporting Cambodia’s efforts in 1995, and cooperated with the government in making its vision possible. The RGC had instituted an initiative referred to as the National Program for Administrative Reform (NPAR), which would be the foundation upon which the whole public administration reform program would be built. UNDP Cambodia decided to directly support the NPAR, and offered help to the Council of Administrative Reform (CAR) which was aimed at: a) Strengthening the capability of the council’s secretariat in order to improve the effectiveness of national consensus building, strategic planning, donor co-ordination, policy development, and how the NPAR is managed strategically. b) Facilitating the enforcement of priority reform programs and sub-programs, and also the creation of implementation plans. c) Supporting the creation and organization of a Priority Mission Group (PMG) plan so as to improve the efficiency in public service delivery in vital areas of government administration, and also to accelerate reforms. UNDP’s assistance in public administrative reform targets not only decentralized reform enforcement, but also wholesome strategic reform organization. It identified the need to integrate both aspects more fluidly, and also learned some important lessons in the process of supporting Cambodia in its quest to improve public service. Overall, although this project was originally meant to reflect UNDP’s expertise in public administrative reforms, other donors were unwilling to cooperate (Heeks 2002, pg. 25). In addition to this, poor coordination in comparison with other reform areas resulted in weak connections to other activities, disorganized activities, and a loss of focus. Lessons Learned Strategic constituency development is vital to acquire support for and run complex systems modification processes The public administration reform program’s original design failed to recognize the CAR as the organizer of a consensus system that tasks those who have to initiate change and face the consequences with the responsibility of designing change. In addition to this, it did not support the display of a vision of Cambodian administration as the basis of the administrative reform, and also showed a poor understanding of how to manage complex organizational change and the necessity for a strategic perspective of constituency development (Nunberg 2000, pg. 47). As a result, CAR continues to have a precarious function as an inter-ministerial entity with little policy directive abilities and little success in creating a strategic public administration reform management policy. In contrast, the Cambodia Area Rehabilitation and Regeneration program was based on a well-designed participatory approach to implementation of local projects that linked identified concerns with local needs, support, and encouraged local ownership, and provided a platform for coordination and development planning. This approach offered a stable link between implementation and concept development (Pollitt & Bouckaert 2000, pg. 72). Apart from this, these participatory processes were crucial in the reconciliation process by encouraging conflicting communities to identify concerns and solutions, discuss development problems, and unite in implementing projects so as to rebuild mutual trust and confidence damaged by the long history of violence and conflict in Cambodia’s society. The extension of activities meant to enhance capacity development to other local stakeholders like NGOs was also instrumental in improving local capacity and building partnerships and a constituency that are crucial in the implementation of the comprehensive and complex programmes. Public administration reform needs to be flexibly connected to the broader/wider reform process The public administration reform (PAR) project dealt with a series of sensitive cost-cutting and administrative efficiency-improving reform tasks. Although each of these tasks was required to cement the reform, dealing with them separately and in a manner unrelated to the bigger responsibility of governance mechanism reform has cause a lack of coherence as well as confusion. In addition to this, efficiency-enhancement in public sector management calls for positioning within a wider vision and account of general governance reform. In the same vein, flexibility may have been viewed as fundamental to responding to a mutating situation, but it also caused a mismatch between the reform agenda and the project intervention due to a lack of progressively and coherently creating working plans (DiIulio 1994, pg. 34). To ensure that activities and linkages are organized properly, it is crucial that reforms are driven by national leadership and country-driven. Flexibility and implementation allows the project to proceed in a timely and decisive way. Considering the process-oriented and experimental nature of the project, a detailed and rigid plan would have been very restrictive, blocking the core operational mechanism of constantly adapting to and revising the challenges and issues that emerge. At the same time, UNDP Cambodia helped develop and implement simple procedures and systems for accounting and contracting/bidding that enhanced accountability and transparency among several partners, and also for the flow of funds. Despite this, a dedicated and developed constituency is required for that kind of flexibility to play a crucial role in the success