Lech Marcinkowski, dilemmas senior civil service BiH, SIGMA, 24 and 25 June 2021
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Presentation by Lech Marcinkowski on managerial accountability at the webinar organised by SIGMA for its working partner Bosnia and Herzegovina on 24-25 June 2021. The objective of this workshop is to increase the awareness of what should be the role of the senior civil servants, and to exchange views on the way forward of reforms.
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Lech Marcinkowski, dilemmas senior civil service BiH, SIGMA, 24 and 25 June 2021
- 1. © OECD Discussing selected dilemmas related to senior civil service in BiH Managerial Accountability Lech Marcinkowski, SIGMA 24 June 2021
- 2. Terminology: MA • Not a well recognised term • Linguistic problems • No formal definition • Missing element in PAR/PFM implementation • Reforms from the perspective of managers • Changing mind-set of managers and their superiors 1
- 3. Chapter 32 • The acquis under this chapter relates to the adoption internationally recognised frameworks and standards, as well as EU good practice, on public internal financial control (PIFC), based upon the principle of decentralised managerial accountability. • Putting MA in the PFM basket is a mistake. • FMC – PIFC – PIC – IC – … • None of these ideas are (primarily) about financial issues 2
- 4. Why is MA important? “Without managerial accountability, starting with senior managers, Western Balkan governments will fail to achieve the reforms required for European Union accession.” SIGMA Paper 58, Executive summary It is not about meeting Chapter 32 requirements. MA is about achieving results, about getting things done… MANAGEMENT 3
- 6. Emphasis on results Managers are held accountable for results • by assigning them responsibility, • accompanied by delegated authority for decision making, • and the autonomy and resources necessary to achieve the expected results. 5
- 7. Managers • Who are the managers and what do they need to deliver results? • Assigned responsibility • Delegated authority • Some autonomy (“strategic space”) 6
- 8. Competent managers • Selected in competitive and merit-based process • Would you delegate authority to someone not-competent? • Or someone you don’t trust? • neutral professionalism vs. political responsiveness 7
- 11. Disbalance: autonomy without control Extensive managerial autonomy Limited accountability and control mechanisms 10
- 12. Autonomy and authority balanced with accountability 11 Considerable managerial authority and autonomy Adequate accountability and control mechanisms
- 13. MA enabling environment • a clear organisational structure and mandate for each department; • the use of performance targets and an effective system of performance reporting; • effective internal decision-making processes and reporting lines; • managers’ involvement in budget planning and execution, in HR management and procurement processes; • the availability of information, … = conditions for good management 12
- 14. MA is a cross-cutting issue, as barriers are in many areas 13 Policy development and co-ordination Civil service and human resource management Accountability Public financial management Legend for the links to the Principles of Public Administration: Reporting on government and institutional objectives Public procurement Budget execution Budget formulation Termination and dismissal, reallocation Staff appraisals and objectives; salaries and promotions Staff planning and recruitment Internal control systems Accountability lines: ministries- agencies Use of objectives in planning of work Financial reporting Clarity of roles and objectives Managing resources Reporting Delegation of decision-making authority Clarity of roles and responsibilities
- 15. Clarity of roles and responsibilities • The scope of managers’ work areas is clear although changes occur too often in some cases • The roles of each key public sector management position are not clear Split between the political and civil service managerial levels needs to be distinct Managerial responsibilities are not clearly given to the senior managers • Accountability lines are blurred in ministries which do not have a clear top civil servant 14
- 16. Use of objectives • The system of government and organisational planning needs to be consolidated and become much leaner • Too many different objectives at various levels, many not measurable • Need to have minimum requirements in place for objectives and indicators for the key planning documents • Objectives, not individual tasks, should be the centre of dialogue between the political leaders and civil service managers 15
- 17. Managing people • Political leaders need to remove themselves from appointment and dismissal decisions of medium level management and below Appointment and dismissal decisions should be done by supervising managers Professional support from HRM units and transparency within the government needed • Focus more on staff objectives and performance dialogue Less emphasis on appraisal and grading • Organisations can benefit from flexibility with setting salaries and bonuses Within the budget and ensuring transparency 16
- 18. Managing finances • All managers need to know their budgets and the budgets of the areas they are accountable for • More responsibility for line managers in budget execution Success or failure in public procurement should be of direct concern for the line managers • Finance departments need to change from book- keeping to financial management advisory service for the management Regular financial information to be provided for the line managers 17
- 19. Measuring MA • Difficult to measure “quality of management” • Enabling environment can be measured • Proxy indicator is used for the assessment purposes Delegation – within ministries Between ministries and subordinated bodies • Do not identify delegation of tasks with managerial accountability 18
- 20. Delegation was not common in 2017 19 Public financial management
- 21. Delegation is not common in 2021 20 Public financial management Number of instances in 40 ministries questioned – blue indicates YES. (*Preliminary data, subject to change)
- 22. What can be done to improve? • Continue with the reforms planned for PAR and PFM but… Analyse the planned changes from the angle of managers’ being and feeling accountable for delivering results Put actual responsibility and authority to the hands of senior line managers Remove political leadership from operational management • Strengthen focus on the managers in the public sector, professional senior civil service • Carry out your own analysis of barriers to managerial accountability 21
- 24. More information can be found at: www.sigmaweb.org http://sigmaweb.org/publications/Managerial-accountability-in-the- Western-Balkans-SIGMA-Paper-58-November-2018.pdf Lech.Marcinkowski@oecd.org 23
Editor's Notes
- This comes from 2017 assessment.
