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European Centre for Development Policy ManagementCentre européen de gestion des politiques de développement

John SaxbyPretoria, South Africa

Building the capacity for managing public service reformThe Tanzania experience

Peter MorganHeather Baser

A case study prepared for the project ‘Capacity, Change and Performance’

Discussion Paper No 57QJanuary 2007

Analysis

The lack of capacity in low-income countries is one of the mainconstraints to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.Even practitioners confess to having only a limitedunderstanding of how capacity actually develops. In 2002, thechair of Govnet, the Network on Governance and CapacityDevelopment of the OECD, asked the European Centre forDevelopment Policy Management (ECDPM) in Maastricht, theNetherlands to undertake a study of how organisations andsystems, mainly in developing countries, have succeeded inbuilding their capacity and improving performance.Theresulting study focuses on the endogenous process of capacitydevelopment - the process of change from the perspective ofthose undergoing the change.The study examines the factorsthat encourage it, how it differs from one context to another,and why efforts to develop capacity have been more successfulin some contexts than in others.

The study consists of about 20 field cases carried out accordingto a methodological framework with seven components, asfollows:• Capabilities: How do the capabilities of a group,

organisation or network feed into organisational capacity?• Endogenous change and adaptation: How do processes of

change take place within an organisation or system? • Performance:What has the organisation or system

accomplished or is it now able to deliver? The focus here ison assessing the effectiveness of the process of capacitydevelopment rather than on impact, which will be apparentonly in the long term.

External context Stakeholders

Internal features andresources

External intervention

The simplified analytical framework

Co r e va r i a b l e s

Capabilities

EndogenousChange andadaptation

Performance

Study of Capacity, Change and PerformanceNotes on the methodology

• External context: How has the external context - thehistorical, cultural, political and institutional environment,and the constraints and opportunities they create - influenced the capacity and performance of theorganisation or system?

• Stakeholders:What has been the influence of stakeholderssuch as beneficiaries, suppliers and supporters, and theirdifferent interests, expectations, modes of behaviour,resources, interrelationships and intensity of involvement?

• External interventions: How have outsiders influenced theprocess of change?

• Internal features and key resources:What are the patternsof internal features such as formal and informal roles,structures, resources, culture, strategies and values, andwhat influence have they had at both the organisationaland multi-organisational levels?

The outputs of the study will include about 20 case studyreports, an annotated review of the literature, a set ofassessment tools, and various thematic papers to stimulate newthinking and practices about capacity development.Thesynthesis report summarising the results of the case studies willbe published in 2007.

The results of the study, interim reports and an elaboratedmethodology can be consulted at www.capacity.org orwww.ecdpm.org. For further information, please contactMs Anje Jooya ([email protected]).

Building the capacity for managing public service reformThe Tanzania experience

Peter Morgan and Heather Baser

A case study prepared for the ECDPM study 'Capacity, Change and Performance'

January 2007

iii

Contents

Acronyms and abbreviations ivAcknowledgements ivExecutive summary v

1 Introduction 1

2 Analytical framework and methodology 2

3 The wider context of change in Tanzania 3

4 The context of the public sector in Tanzania 64.1 The evolution of the public sector 64.2 The current structure and characteristics

of the public sector 6

5 Strategic positioning and design of the Public Service Reform Programme 9

6 Building the capacity to manage the reform programme 116.1 The evolution and positioning of the PO-PSM 116.2 The capacity and capabilities of the PO-PSM 13

7 Performance 15

8 External intervention 16

9 General observations 17

Bibliography 23Annex: Individuals interviewed 26

The European Centre forDevelopment Policy ManagementOnze Lieve Vrouweplein 21NL-6211 HE Maastricht, The Netherlands Tel +31 (0)43 350 29 00Fax +31 (0)43 350 29 [email protected] www.ecdpm.org

Capacity Study Analysis Discussion Paper No. 57Q

CIDA Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)DAC Development Assistance Committee DFID Department for International Development (UK)ECDPM European Centre for Development Policy ManagementEFQM European Foundation for Quality ManagementIMTC Inter-ministerial Technical Committee JICA Japanese International Cooperation Agency NPM 'new public management'M&E monitoring and evaluation MDAs ministries, departments and agencies OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)PIM Performance Improvement Model PIU project implementation unitPS Permanent SecretaryPO-PSM President's Office, Public Service ManagementPSRP Public Service Reform Programme SASE Selective Accelerated Salary EnhancementSida Swedish International Development Agency TA technical assistanceTANU Tanzanian African National Union TGDLC Tanzania Global Development Learning Centre UNDP United Nations Development Programme

AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to thank Joseph Rugumyamheto, the then Permanent Secretary of the President's Office,Public Service Management (PO-PSM), and his staff for their insights, support and good humour during the visit.Both he and George Yambesi, who is now Assistant Permanent Secretary of PO-PSM, vetted the report and madeuseful comments and corrections. Denyse Morin of the World Bank Office in Dar es Salaam and Jack Titsworth of theUK Department for International Development (DFID) Tanzania also provided support and advice. Thanks also go toother interviewees in Dar es Salaam both inside and outside the Government of Tanzania who talked about publicservice reform in Tanzania. The individuals interviewed for this study are listed in the Annex. Finally, our appreciationgoes to the African Capacity Building Foundation for its contribution to the funding of the research, writing andpublication of this case study.

Discussion Paper No. 57Q Capacity Study Analysis

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Acronyms and abbreviations

The Government of Tanzania positioned the PublicService Reform Programme (PSRP) in the mainstreamof global public sector reform. In the late 1990s, theGovernment, with enthusiastic international support,opted for the wholesale adoption of a set of reformmeasures collectively known as the 'new publicmanagement' (NPB), much of which was beingapplied internationally under the sponsorship ofagencies such as the World Bank and DFID. Thispreference for foreign models had implications interms of the transfer of organisational practices,absorptive capacity and a heavy reliance on technicalassistance.

The Tanzanian approach to public service reformfavoured what might be called plannedcomprehensiveness. It was an ambitious government-wide approach that did not rely much on piloting orincrementalism. Participants seemed to relish theidea of 'rolling out' new systems. Few low-incomecountries can have embarked on as manysimultaneous institutional and organisationalreforms as did Tanzania.

At the same time, the Tanzanian approach to capacityand performance improvement favoured the reformof existing public sector organisations rather than thecreation of new ones. While taking this approach, thegovernment tried to build both long- and short-termhorizons into the implementation of the PSRP. It alsorecognised the need for 'soft' changes such as culturaland attitudinal change, although it has implementedhard changes such as organisational structures andsystems first.

The Public Service Management (PO-PSM) unitinitially functioned as a project implementation unitset up to manage public service reform as aconventional aid project. It was subsequentlyconverted into an established part of governmentand expanded in size. The reform process wascarefully designed to balance this connectedness withGovernment through tight connection to processesand networks while providing operating spacethrough some freedom of action

The leadership of the PO-PSM was crucial. The samePermanent Secretary provided guidance for 10 yearsand was able to connect the PO-PSM into a variety ofsystems ranging from those linked to the CabinetOffice of the Government, to the internationalfunding agencies operating in Dar es Salaam, tointernational networks dealing with public sector

Executive summary This case study is about how Tanzania went aboutbuilding its capacity to manage a complex process ofinstitutional and organisational change. With theagreement of the Government, it concentrates on thetopic of capacity development for changemanagement within the public sector. The main unitof analysis is thus the President's Office, Public ServiceManagement (PO-PSM) unit as a change managerwithin the public service rather than the PublicService Reform Programme (PSRP) as such.

The Government of Tanzania, with the help of theinternational development community, has madegenuine progress in building a capacity to design andmanage public service reform. This case looks at howand why this has happened, with an emphasis on theefforts of the Tanzanians involved.

There were several factors in the wider Tanzaniancontext that shaped the development of the capacityfor change management. These include a supportivecontext for public service reform, a relativelyhomogeneous population with no one dominantethnic group, and global trends and the demands offoreign investors and the international developmentcommunity which acted to demand improvedperformance from the public service.

In general, public service reform has more traction inTanzania than in many other countries. The actions ofgovernment officials have been broadly supportiveand the Tanzanian governing elite appears convincedabout the need to embrace globalisation as a key partof any national development strategy. In addition,Tanzania has gone a considerable distance todepoliticise its policy making and to create space forministries and departments to craft and managereform programmes with politicians supplyinggeneral oversight.

At the same time, the readiness of the Tanzania publicservice for large-scale change has been mixed. Manystaff appear to have welcomed the chance to improvetheir individual and collective performance and weredetermined to make progress. But major constraintson the implementation of public service reform stillexisted, including the fact that many public servantssaw themselves as having being the targets ofcontinual reform measures since the early 1990s.


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reform. Senior managers within the unit, led by thePermanent Secretary, also had a sense oforganisational craftsmanship and saw the unit assomething to be creatively built and managed. Effortswere made to inculcate a sense of professional prideand mission in the unit staff. Managers gaveattention to its capability for internal collaborationand cohesion. Finally, the PO-PSM was staffed almostentirely by Tanzanian professionals, which acted toreinforce its particular identity.

The main strategy for putting in place individualcompetencies needed in the unit was that of selectionand recruitment, i.e. a 'buy' rather than a 'make'option. Formal staff training took place but was not ahigh priority in the PO-PSM. Most learning took placeeither on the job or in group settings such as staffretreats. Management did give special attention tothe development of social/personal as well astechnical/organisational competencies, includingbuilding capabilities for inter-office cooperation, fororganisational learning, for improved communicationand for building relationships with ministries,departments and agencies.

The PO-PSM gave staff a sense of meaning andcontext. Commitment, a sense of responsibility andmotivation stemmed from this source rather thanfrom financial incentives.

The role of the international funding community inthe public service reform was generally positive. Partof the reason for this was a broad recasting of thepartnership between the Government and theinternational funding community after reaching acrisis point in the mid-1990s. In addition, theTanzanian PSRP could be characterised as one of lowpoliticisation and high strategy - precisely the type ofsituation in which international funding agencies aremost comfortable. The PSRP lent itself to thecontributions - policy advice and technical assistance- that funders were best able to supply.

The main international funders of the PSRP, the WorldBank and DFID, made some critical assumptions aboutthe programme. They accepted the PSRP for what itwas - a comprehensive, long-term approach at reformwhich would need 15-20 years of steady, patient andflexible support, much like the reform efforts in high-income countries. Both the Government and theinternational funding agencies refrained fromimposing arduous reporting, monitoring and

measurement schemes until such times that the PSRPstaff were in a position to design and manage them.The stability of staff on both sides ensured aconsistency of approach.

In general, a number of factors appear to have cometogether in a systems way to produce the directionand energy needed to make progress in Tanzania inpublic service reform, particularly the fact that thePO-PSM had the space to develop its identity, capacityand confidence. This permitted governmentmanagers to pursue positive approaches to publicservice reform.

