Performance Management and Agency Governance Brainstorming Session Report
Day 1
The Brainstorming meeting under the theme of Performance Management and Agency Governance was organized by DPMF and took place from 11-12 April 2003. The purpose of these informal brainstorming sessions is to bring together academics, policy makers and civil society organizations to critically analyze a paper prepared by an expert specifically for this purpose in order to produce a policy report at the end of the meeting. The paper is discussed and transformed into a policy report containing recommendations addressed to governments, regional organizations and the public sector.
The opening remarks of the
session were made by Dr. Abdalla Bujra, Executive Director of DPMF, who briefed
participants about the purpose of the meeting which was to present and discuss
the paper written by Dr. Jide Balogun, Principal Regional Advisor, on
Performance Management and Agency Governance.
The paper was circulated
and placed on the web weeks before the meeting as well as the UNDP SURF calling
for comments.
Dr. Bujra noted in his
opening remarks that the absence of effective governance has contributed in no
small measure to poor performance in the public sector in Africa. According to
him, the failure of many public agencies to achieve policy objectives could be
attributed to the way these agencies are managed, or, as the paper notes,
“governed”.
Dr. Balogun began his
presentation by providing a rationale for his choice of title. According to him,
he settled for “agency governance” after careful reflection. He stressed the
need to move away from the mode that the notion of governance is alien to the
public service. He added that the time has come to put at center stage issues
critical to the management of performance in the African public service. The
searchlight earlier directed to “governance” in the broad sense, now needs
to be turned to the specific situation in which public affairs are managed.
Dr. Balogun’s
presentation was to the effect that efforts to improve the performance of the
African public agencies to date have not had much success. He went on to outline
efforts at various times made by African countries to achieve enhanced
performance of the public service, beginning with the early efforts in civil
service reform, through the era of structural adjustment, to the contemporary
emphasis on “home-grown” revitalisation initiatives. Dr. Balogun paid
particular attention to interventions linked to New Public Management (NPM),
which essentially borrows practices of the private sector and uses these to
improve the performance of the public sector.
According to Dr. Balogun,
for performance improvement efforts to pay off and have a lasting impact, there
is a need to interrogate internal governance practices in the public service, in
much the same way as political systems were subjected to good/democratic
governance tests in recent years. To improve the performance of the public
service, we should move beyond the narrow confines of “management” to that
of governance. Dr. Balogun noted that certain attributes of the bureaucracy
(e.g. hierarchical conformation, premium on secrecy, and frequent disposition
towards legalism) pose immense challenges to agency governance. Even the
internal performance evaluation and external progress reporting mechanisms are
suspect, considering the frequent application by managers of “positive” and
“negative” learning techniques to disguise shortcomings and play up minor
achievements.
He went on further to
outline the attributes of the agency governance approach, and focused on three
main pillars on which the concept rests. The first is political power, the
second, managerial authority, and the third, the prevailing rules regime. The
extent to which the pillars stand on the principles of governance – democracy,
accountability, rectitude, professionalism and integrity – to that would the
underlying performance management and improvement questions be realistically
answered. Unless such issues are incorporated in how public agencies are
managed, efforts at improving public service performance will not succeed.
The topics discussed in
the paper fall under the following headings:
1. Performance Management: 3 Pillars –
· political power (politics, a game without rules);
· managerial authority (NPM and single pillar “empowerment” hypothesis, professionalism);
·
rules regime (the visible and invisible bosses, NPM the rules and the
competitive edge, accountability and diversity).
2.
Governance and Development
challenges – bridging the deficits, social imbalances, democracy dividends
and where performance management and agency governance fit into all this.
3.
Performance Management response to
challenges – the past responses to various challenges indicating that
agency governance had a narrow scope which did not include politics or external
factors and evaded issues of performance management.
4.
The “agency governance” option
and the indicators – the three pillars of agency governance, the
indicators and the role of African institutions.
5. Summation
and the next steps
At a glance, the agency governance indicators consisted of
· Diversity and representation of the policy makers group
· Degree of importance accorded to policy analysis and strategic visioning
· Relations between the political and the career wings of policy
· Level of external inputs into the policy process
· Respect for the rule of law and the policy level
· Placement of the policy making group on the “rectitude scale”
· Diversity and representation of senior management group
· Degree of importance attached to policy analysis
· Responsiveness of managerial decisions to external and internal “demands”
· Respect for the rule of law at senior management level
· Observance of human and civic rights
· Placement of s/management group on “rectitude scale”
· Change and diversity management capacity
· Level of Morale and esprit de corps
· Transparency of rules interpretation and application
· Consistency
· Fairness and impartiality
· Cost consciousness and cost-effectiveness
· Responsiveness to “customer demands”
Discussions
Following Dr. Balogun’s
presentation the participants made a number of observations. Mr. Opio Vincent
Lukone, Permanent Secretary/Deputy Secretary to Cabinet, Uganda, presided at the
first discussion session. He began by stressing the need to start with diagnosis
before going to “prescription”. According to him, we should ask questions
such as; are we ready for the performance management concept? There is a need to
build capacity for basic things and if this cannot be done, how then do we move
forward to implement and agree on more complex policies? So we need to begin by
asking ourselves why basic things are not working.
