Presentation by Bianca Breteche SIGMA, and Keit Kasemets, Estonia on The Principles of public administration for ENP countries at a conference co-organized by SIGMA with the Jordanian Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation and the EU at the Dead Sea, Jordan 10 May 2016.
3. AjointinitiativeoftheOECDandtheEuropeanUnion,
principallyfinancedbytheEU
Reasons for developing
the Principles
• Each country has its own priorities for public
policies which change over time.
• For a government to deliver on its priorities, good
public administration is a key success factor.
• A comprehensive, holistic and cross-sectoral
framework was needed to define good public
administration and support reforms in different
countries.
• The Principles provide you with a complete
conceptual framework.
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7. AjointinitiativeoftheOECDandtheEuropeanUnion,
principallyfinancedbytheEU
Successful use of Principles so far
Design and implementation of reforms:
• Guidance for PAR and PFM strategies
• Benchmark for individual reform projects
• Guidelines for strengthening legal frameworks
(e.g. civil service laws)
Evaluation of current state and progress over time:
• Baseline measurement and assessments
Dialogue with EU, e.g.
• Formulation of sector budget support indicators
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16. AjointinitiativeoftheOECDandtheEuropeanUnion,
principallyfinancedbytheEU
Use of the Principles and European
Neighbourhood Policy
The Principles can facilitate dialogue with the EU
and other donors, helping you to:
• Steer dialogue on public administration
reforms
• Define indicators for sector budget support
• Inform discussions on sectoral programmes
• Mainstream public sector-related projects
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18. AjointinitiativeoftheOECDandtheEuropeanUnion,
principallyfinancedbytheEU
Purpose of the
Methodological Annex to the Principles
• Without knowing the starting point it is hard to
decide what needs to be changed
• Without analysing progress over time it is
impossible to say what has been achieved
• Therefore, the purpose is to provide a
methodological tool which allows countries to
evaluate their current state of affairs and progress
over time
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19. AjointinitiativeoftheOECDandtheEuropeanUnion,
principallyfinancedbytheEU
What the Methodological Annex includes
• A list of indicators that can be used to support
analysis and monitoring:
All indicators include descriptions that guide
their application
There are both qualitative and quantitative
indicators
• An overview of potential sources of information
• A methodological guide for analysis
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20. AjointinitiativeoftheOECDandtheEuropeanUnion,
principallyfinancedbytheEU Analysis of current situation and
progress over time
The Methodological Annex:
• Reflects the structure of the Principles
• Provides various indicators for all areas of the
Principles
Examples:
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2014 2015
Annual turnover of civil servants at the level
of the central administration
18% 16%
Percentage of users satisfied with public
services
42% 44%
Share of public procurement contracts
awarded by competitive procedures
89% 85%
Take it slowly!!! Smile! Show that you like it !
(don’t start with “so”!)
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear colleagues, it is a real pleasure seeing so many public administration experts from so many countries here today.
My name is Bianca BRETECHE and I have been working with you and your colleagues for almost 8 years now, starting in Georgia where I have worked a lot with the Chamber of Control and the MoF and then here in Jordan, again with the Audit Bureau and the MoF, so my professional background is easy to guess: I have been a civil servant working in a German SAI.
But for almost three years now, I am the Regional Coordinator in SIGMA for ENP South countries and I therefore have the pleasure today to present the Principles of Public Administration-A Framework for ENP countries to you.
Let me take some 15-20 minutes of your time to explain what these Principles are all about.
Before going into the presentation of the Principles itself: let me give you a little background about the reasons for developing those:
Each country has its own priorities for public policies which necessarily change over time.
I guess we all agree, that for a government to deliver on its priorities, good public administration is a key success factor no matter what policy area is being addressed.
However, I’m sure that we would get many different responses from participants here in the room to the question of what good administration actually is. How does it look, what are its characteristics? What are the different areas that need to be covered?
We therefore realised together with our colleagues from the EC, that a comprehensive, holistic and cross-sectoral framework was needed
to define good public administration and
to support reforms in different countries
Because PAR is more than only Civil Service reform and PAR is more than only adopting new laws.
The Principles for Public Administration – A Framework for ENP countries, provide you now with a complete conceptual framework for Public Administration Reform.
Slowly!!!
Why do these Principles can help all of us with our reform efforts?
First of all, because the Principles provide a Cross-sectoral Framework, as they apply to everything that government is doing:
They apply to all sector policies, because those policies only can be realised successfully by a strong and well performing PA.
By defining what PA entails, they describe what is needed to implement any policy.
With the different areas that they cover and the different perspectives that they offer, they provide the building blocks for good PA.
The second reason why the Principles will help us with your reform efforts is that this framework provides you with a holistic approach.
The use of the Principles helps you to not only make sure that the legal frameworks are in place and follow the principles that need to be taken into account in each specific area.
They also ensure, that there is a defined strategy and an ensured leadership for each area of reform that you may want to address.
The Principles will help you not to forget about the importance of adequate organisational structures that are set up to implement those laws.
The use of the Principles equally will make sure that you don’t forget to check in your reform monitoring that all this really works in practice.
Finally, the use of the Principles will help you to concentrate also on the results. For example, let’s say, a country wants to introduce internal audit as part of a larger PFM reform:
a strategy exists,
a law is in place,
internal audit units have been set-up with trained internal auditors
who deliver regularly high quality reports.