What was noticeable about the Tanzanian publicservice reform strategy was its reliance at the start ofthe programme on a transplantation approach asopposed to a more organic, evolutionary processcustomised for Tanzanian conditions. At first glance,this policy choice may seem puzzling. Twoexplanations are possible. First, institutionalstructural adjustment, complete with its ownstandard package of prescriptions, seems to havereplaced economic structural adjustment as the latestuniversal solution in development cooperation.Second, many Tanzanian officials supported theapplication of a 'new public management' (NPM)approach out of intellectual conviction. The stress onimproving service delivery and empowering citizens,in particular, resonated with many senior officials. TheNPM was promoted as international best practice anda symbol of modernisation and globalisation.

This paper makes no judgment about the ultimatewisdom of the strategic choice in the Tanzanian PSRP.But what is clear is that the planned comprehensiveapproach to public service reform is a strategic choice.It may succeed in some contexts and fail in others. Inthe Tanzania case, an unusual combination of politicalsupport, low levels of political conflict, some skilledTanzanian managers, an absence of deep bureaucraticresistance, some historical resonance, funder patienceand some key domestic constituencies may beenough to make the PSRP effective. In the theatricalanalogy of two analysts, Tanzania may just have theright stage, actors and even props to pull off acomprehensive reform show.


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1 Introduction This case study forms part of a research programmebeing carried out by the European Centre forDevelopment Policy Management (ECDPM) based inMaastricht, the Netherlands, for the DevelopmentAssistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation forEconomic Cooperation and Development (OECD) inParis on the subject of improving the capacity andperformance of development organisations mainly inlow-income countries.1 This case looks at theexperience of the Public Service Reform Programme(PSRP) in Tanzania.2 Heather Baser and Peter Morgan ofECDPM carried out the research in Dar es Salaamduring a ten-day period in April 2004.

Readers need to keep in mind some of the directions ofthis case study.

• First, this case study is about how a country -Tanzania - went about building its capacity tomanage a complex process of institutional andorganisational change. It is not intended as ananalysis of the outcomes and impacts of the overallPSRP.Trying to make quick Olympian judgments onthe effectiveness of the overall programme was notfeasible, or even advisable.3 Timing issues weredeterminant here.The post-retrenchment phase ofthe PSRP was only about four years old. Majoradvances in capacity in areas such as service deliverywere estimated to be years away. In addition, theshort amount of time that the team was able tospend in Dar es Salaam compelled a tighter, moremanageable focus.The case study thus concentrated,with the agreement of the Government, on the topicof capacity development for change managementwithin the public sector.The main focus of analysis isthus on the work of the Public Service Management(PSM) unit within the President's Office (PO-PSM) as achange manager, rather than the PSRP as aprogramme.

• Most analyses of capacity issues in developmentcooperation focus single-mindedly on weakness.Theattention of the participants, especially in the publicsector, is normally on constraints, dysfunctions,problems and resource shortages. How, for example,can countries and donors collaborate to fill thecapacity 'gaps' that prevent programmeimplementation from going ahead? In contrast, theoverall ECDPM study, of which this case is a part, hasgiven more attention to strengths and achievements.It has tried to understand how and why effectivecapacity has emerged. In this particular case, theGovernment of Tanzania, with the help of theinternational development community, has madesome genuine progress in building a capacity todesign and manage public service reform. A broaderinternational audience may benefit from itsexperience.

• Two other objectives of this case need to behighlighted.The first is to address the 'what', 'how'and especially the 'why' questions with regard to themanagement of public service reform in Tanzania.The purpose of this case is explanatory. It looks backnot forward. It is not intended as a formal evaluationor a comprehensive organisational assessment of thework to date. It makes no specific recommendationsor proposals for future action, although it does raisesome general issues in the final section (the 'so what'and the 'now what' questions).The second objectiveis to highlight the efforts of the Tanzanianparticipants.The contributions of internationalfunding agencies such as DFID and the World Bankwere crucial to the progress of the work in terms ofthe provision of advice and financial support, butthey were not determinant. Capacity emerges. It isnot delivered or transferred. National participantsmake or break capacity development in all cases. Ourfocus is thus on the Tanzanian efforts.

• Finally, the broad spectrum of the readers of this caseneeds to be kept in mind. At one level, readers with adetailed understanding of public service reformissues in Tanzania will hopefully get some benefitfrom another perspective. But it is also the intentionto create some value for readers in other parts of theworld who know little about the Tanzanianexperience or even about public service reform.Thecase therefore puts limits on detailed analysis ofissues such as pay reform or decentralisation.

Notes1 The original intention was to look at cases in both high and

low-income countries in the belief that capacitydevelopment issues are of universal concern and difficulty.

2 Readers interested in more background can consult the PO-PSM website at www.estabs.go.tz

3 For an early look at the value of executive agencies inTanzania, see Talbot (2001).


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2 Analytical frameworkand methodology

The analytical framework used in this case parallelsthat used in the other ECDPM case studies carried outto date.4 The framework is divided into the followingcomponents:• the wider context of change in Tanzania;• the context of the public sector in Tanzania;• strategic positioning and design of the Public

Service Reform Programme;• the development of the capacity and capabilities of

the PO-PSM;• the strategy for change used by the PO-PSM;• the emerging levels of performance of the PO-PSM;

and• the nature and effectiveness of the external

support.

The sources of information and insight for this casewere threefold: first, interviews with a range ofofficials both inside and outside the Government ofTanzania. These included staff of the PO-PSM, lineministries, participating consulting firms andinternational funding agencies. These are set out inthe Annex. Second, we reviewed a sample of thereports coming out of the programme. These can befound in the bibliography. Finally, we looked at a smallpart of the enormous secondary literature on publicsector reform, including that on Tanzania itself, whichis also referenced in the bibliography.

A brief explanation is needed at this stage about theperennial issue of defining the terms 'capacity' and'capacity development' and 'capability'. After havingnow completed the field work on most of the 17 fieldcases to be carried out under the larger ECDPM study,we can safely say that there is no agreed definition orshared understanding of these terms in theinternational development community. Either theyare so abstract as to have no operational value ('theability to perform'), or so functional and specific as toexclude a wide range of useful broader ideas andapproaches. This buffet of meanings extends to theTanzanian situation. Some Government and donorofficials saw capacity development as skillimprovement and/or training. Some viewed it asimprovements to the implementation of certainprogrammes, others as increased effectiveness. Somesaw it as a distinct phase of institutional and

organisational development. Some even used theterms 'capacity' and 'capacity development'interchangeably.

Yet, getting a clearer idea of the nature and source ofcapacity lies at the heart of the ECDPM study. In thiscase, we have looked at three aspects of the broadattribute known as 'capacity':• 'Capacity' is taken to mean the overall ability of the

PO-PSM to support the design and managementthe Public Service Reform Programme.

• 'Capability' refers to those specific abilities thatmust be brought together to make up the overallcapacity to manage the programme. Thosecapabilities that were critical to the effectiveness ofthe PO-PSM included strategic thinking, negotiatingwith other ministries, departments and agencies(MDAs), monitoring and evaluation. We give most ofour attention to this level of analysis.

• 'Competence' refers to those skills held byindividuals within the PO-PSM or other locationswithin the Government that form part of thecollective capabilities and capacity.

Notes4 These include cases in the Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia,

Indonesia, Jamaica, the Organisation of Eastern CaribbeanStates (OECS), Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, the Philippines,Russia, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda. Seewww.ecdpm.org/dcc/capacitystudy


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3 The wider context ofchange in Tanzania

Many capacity interventions implicitly assume thatthey contain within themselves all the ingredients toensure their effectiveness. Are the objectives clear? Isthe sequencing of activities appropriate? Has theintervention been given sufficient resources? Are thepredicted results appropriate? Do the participantshave the right skills? And so on. Yet it is also clear thatvirtually all efforts at capacity development arenested in a broader web of contextual influences thatshape their evolution regardless of the technicalrationality of the particular intervention. Put moresimply, capacity interventions take place within opensystems. In many cases, the nature of thesecontextual influences - the political economy of thecountry, its institutional patterns, its historicallegacies, the web of stakeholder relationships - arepoorly understood and, in many cases, invisible tooutsiders and even many insiders.

This study does not pretend to have done anythingapproaching an institutional and governance reviewin Tanzania. But some factors in the wider Tanzaniancontext that have shaped the development of thecapacity for change management were obvious evenduring a short visit. Some of the key internationalfunding agencies such as the Bank and DFID have alsodone some work in these broader contextual areas.5We therefore set out below a brief overview of thewider Tanzanian context that needs to be understoodin assessing the capacity issues to do with the PO-PSM.

Compared with many other low-income states,Tanzania has a supportive context for public servicereform, a condition that partially explains its successto date. It is crucial for outside observers, especiallythose enamoured with the idea of universal 'bestpractice', to appreciate this 'good context' whenassessing change strategies and capacity gains.

Tanzania has a relatively homogeneous populationdistributed amongst over 200 small tribes and ethnicgroups. No one ethnic group in any part of the countryhas the size, wealth or the geographic base to captureeven individual ministries let alone the entireGovernment. Tanzania has few landed elites. Themilitary does not play a dominant role in politicaldecision making. Regional differences in economicand political power are much less than those of otherneighbouring states. Tanzania also has a nationallanguage spoken widely in all regions that facilitatescollective identity, interregional communication andshared understandings. Levels of social capital and asense of personal security amongst different ethnicgroups appear to be higher than in many otherAfrican states.6

Predating the colonial period, Tanzania had a strongassociational life showing itself in the growth ofburial societies, ethnic societies, a women'smovement, dance troupes and the like. The incidenceof social discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicgroup, religion or language is lower than in mostcountries. Tanzania has no history of civil strife or stateviolence including during the drive for Independence.The geopolitical context of its East Africanneighbourhood is stable. Few issues, such as landownership, minority rights, border incursions, orregional favouritism, have led to major politicalconflicts. Resentments from the past that are presentin many other countries, stemming from civil war,collusion with the colonial authorities, politicalassassinations, do not seem to shape individual orgroup memory. In such an environment, powerstruggles over the control of public serviceorganisations play less of a role. Most groups appearto have an interest in supporting the drive to reformthe public service.

Some genuine 'drivers of change' acting in support ofpublic service reform would appear to be present inTanzania. The influence of global trends and thedemands of foreign investors and the internationaldevelopment community are acting to demand or'pull' improved performance out of the public service.Governing elites including those at the political levelhave real incentives to formalise and professionalisepublic service organisations. They see the benefits ofimproving the performance of the public service. Asubstantial proportion of the emerging, but small,middle class in Tanzania do not wish to see a return tothe disabled public service of the 1980s. Almost all

Notes5 See, for example, Barkhan (2000); Lawson and Rakner

(2005).6 One staff member stated '... we Tanzanians, we think we

cannot be hurt'.


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rural areas or to destabilise the political system.9• Tanzania also has a strong presidential system.

Decisions from the top of the political structure canbe altered by elected party members but are notlikely to be strongly contested or overturned.Supportive leadership focused on public issues canmake a difference.