Prof. Gelase Mutahaba
chaired the afternoon session and stressed the need for clearly identifying the
environment in which we are operating. He highlighted the importance and the
role of civil society in terms of its ability to pressurize the public service
to bring about reforms beneficial to the people. The issue of democracy needs to
be brought to bureaucracies. He noted that the more democratic civil society is
the more aware it will be and this will enhance the relationship between public
institutions and the people. The public service must be reconfigured in such a
way that it will be an agent of social transformation. This transition must have
clear objectives that will serve society. The public service must be politically
sensitive and responsive without being partisan or biased towards political
parties. This link is important for the performance of the public sector.
Further contributions
included suggestions that:
1.
The paper started on the assumption that we know the context/the
environment in which we are operating. This needs to be sketched out.
2.
There is a need for the author to bring out more explicitly the dynamics
of the internal environment.
3.
There is a further need for efforts to be directed towards social
transformation demonstrating the link between social transformation and public
service management/governance.
4.
A focus on the pillars on which agency governance rests would lead to
forward movement.
5.
It was noted that for decades Africa has largely been reproducing
borrowed thinking. To move from this external dependence, we must start by
asking ourselves if our assumptions are right and if they are founded on local
realities. It is only thereafter that we will be able to arrive at an agenda on
the way forward. To begin with we must first recognize the positive changes over
the last 20 years. Thereafter, we can move on to identifying what is missing.
6.
We need to focus on where we are today as compared to many other
countries and the extent to which countries have copied NPM, borrowed from it,
and internalized it. Many have copied “good governance” principles from
outside but these have not had any impact on public service management.
7.
Within the performance management system in the public service, there is,
as the author emphasizes, need to build issues of internal governance and not
just technocratic issues. The question of defining the reform agenda of the
public service to prevent it from being confined to narrow “technocratic”
issues is therefore important.
8.
There is an issue of placing the discussion within the context of social
transformation. There are two important levels namely micro and macro.
Emphasis to-date has been on the macro (political governance). It is now
important to supplement this with the micro (agency governance). These two must
have the same mission and must be complementary. If the public sector knows its
mission then performance management becomes a vehicle towards meeting the
objectives.
9.
The issue of diversity within the paper is a major theme that needs to be
discussed but has only been briefly touched upon. It needs to be expanded upon.
10.
There must be democratic pressure from below where civil society
organizations must be the vehicle for pushing civil society “demands”. A
citizen’s charter needs to be introduced underscoring the rights of the
people.
11. Copying ideas/practices from the outside world is not necessarily bad. We should, however, adapt the ideas and practices to our own unique situations, and reject those, which are at odds with our realities.
We are still tackling
issues of how institutions should work. The more democratic civil society is the
more aware it will be and the better the relationship between other institutions
and people. This link is important for the performance of the public sector.
Author’s
Response
The author thanked the
participants for their highly useful comments. He took particular note of the
suggestion for explicit statements on the context, and for inclusion of the role
of civil society in the agency governance model. He, however, called attention
to parts of the paper that had anticipated some of the issues raised in the
general discussions.
The
Way Forward
It was agreed that the comments would assist the author in revising the paper. The product to be produced should outline the context in which agency governance would form the basis of public service reform. There is also need for the paper to identify gaps in knowledge and propose measures for filling these gaps.
Further suggestions for
the way forward were made such as:
· Incorporating training as a major element for public service improvement;
· Pay closer attention to cultural variation within the environment;
·
Make the paper more user friendly and come out with easy to understand
policy recommendations
DAY
2
Dr. Tebogo Mokgoro opened discussions on the research proposal and asked Dr. Balogun to present it formally. Extensive discussions followed the presentation. Based on additional comments and suggestions from participants, the proposal was to be revised and submitted for donor funding.
For
a full copy of Dr. Baloguns revised
paper please visit www.dpmf.org.
Participants
Prof. Ahmed Mohiddin, Twenty-First Century Africa Foundation
Dr. Tebogo Job Mokgoro, Centre for Policy Studies
Prof. Gelase Mutahaba, President’s Office, Tanzania
Mr Opio Vincent Lukone, Office of the President, Uganda
Dr. Abebe Haile Gabriel, Ethiopian Civil Service College
Mr. Getachew Demeke, Consultant
Dr. Jide Balogun, ECA/DMD
Dr. Abdalla Hamdok, UNECA
Mr. Ben Kasamale, DMD/ECA
Ms. Doreen Kibuka-Musoke, DMD/ECA
Dr. Denis Zunon, DMD/UNECA
Mr. Okey Onyejekwe, DMD/UNECA
Mr. Kaleb Demeksa, UNECA
Dr. Abdalla Bujra, DPMF
Ms Martha Kebede, DPMF
Prof. Adebayo Ninalowo, University of Lagos
Ms. Muna Abdalla, DPMF
Mr. Abdurahman Ame, DPMF
Ms Martha Bakwesegha, DPMF