in Administration for Development / Hanns Seidel Foundation
HIGH-LEVEL SEMINAR FOR POLICY MAKERS AND POLICY IMPLEMENTERS ON RESULTS BASED MANAGEMENT
Enhancing synergies between Policy Makers and Technocrats in Implementing Results-Based Management in the Public Service
“Disconnect between Politicians Technocrats: The missing link in entrenching a culture of Results-Based Management in Governance and Public Administration?”
“Towards Institutionalizing Results Based Management (RBM)
in the Public Service in Africa: What Roles for Policy Makers
and Policy Implementers?”
by
Mrs. Florence N. Wachira
(Kenya)
Tangier (Morocco)
28 – 30 January 2013
Towards Institutionalizing Results Based Management (RBM) in the Public Service in Africa: What Roles for Policy Makers and Policy Implementers?
Summary
Results based management (RBM) is a political process with technical dimensions. Both policymakers and implementers should work in partnership to entrench RBM. Success is premised on strong political will and leadership that ensures a shared vision, and co-creation of public value through effective engagement and involvement of citizens including the youth. Policy makers must ensure there are appropriate legal/regulatory and structural frameworks and good governance mechanisms that enable a focus on results. Policy implementers are administrators who should offer functional leadership that entrenches a results oriented culture, aligns work towards National goals and priorities, promote professionalism and strategic people management. They should have in place mechanisms and systems to collect performance information and feedback to guide decision making to improve service delivery.
1.0 Introduction
New Public Management (NPM) that emerged in the 1980’s came to dominate the thinking about Public Sector Reforms of 1990’s. Perhaps the most central feature of these reforms has been the emphasis on improving performance and ensuring that government activities achieve desired results. Results Based Management (RBM) is a management philosophy and approach that focuses on achievement of results and outcomes rather than inputs and processes and emphasizes value for money. RBM has now been adopted as a proven and acceptable approach for improved public service, accountability, effectiveness and efficiency. However, a lot still remains to be done to institutionalize RBM as the way to go in Public service delivery in Africa.
RBM is a political process with technical dimensions. Successful implementation requires strong political will, strong managerial leadership and strong institutional capacity. The key determinants of its success are technical factors, system/organizational factors and behavioral factors. The key technical factors include a RBM framework, adequate capacity and capability, appropriate tools and instruments to measure performance, use of performance information and ensuring there is linkage between activities and financial systems. System/organizational factors include provision of appropriate authority for decision making, clarification of roles and responsibilities and ensuring transparency and accountability. Behavioral factors are about focusing people towards achievement of objectives.
Both Policymakers (Politicians) and policy implementers (administrators) have distinct but complementary roles to play in entrenching RBM. Max Weber in the 1980’s outlined the conceptual foundation of the relationship between politicians and administrators. He argued for clear roles and responsibilities where administrators were the technical people who were supposed to be politically neutral, give non participant advise to the politicians and execute decisions of politicians to the best professional standards. Both policy makers and policy implementers need to understand this division of responsibilities in order to act as partners on a developmental mission; where Policy makers provide political will and strategic leadership while the policy implementers provide functional leadership. Policy makers should foster a culture of leadership cooperation so that there is mutual respect, serious consideration of professional advise and non-interference in purely administrative matters.
This paper addresses some of the issues pertinent to institutionalization of Results Based
Management in the Public service in Africa and spells out the roles of Policy makers and policy
implementers.
2.0 ROLES OF POLICY MAKERS
In most African countries, policy makers are politicians elected on a ‘popular’ vote to be the voice of citizens in government. They set the Government agenda for the socio-economic development of the country and also pass laws to regulate public life. Their actions and opinions strongly influence the course of events in the delivery of public services. They therefore have very core roles to play in entrenching RBM as discussed below:
2.1 Providing Political Leadership
Many countries in Africa have National Visions as their long term plans embodying citizen’s goals and aspirations for development. A Vision should help Policymakers to adopt a big picture view of the country’s development agenda and to focus them towards the future while dealing with the present. For a national vision to have the desired effect, it should enjoy grassroots support where citizens identify with it having been developed through a participatory process that engages the bigger populace in the country.
