Public sector reforms are all about government effectiveness: The quality of public service provision, the bureaucracy, the competence of civil servants, the independence of the civil service from political pressures, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to policies are critical measures to judge how efficiently and effectively government is producing and implementing the right policies and delivering public goods and services.
Successive audit reports, including the recent one, continue pointing to the need for public organisations to be more efficient ,drawing attention on the shortcomings to improve their performance and accountability. Year in, year out , these audit reports reveal the deficiencies in the management of government capital projects , the lack of proper coordination amongst authorities engaged in procurement and project management, the wastage and unnecessary expenditures, especially the wasteful capital investments in unprofitable govt institutions through loans and equity participation (Investments acquired for a total amount of Rs 44.9 billion have not yielded any return since their acquisitions. ) and the deteriorating fiscal management due to the increasing use of off- budget vehicles for public investment(Rs 25.6 billion, being 60 per cent of the balance of Cash and Cash Equivalents in the accounts of Government as at 30 June 2021 -Rs 42.5 billion- were held by the seven Special Funds.)
It is unacceptable that at a moment where the rise in the cost of living is wreaking havoc on households’ budgets , our Ministries and Departments and State-owned enterprises are being profligate with taxpayers’ money. As significant sums are spent , we are not getting value for money. Our Ministries and Government Departments are not ensuring that “public funds are spent economically, efficiently and effectively with a view to ensuring that expected outcomes are achieved.”
Why is it that our efforts- to reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies, increase overall productivity and improve service delivery and respond proactively to the expectations of citizens and businesses, while acquiring the flexibility and agility to take and implement decisions rapidly- are not bearing fruits ?
We have had a series of objective evaluations/studies of the government’s performance in policy areas such as citizen welfare, economic growth, and functioning public institutions and diverse approaches have been proposed to reforming key institutional arrangements, which include: increasing devolution and decentralisation; strengthening competitive pressures; transforming workforce structure, size, and HRM arrangements; changing budget practices and procedures; and introducing results-oriented approaches to budgeting and management.
Have they been implemented? If yes, why have their impact on govt effectiveness and efficiency so far been so limited ?
The crux of proposed reforms :
The key institutional drivers that may contribute to improving public sector efficiency and better adapt the reforms to the problems we face ,have been identified . Most fundamental though is the architecture of the system itself. The architecture, as in a good building, must fit the context and the outcomes desired.
The main architecture proposed was an Economic Research and Planning Bureau within the Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development which would become the centrepiece of a modern, agile planning system in Mauritius. Why ?
Because “ a key feature of such as system is the cascading nature of high-level objectives in the national vision and strategy, to the intermediate outcomes in sectoral and intersectoral strategies and plans, to the outputs of the organisational strategies. It improves policy coherence leading to better outcomes at lower cost and creates a flexible, market-friendly planning process can contribute to enhanced policy coordination. Focused capacity strengthening for the Bureau should include economic research, planning, and monitoring. At the same time, public financial management should be strengthened to improve transparency as well as allocative and operational efficiency with a strong budget process at the core .”
Another key driver of the reform programme, one of the pillars of the new architecture driving the reform is Programme Based Budgeting (PBB) ( not the present so-called performance budgeting which is an approximation, a spurious imitation and a mere soupcon of a real PBB. ) which would “enhance the ability of the government to allocate resources to priority policy objectives and increase access of the public and National Assembly to performance information, increasing accountability”.
A further pillar is the “focus on implementation” : “An important step to enhance implementation capacity is the development of outcome monitoring and evaluation linked to both budget and planning processes. Developing a national performance M&E system anchored at the new Planning Bureau should build on existing experience and focus on the core national planning outcomes. Mauritius could build on its budget monitoring tools to track planning results. An integrated performance M&E tool would track the core national planning outcomes…The Bureau could also become a champion and capacity provider for the integration of strong M&E mechanisms, …”
No significant budgetary reforms are likely to succeed unless a robust and functioning accounting, reporting, monitoring, evaluation and implementation facilitator/delivering system is in place. And the second step is to upgrade the system of evaluation of projects and programs which is quite weak in many ministries. Evaluation generally takes the form of financial audits. Few examples of engineering and quality control assessments for major capital projects exist. Similarly, there are rare examples of cost effectiveness studies. Attempting performance audit without agreed performance benchmarks and proper systems to record and track and evaluate performance is equally unlikely to be effective. These are some of the basics that must be satisfied for the PBB to be effective- “real” performance and policy-based budgeting - a PBB that secures delivery of government’s major domestic policy priorities.
