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Ministère Fédéral de la Fonction Publique

Rue de la Loi 51 b. 3 1040 Brussels/Bruxelles doc. number/numéro de doc. B 2001 DG.minutes

Version 20/2/2002

Minutes and statements from the 37th meeting between the Directors-General responsible for public administrations in the European Union

Bruges 26-27 of November 2001

Apologies:

PierreNeyensLuxembourgDirector of the Administration and Government Personnel Ministry for the Public Service and Administrative reform

1. Opening of the meeting by the Belgian Presidency

Mr DAMAR, Secretary-General of the Belgian Ministry of the Civil Service and Mr VAN DEN BOSSCHE , the Belgian Minister for the Civil Service and Modernisation of the Civil Service opened the meeting and welcomed the Directors-General from the EU Member States and their delegations.

They stressed the importance of this informal meeting following entirely the spirit of open co-ordination, encouraged by the top of Lisbon of previous year. The "Medium Term Programme" that was approved in Uppsala, offered useful guidelines on how to work in the coming years, whereby the exchange of "best practices" on all fields of government management stand at the heart of the matter.

A resume of the current situation in the Belgian Copernicus reform was also given.

The scope of most reforms, subtopics as HRM – E-gov – monitoring systems...,have exactly been choosen as issues for this meeting.

2.Approval of the report of the 36th meeting

The report was adopted without amendment.

3.Approval of the agenda on the 26th and 27th of November 2001

The agenda was approved.

4.Report on Methods of Change and Modernisation in the Public Administrations of the Member States of the European Union

Dr. AHONEN, Professor at the European Institute for Public Administration and author of the report, gave an explanation on the purpose and the objectives of the study.

He highlighted the seven important aspects of his methology:

-Which reforms? nine items drawn from the CAF

-Origin of reforms: eight items and a class “other”

-Partners: civil servants, Parliaments, unions, implementing officials, users, international co-operation partners

-Reform management and methodology: by whom, how, methods, communication, pilots, one go/gradual, innovation

-Legal and institutional dimension: timing new legislation, reform without legislation, adaptation of existing structures of organisation

-Financial dimension: fiscal climate, costs, gains

-Sustainability: success, failure, evaluation.

The question on reform management and the methodology used was the main issue.

As main results of the study four patterns were discovered: systematic management of the very process of public administration change and modernisation, building democracy into the change and modernisation processes, partnerships between modernisation agents, building around “reform cells” or around “embryos of new organisations”.

5.Comments by Professor Geert Bouckaert of the Catholic University of Leuven

Professor BOUCKAERT gave a parallel trajectory on changing public management and public management of the change, backed by his own expercience with changes and reforms in different OECD countries. He outlined five important issues:

1.starting positions for changing publicmanagement: such as pressure being a significant factor in society, investments as a necessity, improved quality, performance and presentation of results and the European Administrative Space;

2.trends in changing public management: more focus on performance, on responsability and accountability or on social actors as partners (Maintain-Modernise-Market-Minimise);

3.trends in public management of change:strategies as chronologies, timelines, coherence( level/content) or change as a policy cycle;

4. trends in public management of change: tactics (direction-style-scope-pressure-allocation of new tasks-triggers-key actors);

5.focus for a future change agenda: change towards the European Administrative Space, change as a learning cycle and learning from faillures.

6.Discussion on Change Mangement

Mr DAMAR invited his collegues to an exchange of views on two topics:

*keys to the success of change and keys to the fealure of change in the different countries were both important and might be taken on board in order to learn from each other;

*identification of the first signals of the conversion concerning the concept of the European Administrative Area, which will be deployed in full respect of the subsidiarity principle.

The two experts were also invited to intervene and respond on the bases of their own background as a way to promote the debate.

Mr BARKER (UK) thanked Professor Ahonen for his interesting report, but said it was missing an important element namely the culture or the mindset. The UK discovered that they couldn’t change systems and processes without changing performance, unless they changed also this culture and mindset.

He stressed once again that the attitude towards European Administrative Space and the way it is viewed, depended on a country’s culture or mindset.

Professor Ahonen responded by saying that the analyses were influenced and conditioned by a certain extent by the CAF, missing culture and mindset at the time. He added that these elements were difficult to change in a systematic way, this might be the reason why reform activities were often continuous in order to improuve difficult to avoide site effects.