• Tanzanian governance structures appear to rely lesson personalisation and informal structures - e.g.patrimonial networks and communal groupingsbased on ethnicity - compared with most otherAfrican countries.10 Politicians have increasingincentives to rely on performance rather thanclientelism to maintain their political base. Inpractice, Tanzania's public organisations seem to beboth formalising their procedures and separatinginto distinct political and bureaucratic spheres.Tanzania, for example, has tried over recent years todepoliticise bureaucratic decisions and operationswith some success, a trend that appears to havebeen accelerated by the transition to multi-partypolitics. More and more appointments to publicorganisations, including most in the PO-PSM, arebeing made through public notice and competitiveselection. The capability for what Manning andParison call 'basic reforms' - that is, achieving orstrengthening basic public service disciplines - arebeing put in place.11

• In addition to public service reform, Tanzania hasalso embarked on improvements relating tofreedom of the press, the rule of law, academicfreedom and many others. If successful in themedium and long term, these parallel changes mayact to help sustain public service reforms.

Another facet of Tanzanian institutional and politicaldevelopment that supports public service reform iswhat might be called productive stability. Contendingfactions such as military or political cliques have notreplaced each other. Normal political change has beeninstitutionalised to a great degree. For much of thelast decade, political support for public service reform,especially from the senior political and bureaucraticlevels including the President, remained steadfastdespite the dislocations caused by large layoffs of

citizens wish to see better service delivery, and theirpolitical participation appears to be energising thereform process. No insurmountable institutional orstructural barriers exist to block reform. Tighter linksare therefore slowly developing amongst capacity,legitimacy and performance in the public service. Insuch a context, comprehensive reforms in the publicsector with a higher degree of technical rationalitymay stand a better chance of succeeding. In short,genuine spaces and opportunities exist in Tanzaniafor positive change.

The general idea of collective public action and socialcooperation retains a good deal of legitimacy withinTanzania. Egalitarian social policies in the 1970s and1980s diminished a number of grievances that remainevident in neighbouring states.7 Even during theperiod of one-party rule, a high level of internal partydemocracy led to a rough sense of citizenparticipation. The composition of the political eliteshas also changed a good deal over the years asministers and members of the National Assemblywere voted out of office. Indeed, the whole idea ofreform and change, albeit defined in quite differentways over the years, has been more pronounced inTanzania than in many other African states. Thistradition of nation-building goes back to the drive forIndependence in the late 1950s and early 1960s, theArusha Declaration in 1967, the Ujamaa period ofcollectivisation in the 1970s and the role of theTanzanian African National Union (TANU) in the1960s and 1970s. Tanzanians appear to have afamiliarity with the idea of social and institutionalchange in support of a governing ideology that isaccepted by the country as a whole. In one sense, thecurrent Tanzanian enthusiasm for market-basedapproaches to national development is at the otherend of the spectrum from the previous allegiance tosocialism and self-reliance. But in another sense, bothideologies build on the same recurring historicalpattern.

The evolution of political institutions in Tanzania ispart of this supportive context. Four trends inparticular help to give efforts at public service reformmore traction than in many other countries:• The Tanzanian political system has been structured

since 1995 along the lines of what two analysts havecalled uncompetitive pluralism.8 In 2000, the rulingparty retained 80% of the parliamentary seats andcontrolled most local councils. Opposition partiesdid not yet have the strength or the legitimacy toseriously threaten the ruling party especially in the

Notes7 In the mid-1980s, 41% of Tanzanians had access to safe

drinking water, compared with an average of 19% for Africaas a whole.

8 Kiragu and Mukandala (2003: 61).9 Opposition parties actually lost seats in the 2000 elections

falling to 29 seats from 46 in 1996.10 For an analysis of this phenomenon, see Chabal and Doloz

(1999). This book lays out the case for the instrumentalvalue of disorder and public sector collapse for manygoverning elites in Africa.

11 See Manning and Parison (2004: 16).


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government employees.12 The bureaucracy, includingthe PO-PSM, has been partially buffered from thenormal struggles in the political arena. This practicebears some resemblance to the practice in Southeastand East Asia of insulating economic policytechnocrats from the push and pull of politicalconflict.

Macro-economic stability has also been in place formost of the last decade. Economic growth, whilegradual, has been steady. Such stability is not aguarantee of improved capacity but it did appear tobe an enabling factor in the Tanzanian case. SeniorTanzanian officials also make the reverse case thatsteady public service reform has contributed tomacro-economic stability. Capacity development inthe public service is a slow process that needs bothsustained buffering and support. Policy shifts thatswing from one extreme to another tend to disableserious efforts at public service reform. Much of thisoscillation has been avoided in Tanzania.13

It is important not to overdraw this picture of abenign and supportive context. Tanzania remains oneof the poorest countries in the world with a GNP percapita of about US$310 per annum. In 2003, it ranked164 out of 177 on the Human Development Index andit has few resources that can be invested in publicservice reform beyond those provided byinternational funding agencies. At present, it cannotafford to pay living wages to most of its publicservants. Corruption remains an issue of concern.Basic logistical support - transport, computers,reasonable offices, paper, desks - is lacking in manyoutlying regions. Tanzania has a large land mass withthe rural population dispersed mainly along itsborders. Transportation and communication linksoutside the main urban areas of Dar es Salaam,Mwanza, Dodoma and Arusha are poor. The rural-

urban divide is becoming more pronounced. Levels ofliteracy remain low. The tradition of claim-making bycitizens on government has been weak. An explicit'demand' for improved service delivery in the form ofclient or customer pressure is still developing.14

Tanzania is also working to develop gaps in itsinstitutional and organisational landscape that are, inpart, a legacy from a long period of single party,centralised presidential rule and the dominance ofthe single political party TANU in the 1960s and1970s.15 In practice, the politicisation of this earlierperiod led to the suppression of a good deal ofinstitutional and organisational capital (e.g. tradeunions, cooperatives) outside government that is onlynow re-emerging some 40 years later.16 Tanzania hasa comparatively small number of autonomousorganisational actors outside the Government thatcan push for reform. The influence of private firmsand civil society organisations remains nascent atbest. But the aggregated effect of such institutionalpatterns in Tanzania can be hard to assess. It canlessen the demand for public service responsiveness.But it can also avoid resistance and blocking actionsof powerful non-state groups such as teachers'unions.

Second, a large part of the economy is informal andremains unable to support the growth of complexformal organisations. The country lacks many moderninstitutions such as acts and statutes and legalguidelines. Part of the challenge facing theGovernment is the need to put such institutions inplace in a systematic and legitimate way. Third,Tanzania lacks the skilled human resources needed toenergise and manage its institutional infrastructure.Part of the explanation for this gap is historical. Partcan be accounted for by out-migration of its citizensto other parts of Africa, Europe and North America.

Notes12 The Government, for example, managed to deal with

concerns about the sale of privatised organisations to SouthAfrican investors, a policy that many members of theNational Assembly found difficult to accept givenTanzania's long history of involvement in the struggleagainst apartheid.

13 For an example of a country (Peru) that underwent constantoscillations and changes in policy, see Matsuda (2004) .

14 This is not to say that public opinion cannot be mobilised insupport of reform. Tanzanians clearly wanted faster service,less corruption and fairer treatment from the courts. For acase study in building a public knowledge about lawreform, see Widner (2001).

15 Tanzania was the first country in Africa to adopt one-partyrule in May 1965.

16 Independent trade unions were abolished in 1964 andparty-affiliated ones put in their place. Farmers'cooperatives and local government were disbanded in theearly 1970s.


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4 The context of thepublic sector inTanzania

We set out in this section two aspects of the publicsector in Tanzania which are essential forunderstanding the later discussion on building thecapacity for change management. These aspectsinclude the evolution of the public service since itsestablishment during the colonial period and itscurrent structure.

4.1The evolution of the public sector The evolution of the Tanzania public sector showspatterns which have both differences and similaritieswhen compared to those of other African states. Forease of understanding, this evolution can be dividedinto five overlapping phases.

• The colonial phase lasting up to Independence in1961 produced a bureaucratic structure that was -and still is - smaller and less complex than those inneighbouring Kenya or Uganda. Under itstrusteeship mandate from the League of Nations,Great Britain had invested less in Tanzania than itdid in colonies of greater political or commercialinterest.

• The phase of growth and politicisation began in thelate 1960s and saw the public service subordinatedto the dominance of the dominant single politicalparty, as mentioned earlier. This phase led to thestrengthening of the centralised Tanzanian stateand the rapid expansion of the bureaucracy toimplement ambitious development plans. Overtime, policy control began to flow through TANUparty committees and organisational structures,leading to a diminution in direct citizenparticipation and accountability. Local governmentwas abolished in 1972. The size of the public serviceincreased by about 350%, with the number ofemployees reaching a total of 295,000 in 1980.

• A period of public service stagnation and declinebegan in the early 1980s characterised by declininglevels of service and a collapse in discipline, training,salaries and other incentives. Corruption, notsurprisingly, grew as a response.

• The phase of retrenchment beginning in the early1990s was based on a conventional costcontainment and downsizing strategy. TheGovernment and international funding agenciesworked to reduce the core functions of government,reset the boundaries between the public andprivate sector and tried to infuse the system with agreater sense of accountability. In pursuit of thesegoals, many public organisations were eitherprivatised or turned into executive agencies. Totalstaff numbers fell from 355,000 in 1992 to about270,000 in early 2000 - a shrinkage of about 35%.The number of 'grades' within the public sector fellfrom 196 to 45. The payroll system was simplifiedfrom 36 different allowances to seven. Structures atthe senior management level were simplified, aswere those in the regions. Efforts were made toimprove public service training.17

• The current phase of reform began in 2000 with thePSRP focusing on building capacity andperformance. The previous emphasis onretrenchment had been effective in terms ofrebalancing costs and scope. But it had notcontributed enough in terms of improved servicedelivery, a pattern that was common across mostAfrican states. The current phase was designed tofocus on improving performance.

4.2 The current structure and characteristics ofthe public sector

We can briefly summarise the size and structure ofthe public service. The national level is divided into 29ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). Thistotal includes ten lead ministries, five economic, fivesocial and nine independent departments. Since 1994,19 executive agencies have been established, coveringfunctional areas such as airports, businessregistration, taxation, visas and national statistics.

What other characteristics of the Tanzanian publicsector should be taken into account when discussingcapacity issues?

• The actions of politicians and senior governmentofficials in Tanzania have been broadly supportive ofpublic service reform. The Tanzanian governing elitebased mainly in Dar es Salaam appears convincedabout the need to embrace globalisation as a keypart of any national development strategy. Thisbelief, in turn, has led to a series of broad policy

Notes17 See Mutahaba (1986).

directions that include encouraging foreigninvestment, modernising the public service,improving a variety of institutions such as the ruleof law and regulatory mechanisms, and improvingrelationships with the international developmentcommunity. The President, himself a former publicservant, has supported reform over his eight-yearterm. All three ministers in charge of the reformportfolio since 1996 have worked to push it forward.As mentioned earlier, most of the changes in the1990s encouraged the depoliticisation of policymaking and created space for ministries anddepartments to craft and manage reformprogrammes with politicians supplying generaloversight and support. Indeed, some Tanzanianobservers interviewed for this case studycommented that politics now comes as much afterthe start of implementation as before.