But, what probability is there that the next person you meet anywhere in Africa will tell you what their country’s vision is about? , Whose vision is it? Whose agenda does it spell out?
Policy makers have the responsibility to engage the citizens to ensure a shared vision and joint ownership of the developmental agenda. They should give appropriate leadership committed to the achievement of the vision in a way that links with citizen’s aspirations and priorities and solves their problems. They require to provide transformative leadership. According to Covey (1990) transformative leadership should focus more on people than on things; on long-term than short term; on values and principles rather than activities; on mission, purpose and direction rather than on methods, techniques and speed.
Effective implementation requires political will and support for the ensuing governance reforms and most importantly, to ensure it is secure from succession politics. But many National visions are vulnerable to leadership transitions and are at the mercy of incoming Governments. Each Government comes with new Political agenda-a new ways of doing things often with total disregard of past initiatives. As it seeks to stamp its authority, the government creates new institutional frameworks to replace the old. In reality these new frameworks duplicate/delay/confuse RBM initiatives. Policy makers need to recognize that a change in Government only changes the service providers and not the goods and services a government provides to its citizens.
2.2 Involvement of stakeholders in RBM
Creation of Public value
A government exists to serve its citizens. It should seek to harness the adaptive potential of the public sector to create Public value. Public value is created by Government through services, laws, regulations and other developmental activities. In a democracy, this value is ultimately defined by the public themselves through their ‘preferences’ expressed through a variety of means and refracted through decisions of policy makers (elected politicians).
Policy makers need to constantly remember that public value is ‘created’ not ‘delivered’. One cannot deliver clean streets, good health, good education etc. in the way commercial companies can deliver ‘pizzas’. Solutions to citizens problems rely partly on them and their capacity to take shared responsibility for positive outcomes. This co-production of public value requires them to connect different co-production activities to generate economies of scale and wider systems of support.
Citizen participation:
If the ultimate goal of the public sector is to satisfy the needs of the population, then any credible program should ensure it represents the interests of the people. Development of partnerships with stakeholders is therefore paramount to effective formulation and implementation of public sector reforms and strategies for service delivery. Policy makers should empower and engage citizens in decision making to improve their ability to control their own resources and to unleash their creative and productive energies to achieve sustainable improvement in their living standards. Citizen participation helps in defining their priorities and empowers them to take responsibility for implementation of planned actions.
Involvement of youth
Africa is the world’s youngest continent, as the proportion of youth among the region’s total population is higher than in any other continent. In 2010, 70 percent of the region’s population was under the age of 30, and slightly more than 20 per cent were young people between the ages of 15 to 24 (UNECA, 2010). Youth are the main recipients of public services. The youth have unique skills, new ideas and enthusiasm and can be very useful in entrenching digital literacy, social networking and social media. They are great at dealing with technology because they have grown up with it. They also bring perspectives of a younger customer base and personal knowledge of their own market. They are often in touch with latest education, learning methodologies and technology and would add value to RBM in the public service. Policy makers need to actively engage the youth and involve them in decision making. They should address youth unemployment which is getting to worrying proportions in Africa countries.
2.3 Providing enabling Legal/Regulatory/Structural Frameworks
RBM is premised on existence of systems and structures capable of identifying the most critical, solvable problems, reorganize where necessary to deliver the right solutions and abandon the tools and approaches that no longer work. However, the Public service hierarchy makes it difficult to adapt particularly due to practices of generalism, delegating upwards, time pressures, inward focus and mechanistic thinking. Administrative structures are weakly institutionalized making the sector prone to ‘penetration’ by party politics leading to politicization at all levels of the hierarchy. Politicization has led to demoralization of public servants and impaired their effectiveness(Cohen & Wheeler, 1999).