But: no-one uses those reports. The managers don’t understand them or aren’t interested.
Consequence: the reform failed to produce results.
We have shared with you 2 different documents:
first a short Brochure that we call the “Overview” and that presents briefly only the Principles and gives some examples of indicators. This is intended to provide the busy reader (like you minister) with a first impression of what the Principles are about.
2. We have then share a bigger publication that describes, for each of the Six core areas and sub-areas (that I will explain in a minute):
The key requirements, the Principles and the sub-principles. Now please bare with me ., this might sound a bit dense when you hear it he first time, but it is important:
- the key requirements summarise the principles in one sentence for each core area or sub-area
- the Principles describe each main element that has to exist in order to ensure that the key requirement is fulfilled
- the sub-principles define in more detail what is needed to fulfil the principle that they belong to
3. But the full framework of the Principles also includes a third document, which has not yet been distributed and is called the Methodological Annex.
The Methodological Annex provides and explains quantitative and qualitative indicators and necessary information sources to measure to what extent a principle is met.
The reason for not distributing this part of the framework for the conference is that we are currently in the process of revising the indicators.
My colleague Keit will present this part of the framework to you later .
The Principles for PA: A Framework for ENP Countries have just been finalised and you are the first ones to see them outside of the OECD and the EC. However, a similar framework has been successfully used by EU Enlargement countries for 2 years in different ways:
Over the past 2 years, it has proved to be a useful tool for the design and implementation of reforms:
- it has provided guidance for numerous PAR and PFM strategies and plans in EU Enlargement countries
- it has been a benchmark for individual reform projects, e.g.: Jordan uses an early version of the principles as benchmark for a specific activity in the MoSPD to measure governance performance.
In Ukraine, the Principles serve as Guidelines and benchmarks for strengthening the Civil Service Law.
2. The framework has been used successfully also as a tool for evaluation of the current state of affairs and progress over time:
- On the request of the EC, for example SIGMA has done a so called Baseline Measurement in all EU Enlargement countries
- On the request of the Moldovan prime minister an Assessment has been carried out and will be presented to the government this week.
3. The framework also has already proved to be really useful in the Dialogue with EU, e.g.
Several EU Enlargement countries have used indicators of the Methodological Annex to formulate some of the Sector Budget Support Indicators.
Let me now briefly explain what makes the Principles a Comprehensive Framework:
The framework describes the six core public management systems that make up an efficient public administration
And those are :
Policy development and co-ordination
Public service and human resource management
Accountability
Service delivery and
Public financial management
Plus as an area that brings all of the other areas together when it comes to the strategic framework of PAR
Let me start with policy development and co-ordination, which is about helping governments to make good decisions.
This area covers the co-ordination at the centre of government,
inter-ministerial co-ordination as well as
policy development that takes into account potential impacts and consults with external stakeholders
In the principles document we have divided this area into two sub-areas: one for policy planning and co-ordination and the second for policy development
The area of public services and human resource management is about people with the skills and knowledge to get things done.
This areas focusses on all aspects of HRM in the public sector, starting from the scope of the public service, covering merit based recruitment and promotions, remuneration systems, professional development, as well as integrity issues.
In the Principles, this core area is divided into two sub-areas: one is policy and legal and institutional framework for public service and the second HRM
Accountability is about an administration that allows citizens to get things done for their benefit.
In this area we are looking for a rational public administration organisation, reasonable access to public information and the possibility for administrative and legal redress in case public authorities have made erroneous decisions against individuals or companies.
Service delivery is about good, accessible public services for citizens and businesses.
This area covers good administrative procedures, equal access to public services and easy to use e-services.
The area of PFM aims to make sure that the public administration uses public money wisely.
PFM covers budgetary procedures that keep public finances on a sustainable path, proper internal control and public procurement to ensure value for money and regular oversight by an independent external audit.
In the Principles this is the largest core area that is divided into 4 subareas which are budget management, internal control and audit, public procurement and external audit
Last but not least, the area of strategic framework for public administration reform is about an administration that focuses on constantly improving its own functioning
This area describes how the government should deal with a complex area of reforms to modernise public governance – it focuses on the characteristics of a good reform plan, political and administrative co-ordination, monitoring and evaluation.
We hope that the Principles can help you in your own country to define necessary areas of reform and to define what exactly needs to be done.
To this effect it is the decision of each country how to use this framework.
We like to think of the Framework as a Restaurant Menu: you can chose from it and take what you like. This can be a full seven course meal or just and apéritif. It depensds on your countries current needs:
For example, you can chose
The Full set for designing a comprehensive PAR strategy
One core area: design a PFM strategy
One or several principles: e.g. drafting/amending a key law, civil service law, budget law, etc
One or several indicators: e.g. define indicators for PAR or PFM strategies
Any Other combination of the above
The Principles also can facilitate the dialogue with the EU and other donors to help
- Steer dialogue on public administration reforms
- Define indicators for sector budget support
- Steer dialogue on sectoral programmes
Mainstream public sector related projects
And as I said before: it has already helped your colleagues in other countries.
I have come to the end of my part of the presentation. Thank you very much for listening.
I am looking forward to continue working with you hopefully on the basis of the Principles that I have just presented.
I would like to now give the floor to my colleague, Keit to explain how the Principles can help to monitor
Progress over time and
- continuous improvement.
Keit, the floor is yours!