• Politicians and senior officials do appear to havedifferent perspectives on public service reform, asmight be expected. In the Tanzanian system,permanent secretaries see their primary reportingrelationship through the Chief Secretary who, inturn, reports to the President. Ministers, while stillresponsible to the National Assembly have, inpractice, little direct control over the reformprogramme. In effect, the Public Service ReformProgramme is largely designed and controlledthrough the central bureaucracy. Executiveagencies, for example, report to permanentsecretaries and on to the Chief Secretary and thePresident. More than in most other Africancountries, the PSRP is insulated from politicisation.

• Each country has a few key issues that affect theprogress of public service reform. In the Tanzaniacase, one of the most obvious has to do with payreform and more specifically with the remunerationfor middle and senior-level government officials.One of the historical legacies of the 1960s and 1970shas been ambivalence, especially at the politicallevel, about the ethics and impact of financialincentives in a society that still believes inegalitarianism. Much of the original purpose of

Tanzanian socialism was to create a classless societyin which favoured groups, particularly thoseengaged in commerce and the professions, wouldnot be allowed to capture undue benefits either interms of salaries or access to opportunities.18 Oneof the outcomes of this principle was thecompression of public sector salaries. A difficultissue for the Government to resolve as part of thecurrent PSRP has therefore been that of pay reformand the awarding of bonuses to key staff especiallyat the professional levels. Pay levels remaincompressed and many of the key staff whosecontributions are critical to improved performanceremain severely underpaid.19

• The Tanzanian approach to policy analysis anddecision making has become more systematic andprofessional compared to many other countries.Efforts have been made to strengthen the CabinetSecretariat.20 Cabinet liaison staff and policy unitshave been set up in the sector ministries. The Inter-ministerial Technical Committee (IMTC), composedof the Permanent Secretaries, has been in placesince the late 1970s and by all accounts, provides agenuine capability in inter-ministerialcoordination.21 This trend to institutionalising thedecision-making process has been accelerated bythe transition to a multi-party political system.

• Tanzania remains an aid-dependent country. Butrelationships between the Government and theinternational funding agencies have become morebalanced and collaborative since hitting bottom inthe mid-1980s. Both sides have made significantefforts to restore the appropriate decision-makingrole of the Government and to make externalinterventions less intrusive and directive. TheGovernment now plays a much greater role in aidmanagement. Improved communication has led tomore of a shared understanding about aidpriorities. An independent group of advisersmonitors the behaviour of both the Government andthe donors and submits regular reports andrecommendations.

• The Tanzanian public service is working to improve itsperformance, credibility and competence.The generalidea of public action through government still hascurrency in Tanzania. But most departments andagencies have yet to regain the standing they oncehad in the early 1970s. Most wage levels would haveto double to reach acceptable levels, especially at themid-levels of technical, professional and managerialstaff.22 Indeed, the level of service provision reachedduring that period has yet to be achieved three


7

Notes18 Some of the legitimacy of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM),

the largest political party, still stems from this principle.19 For a detailed analysis, see Kiragu et al. (2005: 109-149).20 The Cabinet Secretariat currently has 14 professionals.21 One senior Tanzanian official noted that the IMTC was

established to help coordinate the war against the Idi Aminregime in the late 1970s. It has functioned well ever since. Itnow fills the role of a steering committee for the PSRP. Itmeets regularly - almost weekly - and is chaired by the ChiefSecretary.

22 It should be kept in mind that Tanzania was one of the fewAfrican states where salaries were higher in 2000 than theywere in the early 1990s.

decades later. Public dissatisfaction with poor servicelevels was a major factor in pushing both theGovernment and the international fundingcommunity to shift to an emphasis on performancein the late 1990s.

The 'readiness' of the Tanzanian public sector for large-scale change was, not surprisingly, mixed. Many staffappear to have welcomed the chance to improve theirindividual and collective performance and weredetermined to make progress. But at the same time,major constraints on the implementation of publicservice reform still existed. Most of these issues wereentirely predictable and could be found in almost allpublic services around the world.

• Most reform programmes lose energy when theyspread out beyond a narrow circle of true believers. Inthe Tanzanian case, some staff in the MDAs,particularly outside of Dar es Salaam, tended to seereform as a preoccupation of the bureaucratic elite.From this perspective, benefits from the reformswould continue to go to senior managers in centralagencies, while most of the major disruptions wouldbe passed on to the middle levels of the MDAs. Fewstaff at the operating levels, for example, wereeligible for salary supplements under the SelectiveAdditional Salary Enhancement (SASE) compared tothose at the more senior levels. Central agencies suchas the Ministry of Finance were perceived as underlittle pressure to delegate authority to supportregular operations.

• Generational issues were at work in shaping thereceptivity of public servants to major reforms.23 Forthe younger age group under 40 years of age, thePSRP was more likely to be seen as a chance to workwith new ideas and techniques such as client surveysand organisational self-assessments. But for manyolder staff, the emphasis on issues such ascontractualism and individual incentives seemedinappropriate. For this group, the reforms lacked themoral authority and legitimacy that they believedcharacterised the Tanzania of the 1960s and 1970s.Different groups within the public service haddifferent perspectives on the values that the reformsrepresented.

• Perceptions also differed between professional andadministrative groups.The first group was more likelyto view the PSRP as focused on organisationalchanges with little recognition of the particular

needs of technical professional staff, especially thoseat the middle levels of many MDAs. Many suchorganisations still suffered from shortfalls inprofessional expertise stemming from staff freezesthat had characterised reform efforts in the mid-1990s. Many also saw few benefits of the PSRP interms of new equipment or operating costs and fewquick advances in terms of performance on theground. Again, not surprisingly, many mid-level staffsaw the reforms as lacking understanding of thechallenges faced by operational staff on a daily basis.

• Finally, many public servants saw themselves as thetargets of continuous reform measures since theearly 1990s.They remained sceptical about the valueof the latest 'fashion' to sweep over the government.These staff, in common with their counterparts inother parts of the world, tended to try and wait outthe latest reform impulse until such time as realincentives existed for generating real commitmentand collaboration.This trend to minimal participationapplied, in particular, to the many staff in actingpositions and was accentuated by a low level ofunderstanding of the real purpose and nature of thereforms.


Notes

23 As an example, the Ministry of Communications age setswere the following: 63% male, of whom 4.4% were under 35years of age, and 1.5% were over 55.

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5 Strategic positioningand design of thePublic Service ReformProgramme

Part of the challenge of this case is to understand theprocess of change that underpinned the PublicService Reform Programme. What was the scope ofthe reform programme? What kind of a process wasthe PO-PSM managing? What challenges did it posefor the PO-PSM unit? We can see in the Tanzaniancase a series of deliberate choices and approaches.

First, the Government had positioned the TanzanianPSRP in the mainstream of global public sector reform.Both the Government and the international fundersbelieved this to be appropriate given the increasingneed of the public sector to respond to market forcesat both the country and global levels. The previouschange strategies in the 1970s and 1980s hademphasised the value of Tanzanian practices and hadshown a pronounced scepticism towards the use offoreign ideas and techniques. In the late 1990s, theGovernment, with enthusiastic international support,opted for the wholesale adoption of a set of reformmeasures collectively known as the new publicmanagement, much of which was being appliedinternationally under the sponsorship of agenciessuch as the World Bank and DFID. In particular,international funding institutions had urged anumber of English-speaking African states such asGhana, Uganda, the Gambia and Kenya to adopt

them. These measures included a focus on serviceimprovements, executive agencies, performancecontracts, and incentive systems for both individualsand MDAs, merit principles and practices, suppliercompetition, citizen charters, citizen as customers,and so forth.24 As we shall see later, this preferencefor foreign models had implications i n terms of thetransfer of organisational practices, absorptivecapacity and a heavy reliance on technical assistance.

Second, the Tanzanian approach to public servicereform favoured what might be called plannedcomprehensiveness.25 It was an ambitiousgovernment-wide approach which did not rely muchon piloting or incrementalism.26 The Government, incooperation with the donors, embarked on 'rollingout' a variety of new systems. Indeed, few low-incomecountries can have embarked on as manysimultaneous institutional and organisationalreforms as has Tanzania.27 Two aspects of thisapproach have been of particular importance. First, aguiding assumption was that the overalleffectiveness of the reforms would come, at least inpart, from the synergies arising out of a series ofother institutional reforms that had been passed intolaw over the last five years.28 Second, all MDAs werecompelled to participate in the PSRP. Participationwas not staged or voluntary. The financial cost of thiscomprehensive approach was considerable with thevarious external credits amounting to over US$100million over five years. The combined weight of thesereforms would have implications for the work of thePO-PSM , including the need to emphasise coverageover customisation, and the use of external technicalassistance rather than local expertise.

Third, the Tanzanian approach to capacity andperformance improvement favoured the reform ofexisting public service organisations rather than thecreation of new ones. The Government privatisedmany dysfunctional parastatals in the 1980s and1990s. Some new organisations such as executiveagencies were set up in the 1990s. But beginning in2002, the focus was on the reform and restructuringof existing MDAs. The Government had little faith indramatic experiments along the lines of the EthiopianMinistry of Capacity Building. Neither theGovernment nor the international financingcommunity saw sweeping structural change as theway forward to improve capacity and performance.For both, the key was to embed reform in the dailyroutines of existing political and organisationalactors.


9

Notes24 Executive agencies are now used in Tanzania to manage

airports, do business registrations and produce nationalstatistics, amongst other tasks.

25 The term 'reformitis' is now used in some circles to replacethe 'projectitis' of an earlier generation; see Therkildsen(2000: 62).

26 The original intention was to limit the early stages of theperformance improvement model (PIM) to three MDAs.Then it was decided to extend the programme to 10, andfinally all 29 MDAs. Part of the reason for the lack of pilotinghad to do with the wish of the MDAs to gain access to PSRPfunding.

27 This tendency to comprehensiveness is a common one inTanzania history. Goran Hyden wrote in 1984 about the'strong urge to do everything and do it all at once' (cited inBarkhan, 2000: 107).

28 These include the Local Government Act, the Medium TermPay Policy, the Legal Sector Reform Programme, the PublicFinancial Management Reform Programme, the PublicService Act and Regulations, the Public ServiceManagement and Employment Policy, and the Code ofEthics and Conduct.