Primarily, Policy makers need to embrace a shift in perspective and re-define their role as supporters not drivers of adaptive processes of change. Then look at every aspect of the Public service system; how it is organized, its objectives, what information is available, how it is structured and how it is led/ managed in order to ensure it is results-oriented. They should then establish appropriate legislative/regulatory frameworks for operation. Such frameworks should clarify lines of accountability and ensure that services are organized and operated in a way that makes them responsive on a sustainable basis to changing political environmental needs and demands of the public at large.
The challenge for political leaders is to build a system of Government that delivers results, structures that widely distribute and clearly delineate the decision making responsibilities and empowers the policy implementers. The system should supports strategic thinking, innovativeness, forecasting and planning and should foster systemic change not incremental or piecemeal reforms.
2.4 Ensuring good Governance
Good governance or exercise of authority for common good means more than government. It captures how society and state are shaped by power relations and influenced by obligations and responsibilities. It gives a State legitimacy and establishes the rule of law and political stability all of which promote sustainable development. Good governance is epitomized by predictable, open and enlightened policymaking, a bureaucracy imbued with professional ethos acting in furtherance of public good, transparent processes and a strong civil society participating in Public affairs (World Bank, 2004).
Ethics and moral values are central to good governance and massive re-orientation of Government cannot be achieved without a clear moral and political vision. The kind of Government in power in a country, the quality of its leadership, vision and integrity and its commitment to promotion of common good determines the kind of civil service. The political class should therefore support ethical principles to create an environment where incorruptible civil service can function. They should ensure that the systems in place can address issues of breach purposively, fairly and with speed to deter complacency and stem widespread occurrences.
3.0 ROLES OF POLICY IMPLEMENTERS
The primary function of a public service is to translate the National Vision into tangible outcomes. How it does this depends on the clarity with which the National vision is articulated, the resources available, the competence of its managerial leadership and the partnerships with other players. According to empirical findings, reforms have had a high failure rate partly because of a poor record of implementation (Kiggudu, 1998 & Caiden, 1991). Successful entrenchment of RBM requires policy implementers to play leading roles in entrenching the right culture for implementation, clarifying and aligning strategy towards RBM, promoting professionalism, instituting strategic management of people and proper performance management in the Public service.
3.1 Role in Culture change
According to Fulmer (1992), organizations undergoing change require new and different ways of thinking, new business skills and development of different leadership and communications behavior. A focus on results requires a total overhaul of ‘how business is run” – a different culture. Culture is the seedbed for reforms and the right culture is required to support long term performance (Miller, 2011). Policy implementers have a major role in shaping an appropriate culture for change. This includes institutionalization of change management initiatives to transform mindsets of public servants to focus on service delivery and on results not processes. They should seek to institutionalize working systems where hierarchy is replaced in part by reliance on expert power and those with best understanding of issues take decisions and responsibility. Enhancing trust, empowering employees, effective delegation, consistency and mentorship are some of the ways the implementers would adopt towards building a positive culture. They should also ensure there are support systems and other mechanisms to allow employees empower themselves and to flourish in order to increase their own effectiveness and that of the service.
3.2 Ensuring clarity and proper alignment to RBM
Lack of alignment between National priorities, Government policy, strategic planning and budgeting often lead to poor results. Clarification of who are customers and their relative hierarchy of priority is critical to public sector organizations’ performance and particularly for those which do not have an evident service function. Policy implementers have the responsibility of ensuring clarity and alignment of the National vision with the mission and goals of their organizations to give direction. They should ensure that work plans, programs and projects undertaken are aligned with the objectives of Government programs and services as they maintain a strong focus on performance and linkages between performance, policy making and resources mobilization. They should promote and reinforce cross-sector partnerships and interactions with other Government departments/agencies and the private sector.