Professor Bouckaert explaned that culture and mindset only changed if the pressure also changed on systems and individuals. Key elements were responsability (tell people what you expect them to do) and accountability (in quite public way) at the same time.

Mr RICHARD (F) congratulated the two speakers and responded to the first question of the chairman.

He developped a theory on the factors of success or faillure in 5 points.

1.The lenght, the duration, the time of the change: change inquired a willingness not to give up and to go on without becoming impatient.

2.The policy had to be implemented by the civil servants themselves. The guidance had to be supported by the personnel. One single Ministers should be responsable for the “Human Resources Management” and for “Change” (single structure).

3.The change should be made for the sake of the users, the tax payers, the citizens. The perception of success or faillure (satisfaction) should be assessed once implemented and in practice.

4.The change moved forward in a horizontal way (thematically linked networks).

5. The political willingness: goals and the ensuing results, created by seizing upon the trust the citizens have and the opportunities arising from them, must be kept in mind. In France an interministerial commitee was set up with the responsibility of monitoring the state reform.

Mr Damar liked particulary the idea of the horizontal approach; this crucial element didn’t appear very well in the presentations. Vertical policies should be taken on board especially in countries with a federal system.

Mr DRUESNE (EIPA) questioned Professor Bouckaert on his detailled vision of the Europan Administrative Area.

The concept presupposed a homogeneous structure or framework, like the economic area growing on a treaty. We saw for the past three years a major progress under the third pillar, cooperation in legal and home affairs (homogeneous areas too). What he feared was an increasing Europeanisation of civil services. Should we jump consequently to conclusions and talk of a de facto European Administrative Area, or were there other elements of building blocks in this European Administrative Area (EAA) ?

Professor Bouckaert responded by saying that there was not a legal framework as such, but a de facto “community acquis”. This implied a need for convergence, of tuning up common standards, performance assessments, schemes... The partnership in the field of audits was a de facto acquis communautaire and was a building block to this EAA. The implemenation of European legislation in the individual member states could also be considered as a building block to this EAA. He also mentioned that we could identify other building blocks, managing political cycles, tuning up the proceedings of all levels of power (municipal, regional, national and European levels).

He thought it necessary to link together the various powers (see Sigma survey which focused more precisely on these elements).

Mister REXED (S) approuved the well done survey, but as a business economist he felt something was lacking.

1. A reduction in efficiency was discovered because of the traditional static way of working, so change management could create a culture of continuous improvement by empowering management.
2. Change management was related to quality management. The more we tried to create a citizen oriented public sector, the less we should create standard procedures. We had to proceed further on continuous empowerment. The civil servants should be more sensitive to the real needs of the citizens.
3. To the question of the EAA Mr Rexed said that basicly the differences between our countries were enormous and a conversion was difficult to detect. But still there was a pressure on harmonisation through the European Court of Justice and through the reliance into national agencies or national administrations to carry out decisions and directives of the European Commission (externalisation).

Memeber States should pay attention to this.

1. Mister Rexed concluded by saying, as adivice for the Spanish, Danish aan Greec Presidency, that the use of questionnaires was a possibility to develop further our ways of working, but only if useful provocative questions were raised.

Mr Damar said that in the learning processes there were indeed aspects which were not logical, but the learning exercises had to be the main objectives in the future.

Mr D’ORTA (I) started by saying that the link between institutional reforms and administrative reforms was missing from the study. The keys to success were closely related to the level of attention paied by the political level of those reforms. And even more a link could be made between political and administrative reforms. In Italy they started at the local level with this reform process. The change in the election process for town counsellors has had a great impact on the way local civil services operate.

Secondly he argued that if the reforms were decided at the central level and had to be implemented at the decentralised level, the impact would be totaly different.

Mr D’Orta wondered how the results could be assessed and monitored. Could the elaboration of benchmarking methods be considered in order to compare the impact of those reforms at all levels of power ?

He stressed the connection between the method and the purpose of the reform.

Thirdly Mr D’Orta added to the discussion of a user oriented public service. He said that the Mandelkern report on better regulation was a demonstration of the connection between regulation and administrative reform.

Lastly he argued that we should listen to the other European administrative projects, launched in the past decade, since the subjects were the order of the day and joint concerns. Benchmarking remained interesting as a way to identify best practices and discover the secret recipes to yield those results.