Fourth, the Government adopted a rough sequencingstrategy which tried to build both longer -and shorter-term horizons into the implementation of the PSRP.Section 3 above set out the evolution of change andreform, ranging from rapid expansion in the 1970s tostagnation in the 1980s and downsizing in the 1990s.The phase beginning in 2002 focused on MDAcapacity and performance improvement. The finalstage would focus more on the achievement ofquality extending out until at least to 2011. These lasttwo stages would have a different emphasis butwould overlap, as set out below:• structural reforms and cost containment 1989-1999;• structural reforms 1993-2003;• performance management structures and systems

1995-2007;• performance management culture improvements

2000-2009;• quality improvement cycle 2004-2011.

Fifth, another sequencing issue had to do with 'hard'versus 'soft' aspects. The phase beginning in 2000would focus on changes to formal organisationalstructures and systems. Once these 'hard' changeshad been implemented, more attention would thenbe paid to the 'soft' reforms having to do with culturaland attitudinal change. In the Tanzanian context, staffin the PO-PSM frequently referred to such 'soft'reforms as the need for a different 'mindset', i.e. agreater individual performance orientation mainlyamong the middle- and lower-level staff of the MDAs.

Sixth, the Tanzanian PSRP strategy was mainly top-down and supply-driven, a strategy that should not besurprising in the Tanzanian context. A good deal oflatent or tacit demand existed in the country forimproved services. But little evidence existed ofTanzanian citizens asking for the type of reforms suchas citizen charters that the public service reformleadership put forward. In practice, the reformprogramme tried to combine attention to both supplyand demand - supply in terms of some of thecomponents that were perceived to be essential toimproved capacity and performance, and demand interms of creating greater accountability ofgovernment to its citizens.

A sixth element of the reform programme was thelimited use of financial incentives. According to muchcurrent thinking, performance - and presumablycapacity as well - will only result if the pattern ofexternal and internal financial incentives affecting

individual behaviour acts to align that behaviour infavour of the desired changes. But the Tanzanianapproach to change, in practice, gave less emphasis toincentives. Some effort was made to boost salaries, asdescribed elsewhere in this case, but the increaseswere not of sufficient size to make a major difference.Financial incentives, at least at the individual level,were used to retain staff and to ensure some sense ofcompliance. They lagged but they did not lead or drivereform behaviour. Their role was to support othermanagement strategies designed to foster change. Inpractice, the use of financial incentives was a limitedpart of a basic deal on the PSRP: persuading mid-levelstaff of the MDAs to think and work differently inexchange for better conditions, training and salaries.


10

6 Building the capacityto manage the reformprogramme

Given this overall strategy for public service reform,how did the Government, with the help of theinternational funding community, go about buildingthe capacity needed to manage it? We look at thisissue from four perspectives: first, the evolution of thePO-PSM unit itself, second its change strategy, third,the growth in the capabilities of the PO-PSM, andfourth, the growth in the capabilities of the publicservice to manage complex change.

6.1 The evolution and positioning of the PO-PSM

The structure and scope of action of the PO-PSM wentthrough two phases in the late 1990s and early2000s, and was scheduled to shift to a thirdsometime in late 2004. Some basic history may beuseful here. The Government made modest efforts inthe mid-1980s to initiate public service reform. Somedata collection and an overview study were carriedout in 1984-1985. More systematic diagnostic workbegan in 1990-1992 with a series of studies for theUNDP carried out by Professor Baguma from theMuzumbe University. These studies, in turn, led theGovernment and the UNDP to set up a Civil ServiceReform Secretariat attached to the President's Office.The group itself consisted of mainly expatriate staff.The mandate of this group during its first orestablishment phase was the following:

• To create a unit that would advise the Governmenton the design and management of public servicereform.

• To help manage the process of retrenchment anddownsizing.

• To establish the first group of executive agencies.

During this first phase, the PO-PSM thus functionedas an enclave structure or a project implementationunit set up to manage public service reform as aconventional aid project. Most of the expatriate staffwere provided through international technicalassistance. The functional relationships of the unitwere mainly with donors and central agencies within

the Government. It had less outreach to sectoralministries, departments and agencies. Issues to dowith mainstreaming, sustainability, capacitydevelopment and a broader government-widecommitment of the reform strategy were not yetpriorities.

The second or mainstreaming phase of the unit beganin 1998. This phase incorporated some of the sameobjectives of the establishment phase but extendedthe scope of the PO-PSM's role to working directlywith MDAs. In addition, care was taken to positionand structure the unit in a way that could make iteffective in facilitating the reform process.

The unit was converted into an established part ofgovernment and expanded in size. In effect, it evolvedfrom a quasi-project implementation unit (PIU) to apermanent unit responsible for managing the PSRP.The PO-PSM was mainstreamed to create the demandfor capacity to manage the new challenges forreform. The Government assigned the unit to aministry - i.e. the President's Office - with a bettercapability for managing organisational change andprogramme implementation. Such a decision waspossible in the Tanzanian context given the lessdominant role of the financial and economicministries compared to their counterparts incountries such as Uganda. Such central agencies couldbe effective in driving retrenchment and downsizing.But their role tended to lose effectiveness once thefocus of the reform switched to the broader issues ofcapacity building and performance improvement.

Care was taken in the design of the reform process tobalance connectedness and operating space.The PO-PSMremained tightly connected to the processes andnetworks of Government mainly through the role of thePermanent Secretary. But it was given sufficientoperating space within the Government to allow itsome freedom of action. Change agents such as the PO-PSM usually face a challenge in crafting and sustainingtheir position and niche. If they are too intrusive andcontrolling they can undermine the very process ofreform they are promoting, as other departments andministries withhold cooperation and cease meaningfulinvolvement, but if they are too detached they canbecome irrelevant.The balance achieved in theTanzanian case resulted in the creation of an effectiveoperating and discussion space within Government thatcould facilitate inter-agency negotiations andbargaining over the range of reform issues.


11

The type of leadership of the unit was crucial in twokey respects. First, the Permanent Secretary, given hisseniority, years of service within the Government andconnections both domestically and internationally,was able to connect the PO-PSM into a variety ofother systems, ranging from those linked to theCabinet Office of the Government, to theinternational funding agencies operating in Dar esSalaam, to international networks dealing with publicservice reform.29 The unit began to depend for itseffectiveness on building, managing and sustaining aweb of relationships that could both enhance itslegitimacy and increase its contribution to the widerprocess of change.

Senior managers within the PO-PSM, led by thePermanent Secretary, also had a sense oforganisational craftsmanship and saw the unit assomething to be creatively built and managed. Aspart of this process, the unit began to pay moreattention to itself as an organisational entity andbegan to develop its own identity. Care, for example,was taken to staff it with a diversity of people rangingfrom academic professionals to long-time publicservants to younger-generation contractors. Effortswere made to inculcate a sense of professional prideand mission in the staff. Managers gave moreattention to its capability for internal collaborationand cohesion. Such internal cohesion was alsoreinforced by a series of working relationshipsamongst key staff that had been formed overprevious decades of work in the Tanzanian publicservice. Finally, the Office was staffed almost entirelyby Tanzanian professionals, a shift that acted toreinforce its particular identity. Most of the previousgroup of external technical assistance (TA) personnelended their contracts and moved on. Even thoseprofessional staff working as full-time externaltechnical assistants were Tanzanian citizens paid forby international organisations.

The Government worked to balance stability andadaptation. Most change units suffer from constantturnover as staff enter and leave, political andbureaucratic sponsors shift, and priorities change. Thecontrast with the PO-PSM is noticeable. TheGovernment maintained its operating space bysustaining political support throughout theinevitable ministerial changes. The PermanentSecretary was its leader and guiding force for tenyears, a situation that helped to stabilise it as well assignal the importance of its work to the wider public

service community. Many of the key staff at the levelbelow the Permanent Secretary remained in place for3-4 years. The bureaucratic location of the PO-PSM didnot change over the period. Neither did the values itmodelled - professionalism, performance andhonesty. But it is also true that the structure andstrategy of the unit evolved constantly throughoutthe period 2000-2004 as it responded to a differentpattern of needs. Effective capacity needs somestability in order to emerge over time. But it alsoneeds to adapt in order to keep up with the demandsplaced upon it.

The main strategy for putting in place individualcompetencies needed in the office was that ofselection and recruitment, i.e. a 'buy' rather than a'make' option. Staff were hired with a variety ofexisting skills ranging from academic andinternational experience in public administration tolong-term service in the Government. Formal stafftraining took place but was not a top priority in thePO-PSM. Most learning took place either on-the-jobor in group settings such as staff retreats.Management gave special attention to thedevelopment of social/personal as well astechnical/organisational competencies.

The development of the intangible assets of the PO-PSM became key. Capacity is frequently described as afunction of technical skills and tangible resources. Butit also has to do with confidence, positive self-perception and organisational integrity. The PO PSMas an organisational unit developed a confidence andan energy that fuelled its capacity.30 According to thePermanent Secretary, the key part of the PO-PSM'soverall capacity had to do with attitude, commitment,pride and focus, something that developedparticularly during the years 2002-2004. Staffdeveloped a strong belief in the value of their work. Intheir eyes, the PO-PSM offered them an opportunityto make a professional contribution to thedevelopment of their country. Simply put, the unitprovided its staff with a sense of meaning andcontext. Commitment, a sense of responsibility andmotivation stemmed from this source rather thanfrom any carefully crafted set of financial incentives.

Finally, we would point to the access of the PO PSM tosufficient tangible resources as part of the process ofcapacity development. Its professional environment,including office space, was good. Equipment -


Notes29 The Permanent Secretary was officially head of the PO-PSM,

and occasionally substituted for the Chief Secretary duringthe latter's absence.

30 One staff member in an MDA referred to the PO-PSM staff'the crusaders'.

12

computers, desks, communication lines - was in ashort but not critical supply compared to many othergroups in Tanzania, particularly outside Dar esSalaam. Funding through the support of theinternational agencies was adequate. This aspect ofthe capacity of the PO-PSM was satisfactory but notdecisive.

6.2 The capacity and capabilities of the PO-PSM

In this section we address the emerging capabilitiesof the PO-PSM that it needed to manage the PublicService Reform Programme. To do this, we have setout in Tables 1 and 2 below a rough categorisation ofthe main capabilities developed by the PO-PSM thatwere highlighted in our discussions.

These capabilities appear to have emerged inresponse to a variety of external demands andinternal strategies. An early stage of evolution sawthe PO-PSM focus on getting its various componentstogether (e.g. positioning, structure, tangibleresources, staffing) and trying to develop itscapability to do a few key technical tasks such asmanaging the inflow of technical assistance andhelping other ministries, departments and agencies(MDAs) to begin putting in place performancemanagement systems.

The effectiveness of many of these capabilities,particularly those aimed at managing externalreform issues, depended in part on the legitimacy ofthe PO-PSM within political and bureaucratic circleswithin the Government and its ability to manage itsrelationships productively. Capabilities were, inpractice, bestowed from the outside, from otherMDAs and the international funding community, aswell as developed on the inside. For the PO-PSMcapacity was, in part, a relational quality.