of the approach. In spite of the high risks linked to the program both in the volatile economic and political atmosphere within which it was and is enforced and its design, the key donors dominated by UNDP, SIDA and DFID (which came later) were ready to take risks and adopted a long-term approach by providing technical support and significant contributions (Peters 2003, pg. 15). The fostering of broad-based partnerships was also instrumental in improving the complementary of programs at the local level, building support, and balancing the project activities by mobilizing resources. This offers a strong contrast to the case study which will be looked at later where the lack of participation by donors led to massive underfunding and eventually to different donor funded projects supporting bits and pieces of the PAR and a general lack of coherence between different donor activities. PAR is a political and inherently long-term process that should be informed and guided by careful piloting. PAR takes time. In addition to this, strategic reform planning results are not easily visible in comparison with reforms that are specific to certain sectors and that are carried out in line departments (Ongaro 2009, pg. 36). At the same time, general strategic reform is naturally political and therefore calls for careful timing, negotiation, coordination, planning, and sequencing in relation to other reform processes because results in one sector usually include appropriate prerequisites for other sectors. This does not mean that addressing all problems at a go but leaving room for a generally staggered approach that is negotiated and discretely monitored along the way. In this respect, it is also crucial that donor collaboration is facilitated in order to provide consistent guidance and support to the government. In contrast to the top-down approach to strategic reform planning, a step-by-step approach combined with a firm implementation management framework (e.g. the SEILA Task Force Secretariat) has proven effective and successful in pioneering and showing successful ideas that have informed the development of policy and supported effective and successful industrialization (Manning & Parison 2004, pg. 61). For this particular PAR project, weak relations to other reform initiatives was partially caused by a lack of dedication in project management due to several factors which include inexperience, inadequate technical capacity and competence among the staff at the CAR secretariat to perform expected duties as effective initiators of a change process. Apart from this, Project Implementation Units are not a common panacea and should therefore be carefully examined in relation to obstacles and exit strategies so as to facilitate proper institutionalization of reforms. Decentralization and PAR should be organized so as to reinforce each other. There is a need for a thorough integration of support to decentralization and PAR so as to avoid institutionalizing a separation which may not bring out the complexity of civil service and public administrative reform and unintentionally compound already existing political cracks in the government. This is also a vital lesson on the disadvantages of the general development strategy employed by some donors, UNDP included, which in the past has centered on sensitive projects that are separated from each other, as opposed to the complex and inherently political areas like public administrative and civil service reform (Kickert 1997, pg. 22). In short, regardless of its shortcomings, the PAR programme has supported the development of the CAR Secretariat’s capacity so as to better coordinate and direct its implementation. To further this, a potential key outcome with possible broader interest in other areas has been the creation of the PMG concept. Although the PMG approach has not been trialed and operationalized by the government, it has the potential, if well managed and supported by government, for correcting the distortions arising from varying donor practices concerning salary supplements, by creating a government supported system for the extent of salary allowances while simultaneously linking it to performance. At the same time, the PMG programme should be integrated into a civil service salary reform initiative that comprehensively addresses the serious issue of salary or else it will remain an ineffective management tool and stop gap measure (Quah 2010, pg. 20). 2. Public Sector Innovation: Case Study on Tools for modernizing the Romanian Public Administration Romania’s Central Unit for Public Administration Reform (CUPAR), established in 2002, is tasked with initiating, coordinating, managing public administration reforms. On a broader perspective, the process of introducing performance and strategic management tools in Romania has relied on contextual factors like willingness to embrace reform and the politico-administrative culture, the administrative capacity of the local and central institutions, and also the broader political system (Frederickson & Johnston 1999, pg. 51). An aspect that is not always discussed in detail but, but which the literature in the area of public reform finds crucial in influencing the outcomes of New Public Management (NPM) reforms, is the degree of corruption as an element of the culture in which such processes and procedures are implemented. As recommended in an analysis of the effects of over 