SPRING 2014
FMI
*
IGF JOURNAL
39
GOOD PRACTICE IN PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM
barriers enables team members to see
themselves as experts contributing to
specific developmental objectives.
RRA combines practices from
organizational
psychology,
change
management, and capacity building.
Learning occurs while working actively
on a performance challenge critical
to the organization. It creates focused
arenas for learning by doing in which
participants are coached in self-reflection,
experience sharing, and teambuilding.
Team members are selected based upon
their skills and ability to help the team
succeed. Tasks are assigned to individuals
and not to organizational units to
promote personal accountability.
In Kenya’s changing governance
environment, public service delivery
was viewed as a collaborative process
for engaging a wide array of third
parties. RRA proved the perfect vehicle
for incorporating stakeholders as team
members, sharing experiences, and
transferring valuable knowledge to the
public service. It anchored a shift in
institutional capacity from management
control to facilitating collaboration and
results. Leaders required the skill set to
engage partners arrayed horizontally in
networks to bring multiple stakeholders
together for a common end in a situation
of interdependence.
Kenya’s RRA succeeded in developing
key staff competencies, changing the
mindset from process to results, and
opening up the dialogue space across staff
ranks to accelerate implementation and
results. In 2005, one pilot project leader
observed that, “The RRA is a good tool
that produces great results and should
be mainstreamed into ministry activities
and teams encouraged to learn from their
successes and failures.” In 2007, Kenya
won the prestigious United Nations
Public Service Award in the category of
improved transparency, accountability,
and responsiveness in service delivery.
Lessons learned
Decades of public sector reform point
to four enduring dilemmas:
1. Reforms focus on changing rules
and behaviour by design rather
than on changing practices during
implementation;
2. Reforms rely on brokering the
politics of special interests rather
than on serving greater interests for
lasting results;
3. Reforms that work in one place do
not always work the same way in
another place; and
4. Reforms have a long results chain,
where a weak link anywhere can
undermine implementation.
Rather than starting fromscratchevery
time, there is inherent pressure to adopt
‘best practices’ from donor countries
and international consulting firms in
the absence of solid evidence to debunk
claims. To adapt on the basis of evidence
means tailoring reforms using rigorous
diagnostics and extensive stakeholder
consultations to specify problems.
Reforms must be implemented with
agility, learning on the go and sharing
knowledge about what works and does
not work in practice.
Reform is iterative and requires
sequencing. Implementation takes place
concurrently in phases, where the dis-
tinct objectives of each phase must be
respected. International experience indi-
cates the need for three phases of reform:
1. Moderate the political-public ser-
vice relationship to mitigate poli
tical influence over public sector
management;
2. Introduce innovative structures to
deliver better services; and
3. Develop systems and processes to
continuously improve service delivery.
Implications for Canadian reform
Canada has perhaps the most
decentralized system of government in
the world. This is a function of Canada’s
geographical size, regional diversity,
and natural paths of communication and
transportation, among other factors.
Policy, programming, and service
delivery must be designed horizontally
and decentralized to manage this reality.
Canada has a moderate tradition
BEFORE RAPID RESULTS
AFTER 100 DAYS
In 100 days, the State Law Office of the Companies’ Registry improved the work
environment and:
• Raised the level of staff and customer satisfaction by 80%;
• Reduced the time to register a business from 3 weeks to 1 day (top-10 World
Bank ranking); and
• Reduced the backlog of 500,000 Annual Returns and related documents.
The Companies’ Registry (Kenya)
Lessons learned from past
reform efforts suggest that the
notion of ‘best practice’ needs
to be replaced by ‘best fit’,
where more pragmatic, context-
sensitive solutions replace
grandiose, comprehensive
reform designs.
World Bank
{
{