The PO-PSM devoted a good deal of attention to whatare seen in many circles as 'softer' capabilities.Specifically, it focused on building its capabilities forinter-agency cooperation, for organisational learning,for improved communication and for buildingrelationships with MDAs. The Permanent Secretarycited the growth in confidence, both personal andorganisational, as critical in terms of building thesecapabilities.

Capabilities appear to emerge out of the interactionof a complex range of components and attributes. Inthe case of the PO-PSM, such components includedthe more technical, tangible aspects (e.g.organisational structure, access to operating costs,staff, technical systems such as informationtechnology) and the intangible (e.g. confidence,interpersonal and inter-group relationships,motivation, a set of shared values, organisationalidentity, pride and commitment).

Collective capabilities We define capabilities here as the collective abilitiesof the PO-PSM that allowed it to perform, adapt andbuild its credibility. For ease of understanding, wehave used one simple categorisation of thesecapabilities - the more technical ones that provide thefocus and substance of performance, and theorganisational/human ones that allowed the office toevolve into a coherent functioning system.31 Theseare set out in Tables 1 and 2 below.32 Readers shouldnote that this rough mapping of capabilities havebeen compiled on the basis of brief discussions with asample of staff. It is not meant as a comprehensivelist.


13

Notes31 There are many ways of categorising capabilities, including

hard versus soft, internal versus external, short term versuslonger term, transitory versus permanent.

32 The tables are adapted from Ulrich and Smallwood (2004).

Notes33 One staff member explained leadership in the following

terms: the leader must explain and legitimise. She or hemust be a role model in terms of work and actions, andmust explain what is required.

Table 1: Examples of the PO-PSM's technical capabilities as of mid-2004 Capabilities Background and issues Actions Providing policy advice • Providing the President, the Cabinet • Unit hired Tanzanian professionals

and ministers with professional advice with international experience on public service reform

• Thinking strategically about change and reform

Information technology • Building collective ability and individual competencies for it

Gender mainstreaming • An early priority for the PO-PSM • Established a separate unit and staffed it with experienced Tanzanian staff

Monitoring and • Need to put in place M&E capability • Slowly experimented with differentevaluation both within the unit and approaches that could capture both

across government capacity and performance

Table 2: Examples of the PO-PSM's organisational/human capabilities as of mid-2004.Capabilities Background and issues Actions Strategic leadership33 • Need for leadership both internally • Reliance on the Permanent Secretary

within the PO-PSM and across plus recruitment of senior officialsGovernment from other parts of Government

Senior staff leadership • Need for senior staff below the PS to • Customised developmentdevelop management programmes for senior staff and leadership skills • On-the-job training and staff

retreats• Mentoring by more senior staff

including the Permanent SecretaryBuilding relationships • Crafting a uniform approach • Office worked hard in the earlywith MDAs to PSRP implementation years to gain MDA cooperation

• Legitimising the role of the PO-PSM • Office hired officers from line • Helping to build performance ministries to help with liaison role

Management systems in MDAsOrganisational learning • Not a priority in the early period • Mastering M&E and other learning

1999-2002 methodologies• Became more important in the later

phase beginning around 2003 in order to master complex change processes

Acting professionally • Need to ensure high standards of • Developing role modelsconduct in terms of reliability, • Mentoring by senior stafffocus on the job and probity

Team building • Need for the PO-PSM to function as • Special group courses for staff an integrated unit members plus management support

Creating identity • Need for the office to establish its • Leadership at the top and middle and confidence organisational presence and legitimacy levels that focused on building office

coherence


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7 Performance What can be said about performance or results of thechange process? As stated earlier, the analysis in thiscase was not directed towards assessing theoutcomes and impact of the overall Public ServiceReform Programme. More attention is given to earlyindications that the PO-PSM was succeeding inbuilding a system-wide capacity for managingcomplex processes of change.

In general, change strategies have received, untilrecently, little explicit attention in developmentcooperation. Many interventions appear to be basedon the assumption that complex change will comeabout either through the power of bureaucraticrationality (e.g. clear objectives, planned inputs,results chains, agreed milestones, anticipated results),or through carefully designed incentives that willinduce the required behaviour or through heroicleadership that compels individuals to do thingsdifferently. Yet most assessments of change strategiesindicate a decidedly mixed pattern of success. Poordiagnoses, political and individual conflicts, lack ofpersistence and resources can combine to derail mostchange efforts. In the case of public service reform inTanzania, we can see an explicit strategy at work that,at least in the short and medium term, was a good'fit' for the situation.

• The office shifted the direction of changemanagement from an enclave strategy to onefocused more on mainstreaming. During the period1993-1999, the original Civil Service ReformProgramme functioned as a project office. Itsmandate was to devise, sell and oversee theimplementation of a series of reform initiativessuch as cost containment, the restructuring ofgovernment machinery and the establishment ofexecutive agencies. The advantage of such astrategy was centralised focus and control. Thedownside was weak relationships with lineministries, departments and agencies. In 2000, theGovernment, at the urging of the new PO-PSM,decided to shift away from this enclave strategy andmove to one designed to promote mainstreaming,i.e. the diffusion of the ownership of reformthroughout the Government.

• More specifically, this mainstreaming strategy tooka particular form. Operational responsibility wouldbe devolved to the MDAs. But in contrast with themainstreaming strategy adopted in theEnvironmental Action (ENACT) Programme inJamaica (another in the series of ECDPM casestudies), all MDAs were required to participate inthe PSRP regardless of their level of interest orcommitment.34 In addition, a standard package ofreform prescriptions was to be adopted with littlevariation or innovation at the outset. Changemanagement units would be set up in each MDA.The PO-PSM would manage the reform process aswhole on behalf of the Government and would alsoact as a support group to the MDAs.

• Also embedded in the evolving PSRP changestrategy was an assumption about a cascading ortrickle-down approach to organisational change.Political and PO-PSM leadership had madesustained efforts in the mid to late 1990s to engageand convince the senior-level officials in the sectoralMDAs about the need for public sector reform,especially in the area of service delivery. Thestrategy here was to build and expand a consensusaround the need for reform, first at the seniorbureaucratic and political levels and then at themid-levels of the individual MDAs.35 Beginning in2000 the programme switched the focus to the


15

Notes34 It is instructive to compare the approach to mainstreaming

in the Tanzanian case with that adopted in the ENACTprogramme in Jamaica (Morgan, 2004). The latter relied onvoluntary participation in an effort to build on thecommitment and interest of particular MDAs.

35 These groups were estimated to number about 500 people.

Box 1: Technical assistance in support of the PSRP

One of the consulting teams,PriceWaterhouseCoopers, managed the performanceimprovement programme at State House, the VicePresident's Office, the Prime Minister's Office, and theministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs. As many 22staff members and consultants were engaged at anyone time, including experts from the firm's variousEuropean offices. The work consisted of helping withorganisational self-assessments using the EuropeanFoundation for Quality Management (EFQM)framework, holding staff workshops, coaching andmonitoring. All strategic plans for performanceimprovement had to be designed and submitted byJune 2004.

mid-level staff of the MDAs, whose interests andviewpoints were different from those at the moresenior levels. Future efforts would be needed toreach the 'street-level' staff of line ministries.36

• The Government decided to hire, with the help ofinternational financing agencies, external technicalassistance staff to help plan and implement thechange process. The PO-PSM was faced with aconsiderable management challenge given theoverall Government decision to pursue twosimultaneous goals: to ensure thecomprehensiveness of the programme and tomaintain speed of reform. In the judgment of thePO-PSM, such a programme could only beimplemented by the extensive use of technicalassistance sourced mainly internationally, but alsofrom within Tanzania. The PO-PSM, with thefinancial support of the World Bank and DFID,obtained the services of five consulting groups whowere to focus on strategic planning at the level ofthe individual MDAs.37

• By mid-2004, progress in the PSRP was uneven, asmight have been expected. Changes in centralministries proceeded much faster than those insectoral ministries with major service deliveryresponsibilities. Put another way, the urgency at thestrategic level at the top of the public sector wasevident. Less enthusiasm existed at the middle andlower operational levels. Thus far, 20 executiveagencies had been established, and 24 MDAs hadclient service charters.

8 External intervention In general, the role played by the internationalfunding community in the Public Service ReformProgramme was a positive one. Part of the reason forthis outcome lies in the broader recasting of thepartnership between the Government and theinternational funding community after reaching acrisis point in the mid-1990s. At that point, both sidesaccepted the need to rethink the relationship giventhe lack of trust and collaboration that haddeveloped. Both agreed to have the Government playa more decisive role, with the role of the internationalcommunity shifting to one of support and facilitation.A spirit of greater openness began to characterisemost Government-donor interactions. The aidrelationship itself and its development outcomeswere independently monitored. Report cards on theperformance of both sides began to be issued inadvance of major biennial meetings betweenGovernment and the international community.

The point here is that the relationships surroundingthe Public Service Reform Programme benefited fromthis broader pattern of partnership. The Governmentand the main international funders of the PSRP - theWorld Bank, DFID, the Japanese InternationalCooperation Agency (JICA), the Danish InternationalDevelopment Agency (DANIDA), the SwedishInternational Development Agency (SIDA), the UnitedNations Development Programme (UNDP) and theCanadian International Development Agency (CIDA) -established a Joint Consultative Committee whichfunctioned effectively.

What other factors appear to have mattered?

• The Tanzanian PSRP could be characterised as one oflow politicisation and high strategy, precisely thetype of situation in which international fundingagencies are most comfortable. The PSRP lent itselfto the contributions - policy advice and technicalassistance - that funders were best able to supply.

• The main international funders, the World Bank andDFID, accepted the PSRP for what it was likely to be -a comprehensive, long-term programme of reformthat would need 15-20 years of steady, patient andflexible support, much like reform efforts in high-income countries. Quiet persistence, both within


16

Notes36 For a similar strategy in a US public sector agency, see

Kelman (2005).37 In some MDAs, coverage was extensive. In the Ministry of

Lands, 250 out of about 700 staff attended the strategicplanning workshops.

the Government of Tanzania and the internationaldevelopment community, paid off and reinforcedthe sense of a longer-term partnership. Thisdifferent sense of time represented a departure formany of the funding agencies and points to theneed for adaptation on all sides if such complexprogrammes are to be effective.

• Both Government and the international fundingagencies refrained from imposing arduousreporting, monitoring and measurement schemesuntil such times as the PSRP staff were in a positionto design and manage them.

• There also appears to have been an acceptancewithin the international community of theGovernment's capacity for self-organisation andself-correction. Situations in the PSRP that wouldappear to be a 'mess' in the short term wouldtherefore be seen to have a good chance of evolvingthough adaptation into productive gains in themedium or long term.

• The stability of the Tanzanian staff was matched bythat on the international side. Some Bank staff, forexample, had been working on the PSRP since itsinception. Organisational trust and commitmentamongst organisations were reinforced by thosebetween individuals on both sides. The connectionsbetween key individuals were also reinforced by thedecentralised organisational structure of the maindonor offices. This structure also generated thecontextual knowledge that supported the reformprogramme.