500 NPM programmes implemented in most EU Member States, it is wiser to address the corruption culture first prior to fully implementing NPM reforms. Despite this, other scholars have noted that incorporating information on quality and performance of public services into public decision-making using such management tools can facilitate the embedding of more constructive approaches to accountability and transparency in the public sector and hence support initiatives for combating corruption. It can also offer the means for changing to more productivity and efficiency in the public sector, where identification and solution of problems comes first, as companies, and not just individuals, are held accountable for their actions (Shafritz & Hyde 1992, pg. 46). CUPAR’s initiatives, even in several other programmes, have faced resistance from certain quarters with regard to change at the local level. In order to address this resistance, CUPAR has tried to engage local agencies as much as possible in developing by themselves the change process, and has placed strong emphasis on providing good explanations of the advantages of the new tools (Bowman, & Menzel 1998, pg. 27). Stakeholders also said that there is a higher probability of success if the process is initiated by local political leaders who convince their staff to participate in the modernization process. In spite of this, the leaders should also ensure that their role remains at the target-setting and policy level. That is, to navigate, but not to drive, and allow public officials to focus on the actual implementation. In practice, this process has sometimes been driven from the bottom up by local public officials, who were the ones who convinced the leaders to participate. Overall, change has therefore occurred progressively at the local level (Shields & Evans 1998, pg. 85). Comprehending the advantages of the new management tools is a vital factor for the public service to embrace the necessity of performance management, because these kinds of tools can greatly improve the government’s attitude towards citizens, so long as results are made more transparent. A number of stakeholders recognized the influence of the Modernizers’ Network as a facilitator in enhancing innovative activities and sharing the experiences resulting from modernization (Donahue & Nye 2003, pg. 45). The network’s role could be improved further as a center for promoting and collecting the evident advantages transforming public agencies and for driving this innovation process ahead. It can also become more important in the quest to further cultivate critical mass for enhancing innovation and reform in local administration. During the early phases of the process, most local stakeholders acknowledged the challenges in choosing the strategic programmes and the most appropriate performance indicators for their companies. This is understandable, considering that public agencies operate in a political atmosphere and need to satisfy different stakeholder demands (Jones, Schedler & Mussari 2004, pg. 30). There is a need for more initiatives to integrate a more extensive follow-up process as part of the programme. In general, public administration reform requires intensive guidance and constant updating. Ideally, experts should provide guidance and advice at least 3 to 4 times annually at the initial stage in order to facilitate the implementation process and sharpen/perfect the development of the management system. Higher levels of institutions should engage in the process of strategy building. Past experiences show that the active participation of staff in higher-level posts (in this case the Public Administrator) is crucial to ensuring the convincing of the whole body of public servants and to getting results. One suggestion is that it is sensible to clearly pinpoint the degree of commitment expected from political leaders or high-level administrators when choosing participants in programmes that involve bringing significant change to the status quo (Schedler & Proeller 2007, pg. 68). There is some sort of trade-off between strict short-term objectives and long-term goals. Although the move to strategic management and performance management calls for local administrations to invest, it is good to highlight the slow as well as quick wins that can strengthen the decision to participate in such a process. It is however vital to recognize that strategic management tools are most meaningful for realizing long-term objectives of public administration and do not always guarantee short-term goals. References Bowman, J. S., & Menzel, D. C. 1998, Teaching ethics and values in public administration programs innovations, strategies, and issues, State University of New York Press, Albany, NY. Bowman, J. S., & West, J. P. 2007, American public service: radical reform and the merit System, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. DiIulio, J. J. 1994, Deregulating the public service: can government be improved?, Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. Donahue, J. D., & Nye, J. S. 2003, For the people can we fix public service?, Visions of Governance in the 21st Century, Cambridge, Mass. Frederickson, H. G., & Johnston, J. M. 1999, Public management reform and innovation research, theory, and application, University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Ala. 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