Professor Bouckaert responded to the question concerning monitoring results of change.

He said that the UK was an interesting exemple from that the point of view of bringing together data sets, based on the leagued tables or at the civil service college based on the data from agencies. All these data could create a time line and from there create and substract some elements. That was a crucial issue.

He wondered whether the CAF might incorporate the possibility of making comparisions, as a long term goal

A considerable effort would be necessary if all the member states tried to start collect data on the results (cfr. UK, Sweden, Finland, USA).

Mr FIEBERG (G) said it was difficult to add anythings after such substantial presentations, but he had a technical remark. It would be very usefull in the future as far as questionnaires were concerned, that the president could explain and give specific instructions on how exactly the questionnaire had to be filled in. It wasn’t always that easy to see what the questions were refering to. Perhaps a feedback on this issue would enhance the value of such documents for our work in the future.

As far as the reforms are concerned, he mentionned that they had been talking about large scope concepts and of course science had to be systematic. However Mr Fieberg said that in politcal practice the idea of there being a series of small steps which contributed to the change and often going unnoticed, was missing in the reports. He mentionned that these steps may be important for global decisions or actions in the long term. So it seemed to be certainly a lot wiser to go step by step gradually towards change without too much resistance. These small steps should therefore not be underestimated.

Germany was known for its decentralised structure; so everybody kept to his or her own subject. But through a discussion general awareness for the need of change could be created. He mentionned that it was vital that all the people got aware of the fact that a continuous change and a need for adaptability and improved methods were inevitable.

Concerning the EAA he thougt that there was not a clear an comprehensive answer, but that some developments could be noticed in certain sectors: e.g. in E-government and safety. Certain European standards were needed in order to let E-gov work.

The objectives and the success of the reform should be evaluated through increased citizen confidence in our administration and improved quality as perceived by the citizens.

Mrs HERSOM (DK) thanked the speakers for their presentations and stressed that public sector reform could not be carried out independantly of history, culture, legal systems, administrative traditions etc. in the member states.

Therefore it was indeed quite difficult to see the emergence of the EAA. What all European countries had in common though was the fact that the globalisation, the use of the internet, a more demanding population, meaned that our public service institutions would increasingly be compared with similar institutions abroad. This kind of pressure was new and called for new solutions. She said that they were working in Denmark on strenghtening the cooperation across the various levels of government.

Mrs Hersom gave two examples: the project on management of small and medium sized public institutions and the newly established task force on E-government.

Successful change management practice necessitated inclusion of all levels of government and will be one of the three main themes at the Second Quality Conference in Copenhagen in 2002.

She concluded by saying that Denmark looked forward to having this discussion in the conference and to witness the best cases from all the European countries on change management.

Mr CONSIDINE (IR) welcomed the given presentations, but wanted to stress the importance of the environment of change: sufficient support should be foreseen and take into account the following conditions.

1. Political and administrative wings of the government had to support it.
2. It had to be clear to the whole system that there was something in it for everyone. The public sector employees should see that there was an advantage to be gained from improving the management system.

We were moving in to a new area now: international benchmarking of E-government would create a new environment for public administration.

Ireland had a number of attempts at modernising the public service, coming from different sources. They were not always successful.

Different action should be indeed based on proper anlyses and not simply emulate work, because of the differences between the European countries.

Mr Considine concluded by saying that we never should loose sight of the original objective: providing quality services to the citizen and to business at a reasonable cost in an open and accountable way thus resulting in nurturing the competiveness of our countries in the European Union.

Otherwise there would be a real danger that the reform would become an industry in itself.

Mr Barker (UK) talked about a new development in the UK reform programme: they acknowledged the osmosis point, a precondition for the success of reform. Recently they helt a successful session between all the cabinet ministers and the permanent secretaries to try to improve the relationship. The Prime Minister promised that it would become a regular event every six months. So that he reform agenda was increasingly being set jointly through a process of osmosis.

Mr VAN RIJN (ND) gave a remark on professor’s Bouckaert presentation. He got the impression that in recent years at least in The Netherlands change in public administration was triggered by cost reduction targets, but the investment to quality had maybe been forgotten.

If we succeeded in defining quality standards and investment strategies and combined them, maybe financing them with cost reduction at the same time, then we should have a more successful combination strategy. He thought this was a hot topic in his country and wanted to have the professor’s comment on that.