9 General observations This case study is not, as mentioned earlier, anevaluation of the Public Service Reform Programme oran assessment of the overall approach to developingthe capacity of the public sector. But it may be useful,particularly for an international audience, to offersome general observations about capacity issues inthe Tanzanian case.

The nexus of fit, positioning and capacityoutcomes This case and others conducted as part of the overallECDPM research programme raise the issue of thestrategic intent and positioning of capacityinterventions. Each context, national, regional or local,represents a complex soup of political, cultural,economic and social structures. Each situation comeswith institutional patterns that create incentives, actas constraints, offer opportunities and cover variousfields of activity. The configuration of power andvested interests supports some capacity interventionswhile ignoring or opposing others. Windows ofopportunity for capacity development open and thenclose. All interventions take place within dynamicsystems that shape or at least influence the capacityoutcomes. Even interventions at 'micro' levels cansucceed or fail in terms of their fit and positioning.

A good deal of capacity development work in the pasthas focused on the manipulation of internalorganisational variables and has tended to give lessattention to this broader positioning issue. But moreattention to this issue is now appearing. Engberg-Pedersen and Levy, for example, point to theimportance of the 'fit' issue and hypothesise thatcapacity interventions 'are more likely to showsatisfactory performance in one of two situations a)where country commitment is far-reaching, someinstitutional capacity exists, and operations arecomprehensive or b) where political and bureaucraticcommitment and capacity is limited and theoperational scope of the projects is narrow'.38 TheTanzanian case would appear to validate thishypothesis. The Tanzanian approach to public servicereform was comprehensive and top-down, a strategynot always conducive to success. But a number offactors appear to have come together in a 'systems'way to produce the direction and energy needed tomake progress. And they did so with enough critical


17Notes38 See Engberg-Pedersen and Levy (2005: 89).

mass to generate some momentum. These factorsincluded the following:• a political elite that saw its interests being

enhanced by well performing public organisations;• a political leadership that made a long-term

commitment to reform and who buffered thereforms from damaging intrusion;

• an approach to public service reform that wascoherent and feasible enough to generate domesticand international credibility;

• an international development community willing todefray a good part of the costs;

• a political system that was able to absorb andmediate the political costs of job and revenuelosses; and

• some acceptance from citizens that these reformswould, at some point in the future, lead to betterservice delivery.

The need for operating space The issue of the need for space for reform andmanoeuvre is one that has appeared in many of theECDPM cases. Chaos and complexity theory tells usthat change is likely to proceed most effectively at'the edge of chaos', that is, at the stage of systemevolution between stability/rigidity andchaos/disintegration. Put another way, the process ofcapacity development appears to need the space thatexists between tight control and no control. Much ofthe current thinking in development cooperationtends to favour the control and accountability side ofthe space 'balance' given the past abuses andunresponsiveness of many public sectororganisations. But in the Tanzania case, it was criticalfor the PO-PSM to have the space to develop itsidentity, capacity and confidence. And such space wasnot simply the administrative creation of seniorbureaucrats. In the final analysis, it was sustained bydeeper dynamics in Tanzanian governance andsociety, as discussed in section 3. Over the yearsTanzania has retained a political space for reform thatin turn has allowed government managers to pursuemore positive approaches to public service reform.

Transplantation versus organic growth Debate about the value of transferring managementideas and practices developed in high-incomecountries to organisations in Africa has a long history.In the 1960s and 1970s, conventional wisdomassumed that such ideas needed to be customised tomeet a different set of conditions. In the 1980s and1990s, that view shifted to the other end of the

spectrum, i.e. to a belief in the universality of manydonor prescriptions, including results-basedmanagement, privatisation, participation, learning,and many others.39

What was noticeable about the Tanzanian publicservice reform strategy was its reliance at the start ofthe PSRP on a transplantation approach as opposed toa more organic, evolutionary process customised forTanzanian conditions. More specifically, the heart ofthe PSRP strategy was based on a package of ideasthat made up the 'new public management' (NPM).Indeed, almost all of the basic menu of that package -executive agencies, customer surveys, benchmarking,performance budgeting and contracts, the pervasiveuse of incentives and indicators, citizen charters, andso on - were applied with only a modest attempt totailor them to Tanzanian conditions. A similar faith intransplantation can be seen in the use by all theconsulting teams of an organisational assessmentframework from the European Foundation for QualityManagement (EFQM).40 Other techniques werecopied from Malaysian experience. Tanzania'sprogramme for the creation of executive agencieswas consciously modelled on the UK's 'Next Steps'strategy.

Despite their fashionability, the applicability andvalue of the prescriptions of the new publicmanagement is the subject of some debate both inlow- and high-income countries.41 In practice, therecord of achievement of pure NPM approacheswhere they have been applied in low-incomecountries can charitably be called mixed. But we couldfind little evidence of a sustained debate in Tanzaniaabout the wisdom of using the NPM formula exceptamong some mid-level staff of the MDAs and somelocal consultants associated with the programme.42


Notes39 One of the best analyses of the transferability issue remains

that by Moris (1979); for a more recent look at the issue, seeJackson (2003).

40 Most of the MDA staff viewed the EFQM framework as toocomplicated (at least 64 separate components) and toooriented to the specific conditions of the private sector.

41 See, for example, Minogue et al. (1998); Manning (2001);Sutch (1999); Polidano (1999) Therkildsen (2000); Savoie(1995); Schick (1998).

42 A number of officials in the sectoral agencies stated thatthey pressed the external consultants to outline the recordof effectiveness of the NPM approaches. Why were theyconsidered 'best practice', and by whom? What specificexamples could be given? Why were they felt to be relevantto the Tanzanian situation? The World Bank (1998) carriedout a portfolio review of its capacity development activities,which raised a number of transferability issues in areas suchas executive agencies.

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At first glance, this policy choice may seem puzzling.Many of the senior Tanzanian officials in the PO-PSMwere active in international discussions about theNPM and were aware of its potential limitations. Twoexplanations are possible. First, the Tanzanianpackage bears a strong resemblance to those appliedin other African countries including Ghana, Kenya,Uganda and Zambia.43 The NPM approach is a kind ofinstitutional structural adjustment complete with itsown standard package of prescriptions. As such, itappears as a successor to the approach of economicstructural adjustment in the 1980s. If countries wishto preserve good relations with the internationalfunding community, it is in their short-term interestto accept such prescriptions, particularly if they arenot clear and confident about possible alternatives.Its wholesale application may not have been seen asworth contesting in advance in the face of a united -or at least coordinated - international fundingcommunity and their associated consultants. Some ofthe Tanzanian participants may also have decided totreat all the various international prescriptions asexperiments that could quietly be dropped oradapted over time if they failed to produce muchvalue. Such adaptations would likely have a betterchance of getting agreement in the light ofoperational experience than in any pre-implementation debate.

Second, many Tanzanian officials supported theapplication of an NPM approach out of intellectualconviction. The stress on improving service deliveryand empowering citizens in particular, resonated withmany senior officials intent on getting beyond thebureaucratic decline of the 1980s and early 1990s. TheNPM was also promoted as international bestpractice and a symbol of modernisation andglobalisation. If Tanzania was to compete in theinternational marketplace, strategies such as the useof NPM approaches would have to be at least tried tosupport that objective. Finally, the NPM offeredTanzanian decision makers a coherent andcomprehensive approach to reform.44 Given the wishto go forward with a transformation of the publicservice, the NPM offered a plausible methodology foraccomplishing that goal.

The Tanzanian case opens up a series of issues thatare important in the larger debate about capacitydevelopment:• Where is the balance between customised, tailored

approaches to institutional and organisationalreforms versus international 'best practice'applications? Who decides, and on what basis?

• Can sufficient learning and flexibility be built intotransplanted approaches? Do both nationalparticipants and international funders have aninterest in building that kind of a learning capabilityand in tailoring transplanted strategies?

• Will governments and funders agree to thevariation and experimentation at the level ofindividual MDAs that would make learningpossible?

• Will the government's wish for a fast pace of reformoverwhelm the capacity of the system to absorbnew initiatives?

Comprehensiveness versus incrementalism The Tanzania case is a good example of the currenttrend to planned comprehensive reforms indevelopment cooperation. From this perspective,countries need transformative systems change,especially in the public sector. The assumption is thatthe synergies gained from simultaneous reforms inservice delivery, auditing, financial management, lawreform, policy analysis, democratisation, and so on,can boost overall performance. Such comprehensiveapproaches can help countries have a better chanceof achieving their Millennium Development Goals.Such strategies can also fit better into the currentdonor efforts at joint action and harmonisation.

Other views are more sceptical about the value ofplanned comprehensiveness as a reform strategy.45From this perspective, such approaches have thepotential to collapse under their own bureaucraticweight even in states that have a good supply ofskilled people. Most governments simply cannot dealwith the barrage of strategies, frameworks, plans,objectives, targets, indicators, coordination meetingsand transaction costs that come with such approaches.Nor do such approaches address incentive issues in away that would energise reforms.The truly sceptical seethe real 'drivers of change' of such reforms as havingmore to do with the need for external funders to beassociated with heroic plans, for foreign consultants tomarket the latest new thing, for partner governments to


19

Notes43 See Mutahaba and Kiragu (2002).44 Again there are precedents for this approach in Tanzanian

history. The country has tendency to experiment with newideologies. Hyden notes 'the unwillingness of policy makersto use the past as a source of guidance for the future' (citedin Barkhan, 2000: 108).

45 See Easterly (2005).

gain international credibility and for senior officials inpartner countries to gain access to additional resourcesfor their particular departments and ministries.

This case makes no judgment about the ultimatewisdom of the strategic choice in the Tanzanian PSRP.But what is clear is that a planned, comprehensiveapproach to public service reform is a strategic choice. Itmay succeed in some contexts and fail in others. It hasno inherent universal virtue. In the Tanzania case, aunusual combination of political support, low levels ofpolitical conflict, some skilled Tanzanian managers, anabsence of deep bureaucratic resistance, some historicalresonance, funder patience and some key domesticconstituencies may be enough to be 'good enough' tomake the PSRP effective. In the theatrical analogy of twoanalysts,Tanzania may just have the right stage, actorsand even props to pull off a comprehensive reformshow.46

Changing the approach to change This Tanzanian approach to public service reformreflects a mix of two basic approaches toorganisational change, each of which comes with itsown internal logic, values and anticipated outcomes.For ease of understanding, these have been labelledas theory P (a focus on development performance)


Notes46 See Stevens and Teggemann (2004: 49).47 For a discussion of this issue, see Beer and Nohria (2000).