The PBB, when properly implemented with an effective monitoring and evaluation process, does confer greater accountability and transparency to fiscal management and delivers on efficiency and effectiveness, especially on our maintenance and service standards.
Another important pillar is the creation of new mechanisms for continuous consultation and collaboration with different stakeholders across a broad spectrum of policy areas, from planning to implementation, etc
As for our State-owned Enterprises, we can start by: (a) putting in place a transparent nomination process for the directors of boards. The key element of such a process should include developing clear selection criteria, professionalizing the nomination process and enhancing public scrutiny of the results; (b) establishing a framework for performance management. Government needs to develop a framework for communicating government’s expectations to each institution and to the public. The core of the process in most countries is the establishment of a performance agreement; (c) reviewing performance and holding institutions accountable, and (d) establishing performance incentives.
And to cap it all, E-governance must become the centre stage all of our institutions to reduce physical contact and to enhance the quality of the delivery of our public services. This will also minimize opportunities for corruption.
Why is such importance given to a planning bureau ? Perhaps this extract may help “While not a panacea for all ills of public sector performance, a new generation of agile national development planning systems are yielding promising results in enhancing policy coherence around the world. According to a recent study, the number of countries with a medium-term national development plan (NDP) has risen from about 62 in 2006 to 134 in 2018 .More than 80 per cent of the global population now lives in a country with an NDP. But while in the past, NDP were often the relics of directed economies and state-led development, the re-emergence of national development planning is based on agile and implementation-focused approaches to planning that are fully consistent with the ‘modern’ industrial policy approach The most effective among these “new” NDPs rely on the evidence-based foundational analysis, have a high degree of internal consistency, employ an inclusive rather than elite-driven formulation process, and are directly linked to the budget. The key hallmark of agile planning is prioritization, both top down (directions set by highest levels of government) and bottom up (through participatory process among MDAs). Ideally, these planning priorities are then reflected in the budget, Public Investment Management (PIM) and Human Resource Management (HRM) systems. Such an agile planning approach, adapted to local circumstances, could serve Mauritius well, and a first step in this direction has already been taken through the formal creation of a Research and Planning Bureau at the MoFED “
Yes , at MoFED, they already have an understaffed and underperforming Economic Research and Planning Bureau constantly on ”rodage” like its pointless, merely informative, Public Sector Investment Program (PSIP) and the ineffectual Public Investment Management Unit (PIMU) and its now famous Capital Project Process Manual (CPPM), a framework that is supposed to appraise and approve the funding of capital projects, which has not been of much help till now, whether on the Betamax or the Medpoint projects…. They have delivered little in the way of reform.
When we finally come face to face with the stark fact -- what most reports seemed not to have factored in - our civil servants, our bureaucrats , the govt unions, the SCEs, the top to low level administrators’ stubborn resistance to public service reforms -- that not much has changed; it is the same old way of doing business, the only difference that, along the way, they have also learned how to pack the same old wine in new more attractive, catchy bottles …and it is business as usual , no commitment whatsoever to genuine public sector reforms - to developing our own distinctive reforms to improve sustainability, efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency that would have laid the foundation for the government to improve the delivery of key public services and we would have obtained value for our money. Genuine reforms are not in the interest of a corrupt bureaucracy and a politicised establishment because they are likely to be made answerable for acts that are against the public interest or the greater good of the nation , particularly when public funds are involved.
And when we have mainly old guards at the decision-making levels of govt, how can we expect that they "change the way they look at things and the things they look at change." Indeed, how can we expect these people who cannot change their minds to change anything !!!