- An objective of managerial accountability is to create an environment where the skills and knowledge of managers at all levels can contribute to improvements in the functioning of their organisations and the delivery of results for citizens.
- As well as a favourable administrative tradition and organisational culture, competent managers are a further prerequisite for improving managerial accountability. For this, the process for recruiting senior civil servants needs to be competitive and merit-based. Competitions for the top public sector jobs should be genuinely competitive and they should attract potentially strong managers, people who want to make a difference and accept accountability for their area of work. When factors such as seniority or technical knowledge, rather than merit, determine promotion to managerial positions, newly appointed managers may feel insecure and thus reluctant to use their managerial capacities even if their strategic space is enlarged. Unless institution heads (in many cases the political leaders) are personally convinced that managers subordinate to them are sufficiently competent to exercise these powers properly, they will remain unwilling to delegate – after all, accountability ultimately rests with them. At the same time the more authority and autonomy the lower level managers are given, the more their level of competence will influence the achievement of government policy goals and, ultimately, trust in the government. There is plenty of evidence showing that the presence of competent and experienced managers in senior positions is associated with greater organisational performance and lower levels of corruption, compared with organisations where senior positions are filled by political appointees selected on the basis of partisan loyalty. Since senior civil service positions function at the junction of the civil service and political spheres, one of the biggest challenges in building a professional senior civil service is maintaining the balance between political responsiveness38 and trust on the one hand, and neutral professionalism on the other. It means that the public sector managers are committed to the professional implementation of the sitting government’s policies, which express the preferences of the electorate. The political responsiveness of the senior civil service is needed for a functioning and trusting relationship between ministers and senior administrative managers. The more trust politicians have and the more they believe in the professionalism, skills and abilities of managers, the more willing they are to share their authority with them.
- lack of delegation of decision-making powers in most of the ministries - minister formally approves all decisions, even on minor technical issues such as low-value contracts or approving annual leaves. There is still strong tradition of all decision-making powers concentrated in the hands of the minister. Centralised management of ministries is another common feature of the BiH administration at all levels, related to both the institutional architecture of governments and the internal management of ministries. The dominant form of administrative body is an administration (or authority) within a ministry with a very narrow scope of managerial autonomy. Legislation governing the internal organisation of ministries does not provide clear grounds for delegation of decision making to senior civil servants, so full responsibilities and powers relating to management of the institution are in the hands of the minister. Hence, the vast majority of decisions of a technical nature relating to human resource issues, financial management and public procurement are made by ministers themselves. This arrangement distracts ministers from focusing on policy-making functions and undermines the managerial autonomy of senior civil servants.
- - weakness of ministerial steering of subordinated bodies - agencies autonomously determine their priorities and objectives that are only formally approved by the governments, there is no evidence for active ministerial leadership and steering.
- Accountability and control mechanisms include Transparency
- Along with regulations to ensure legality in the work of the administration and a clear framework for responsibility and the delegation of decision-making authority, objectives represent a further key ingredient in the managerial accountability framework. The use of measurable objectives in the management of an organisation constitutes the difference between administrative and managerial accountability, as it allows the organisation to move from a compliance orientation to responsibility for performance and results of the managers’ work. The autonomy of managers to pursue objectives implies responsibility for delivering results, framed by relevant laws and internal rules and regulations. There is a strong emphasis on PIFC and the COSO framework on the role of objectives. Managerial accountability requires not only the existence of organisational objectives, but also their cascading through an organisation, with the widest possible distribution of responsibilities. Cascading objectives down within an organisation means that high-level, more strategic objectives (usually found in relevant sectoral strategies) need to be made concrete through operational (shorter-term) objectives, not only at the level of the organisation (i.e. the ministry or agency) but also of individual organisational units. These objectives will ideally then translate into the individual objectives of the managers themselves, which sets a good environment for the delivery of both organisational and individual results. Summary of SIGMA analysis All of the Western Balkan administrations have formally introduced some kind of work planning processes, albeit using diverging methodologies and approaches. The lack of use of objectives and indicators in organisational management is, however, one of the key challenges for the development of managerial accountability in the administrations of the region. Throughout the region, whether objectives are set in one or in several competing planning processes, they are perceived as a formal exercise and their value in management is not widely recognised, either by managers or the political leaders. The low quality of the objectives is, at least in part, both a result and a cause of this lack of interest in management by objectives. If objectives simply repeat the scope of the competencies of an institution, or if indicators and targets are missing, or are vague and unclear, accountability for results will not be possible. If objectives are not measurable (e.g. through indicators and targets), their value is limited to general statements of intent. Lack of consolidated and standardised data leads to unavailability of baseline information for setting objectives and targets. As stated in the conference discussion paper, “if targets are unclear or unknown there is no basis for being accountable for results”. Moreover, the number and diversity of typology of objectives and indicators in some administrations worsen this picture. Where there are numerous objectives from various documents, managers can hardly be expected to focus on them in their everyday practice. Having too many objectives makes it impossible to prioritise and focus on delivering against them. Furthermore, a failure to cascade objectives down the organisational structure indicates a poor connection between organisational and individual work objectives. This results in a missing link within the performance management system, making it practically impossible for managers to connect their own performance and the individual performances of their staff to the organisational objectives. Analysis of annual plans and reports of administrative bodies at all levels illustrates common problems due to the lack of a results-oriented management approach. Planning and reporting documents focus on detailed descriptions of activities, with no links to specific objectives, measurable performance indicators and targets. This practice also demonstrates ineffective steering of subordinated bodies by governments and ministries, as they do not set objectives for administrative bodies or hold them accountable for their performance.