20

and theory C (a focus on developing organisationalcapacity). Table 3 below sets out the 'ideal types' ofthese two approaches.47

This paper is not the place to argue the merits ofthese two idealised approaches. Most reformstrategies, when implemented, end up being amixture of both. But two aspects of their applicationin Tanzania merit attention. First, the differencesbetween their objectives and their methods representa trade-off in the PSRP, especially those aspects usingexternal technical assistance. Is the point of aparticular intervention to do with improvingperformance or is it to do with helping to build thecapacity to achieve improved performance? If betterperformance is achieved, does this automaticallymean enhanced capacity? Conversely, if capacity isbuilt, will it lead to improved performance? How bestcan those two objectives be combined in an overallprogramme of change? Should they be sequenced orintegrated? Under what circumstances do choiceshave to be made between improved performance andenhanced capacity?

We can see the Tanzanian authorities trying to find abalance between these two approaches. Overall, the

Table 3 Aspects Purpose

Approach to capacity issues

Leadership

Main focus

Planning

Application

Motivation

Emphasis on learning andexperimentation

Monitoring and evaluation

Use of consultants

Theory P Maximising performance in termsof development results

Seen as a secondary means insupport of performance ends

Top-down

Structure and systems

Systematic and directed andsolution-driven

Standardised and uniform

Incentives lead

Modest

Focuses on performance

Intensive and focused on taskachievement

Theory CDeveloping capacity

Seen as an end in itself

Participatory

Individual and collective skills,culture and mindset

Emergent and more incremental

Responsive and varied

Incentives lag

Critical

Focuses on capacity

Less intensive and focused onprocess and facilitation

implementation of the PSRP relied more on a 'theoryP' approach to change. The early emphasis was onchanging structures and systems. The process reliedon extensive use of consultants who applied astandard EFQM model of performanceimprovement.48 But plans call for more attention inthe future to cultural change within the MDAs.

These choices also had implications for the role of thePO-PSM. How could it best balance the need to buildits own group cohesion with the need to reach out tothe widening circle of participating MDAs across theGovernment? Embedded in this issue is the strategicchoice of role for the PSM: that of a director of thereform process applying a standardised package ofreforms to participating MDAs, or that of a supportorganisation helping MDAs learn about their newresponsibilities. Could these roles be combined in thePO-PSM, or should they be taken on sequentially? Andif some sort of transition in the role of the unit was tobe made, how could that change be carried out mosteffectively?

The challenges of learning Any process of capacity development dependscritically on the ability of participants to learncollectively about what works and what lasts. Fewpeople are against the general idea of learning. Butthe Tanzania case gives us a sense of why thecapability to learn can be so difficult to embed in acomplex reform programme.• The delivery of most of the reform interventions

was contracted out to consulting groups whosecontractual relationships emphasised productionand delivery rather than learning. Little incentiveexisted in the payment schedules for consultants toengage in more extended deliberations.

• The strategy of the reform programme in the earlystages relied on the application of standardisedapproaches. Customised solutions were notencouraged in the interests of faster progress andmore system-wide coherence.

• The PO-PSM struggled to understand, integrate anddisseminate the lessons of experience across therange of public service organisations involved in thePSRP. Creating an effective 'community of learning'proved difficult given the scope of the programmeand the need to focus on getting change enacted.

The PO-PSM has made sustained efforts to build itscapability for monitoring and evaluation. Itseffectiveness in learning will be shaped, in part, by thewillingness of the international funders to help itsucceed in that task.

Sustaining the energy and resilience of the PSRP Most efforts at public service reform bump up againstsome form of entropy. The costs are identifiable andup-front. Benefits are ambiguous and delayed. Thewider the scope of the programme becomes overtime, the higher the proportion of sceptical anduncommitted participants becomes. Constituenciesof support lose interest or power. New reformers withdifferent ideas appear on the scene and oldchampions leave. Political leaders, in particular, growimpatient to support other new reforms with moredirect payoffs. People simply tire of reform effortssuch as those in Tanzania that stretch into decades.The programme runs out of energy and resilience.

The potential levels of absorptive capacity andinternal reform energy will be key. Will there besufficient 'agency' over the medium and long term tokeep pushing the reform programme forward? For theforeseeable future, most of the energy and directionassociated with the PSRP will have to come out of thetop levels of the public service. The contributions ofother actors in most public service reforms - e.g.demanding citizens, supportive constituencies, andcivil society groups - are likely to be modest.Opportunities to form productive partnershipsbetween the Government and the internationalfunding agencies, however, are likely to be better inview of the low level of politicisation in Tanzania andthe growing formalisation of many governmentorganisations.

All reform efforts must therefore search for ways ofsustaining their energy and resilience. 'Buy-in' ceasesto be the problem. 'Stay-in' becomes critical. In theTanzanian case, PO-PSM staff are already thinking ofapproaches that have the promise to keep thereforms going. These include the following:• Building a programme of 'quick wins' into the work

programme that provide benefits to certain groupsin the short term.49

• Trying to market the value of the PSRP to the widerpublic in Tanzania.

• Trying to build up the demand side of theprogramme so as to create external sources of


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Notes48 The EFQM model is also focused on performance as opposed

to capacity. It focuses on enablers 50% (leadership 10%,policy and strategy 8%, people 9%, partnerships andresources 9%, processes 14%) and results 50% (customers20%, people 9%, society 6%, key performance results 15%).

49 To date, the 'quick wins' approach has been used to improveperformance in activities such as passports, work permits,land titling and investment certificates.

energy that can 'pull' performance out of theprogramme.

• Supporting broader efforts to balance the role ofthe public service in Tanzania with otherinstitutions, organisations and groups. Ultimately,the PSRP will not achieve its goals until and unlessthe power and role of the executive branch and theruling party are balanced by those of the judiciary,citizen groups, civil society, local government, freepress, legislature, and the private sector.

Supply of and demand for capacity Much of the current thinking about reform is basedon the effectiveness of 'demand-driven' approaches.From this perspective, only the pressure forperformance from citizens and end-users will keeppublic suppliers from either capturing most of thebenefits of a programme or letting it drift intoirrelevance and inefficiency. This idea makes generalsense, and much of the thinking behind the PSRPemphasised the value of demand-side approaches.Issues to do with customer service, citizen charters,competition, incentives, transparency, and greateraccountability are emphasised throughout theprogramme.

Yet as an operational matter, much of the PSRP was ashifting combination of both supply and demandsides in design and implementation. As discussedearlier, the PSRP approach was based, in largemeasure, on transplanted reform strategies that had

a good deal to do with Tanzanian elite and donorpreferences. Inevitably, much of this influence wasmore direct, explicit and focused. The nature of thereforms adopted by the Government was nottherefore customised responses to demand-sidepressures from citizens. And yet citizen preferencesdid make themselves felt through elections andconstituent pressures, albeit in more indirect andmuted ways. To increase this connection, the PO-PSMworked to put in place 'demand-creating' initiativessuch as various kinds of developmentcommunications aimed at citizens and otherinterested groups.

A number of reasons have been advanced for thenascent state of demand, including the lack of eliteinterest and pervasive institutional constraints onlocal democracy. One account makes the case that thelack of demand comes from lack of citizen time,diffuse and poorly organised beneficiaries, lack of aclear legal structure, lack of information and lack ofclear or homogeneous individual and collective socialidentities.50 Given these patterns, it is difficult to seehow 'demand-side' approaches could be determinant,at least in the short term, in a state such as Tanzania.Programmes such as the PSRP will inevitably besupply-driven in their early stages. But MDAs andothers are making an effort to give more attention topublic involvement.51 More pressure from thedemand side will be needed to keep the reformprocess energised over the medium and long term.


Notes50 See Kelsall (2004).51 See Paul (2002).

22

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The ECDPM case studies can be found at www.ecdpm.org/dcc/capacitystudy


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Annex: Individuals interviewed Government of the United Republic of Tanzania Aloyu, M., Acting Director of Administration and Personnel, Ministry of Energy and Minerals Cobb, D., Advisor on Monitoring and Evaluation, PO-PSMFimbo, S.K., Director, Human Resource Development Division, PO-PSM Hayuma, A.M., Special Assistant to Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Lands, Dar es Salaam Kafanabo, J., Gender specialist, PO-PSMKazora, F.R., Assistant Director, Documentation and Information, PO-PSM Mabiso, A.P. Human Resources Officer II, Ministry of Energy and Minerals Mambo, Dr. H., Information, Education and Communication Expert, Public Service Reform Programme,President's Office, Civil Service DepartmentMayowera, E., Acting DMS, OP-PSM Mbise, H.A., Principal Engineer, Energy Department, Ministry of Energy and Minerals Mkony, S., Project Accountant/Administrator, Public Service Reform Programme, PO-PSM Mutahaba, Dr G., Chief Technical Advisor, PO-PSMMwakahesya, Dr L.U.A., Assistant Commissioner (Energy Development), Chairman, Change Management Team,Ministry of Energy and Minerals Rugumyamheto, J., Permanent Secretary, PO-PSM Senkondo, C., Director, Tanzania Global Development Learning Centre, Dar es Salaam Swai, S., Assistant Director, Performance Improvement Management Expert, PO-PSM Wadoud, R., National Expert in Capacity Building, PO-PSMYambesi, G., Director, Policy Development Division, PO-PSM

International funding community Gerry, A., Governance Advisor, DFID Tanzania Merry, L., Consultant to Civil Service Department team, Fresh Approaches Ltd, UK Morin, D., Senior Public Administration Specialist,World Bank, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania Salla, E.S., Assistant Resident Representative (DMU), United Nations Development Programme Titsworth, J., Governance Advisor,World Bank and DFID

Private and NGO sectors Kiragu, K., Senior Consultant on Public Sector Reform, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Nairobi Kariuki, E., Public Sector Group, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Dar es Salaam Mukandala, Professor R., University of Dar Es Salaam Wangwe, Professor S., Consultant, Economic and Social Research Foundation


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The European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) aims to improve internationalcooperation between Europe and countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.

Created in 1986 as an independent foundation, the Centre’s objectives are:• to enhance the capacity of public and private actors in ACP and other low-income

countries; and • to improve cooperation between development partners in Europe and the ACP Region.

The Centre focuses on four interconnected themes:

• Development Policy and EU External Action• ACP-EU Economic and Trade Cooperation• Multi-Actor Partnerships and Governance• Development Cooperation and Capacity

The Centre collaborates with other organisations and has a network of contributors in the European and theACP countries. Knowledge, insight and experience gained from process facilitation, dialogue, networking,infield research and consultations are widely shared with targeted ACP and EU audiences throughinternational conferences, focussed briefing sessions, electronic media and key publications.

This study has been done under the aegis of the Network on Governance of the Development AssistanceCommittee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and has benefited fromthe support of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF).

The results of the study, interim reports and an elaborated methodology can be consulted atwww.ecdpm.org/dcc/capacitystudy. For further information, please contact Ms Heather Baser([email protected]).

ISSN 1571-7577

The European Centre forDevelopment Policy ManagementOnze Lieve Vrouweplein 21NL-6211 HE Maastricht, The Netherlands Tel.: +31 (0)43 350 29 00Fax.: +31 (0)43 350 29 [email protected] www.ecdpm.org

analysis · 2019. 4. 25. · building the capacity for managing public service reform ... tgdlc...

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