Public Administration Reform

Practice NotePart 1Global Practice Meeting on

Public Administration Reform

The Practice Note

• Provides a strategic framework for UNDP Country Office staff and Regional Programmes for PAR programming

• Provides UNDP’s development partners with clear sense of UNDP’s strategic focus

• Provides a ‘portal’ to more detailed programmatic guidance: toolkits including primers, case studies; other resources.

UNDP support for PARBasic statistics

• 380 projects in 112 countries • 7% Promoting a professional, merit

base, civil service.• 17% Functional reviews• 63% Training civil servants• 13% ICT

PAR and the MDGs• More resources in poor countries are freed to be

used in pursuit of MDG goals • By increasing transparency and eradicating

corruption, more scarce resources in poor countries are directed towards achieving MDGs

• A responsive public administration, especially to women and marginalized people, is critical to ensuring the sustainability of MDG achievements

• Increasing the accountability of state institutions is essential to closing the democratic deficit.

Process of developing the PN• Mapping of UNDP activities, lessons from

experience and evaluations• Inputs by the Democratic Governance

Group, PAR Advisers based in NY, Oslo and the SURFs.

• Comments from Network Discussion between October 8th and October 22nd, involving over 20 participants.

• Review by the Democratic Governance Programme Team – over 25 responses.

• Peer review by senior practitioners in partner agencies

Main issues in PAR for UNDP

• Difficult to define a UNDP role compatible with its resources.

• Other players have increased their role in this field, e.g. World Bank, ADB, IADB, and DfID

• Surveys in Africa, Asia, and the Arab States have shown that focus on reform of central government declined while decentralization has become a core area for UNDP

UNDP’s comparative strength is evolving:

UNDP’s Niche

• UNDP’s twin pillars of a pro-poor and human rights-based approach to PAR are a focus on open government and decentralization

• UNDP practitioners, informed by this Practice Note and accompanying toolkit will be able to engage in a dialogue on all aspects of PAR, and be advocates for UNDP’s pro-poor and human rights-based approaches.

Substance and Scope of PARThe PN is built around capacity

development at the individual, institutional and societal levels for poverty reduction in four areas:

– Civil Service Reform

– Improving the policy making system

– Reforming the machinery of government

– Reforming the public expenditure management system

Civil Service Reform• Mission• Training• Establishment control• Management systems: career vs.

position; civil service commission; performance management

• Pay and compensation• Gender equity and affirmative

action• Politicization and patronage

Improving the policy making system

• Growing area of interest• Politically very sensitive• Weakness one of the key

handicaps to reform

Reforming the machinery of government

• Functional Reviews• Information and Communication

technologies and e-governance• Democracy enhancing public

institutions

Reforming the Revenue and Expenditure

Management System• More often the preserve of the IFIs• But important new approaches:

pro-poor budgeting; gender budgeting, etc.

• Critical dimension of decentralization

PN provides practical guidance for DG

practitioners

• Entry points and sequencing • Winners and losers • Gaining support and fostering

leadership • Accounting for different administrative

traditions • Enshrining the Human Rights Approach • Measuring Progress

Technical guidance on the main areas of PAR (Poli cy making systems, CSR, etc.) as well as:

Regional Trends• RBA – driven by structural adjustment and strong

donor pressure; decentralization focus; CSR; ‘holistic’ approaches

• RBAP – UNDP increasingly crowded out; shift towards decentralization; CSR, institutional capacity building, public awareness and pro-poor reform

• RBAS – few countries, focus on technical reforms, anti-corruption, ICT

• RBEC – EU accession; transitional economy issues• RBLAC – shift from focus on economic and financial

management (“modernization”) to more ambitious approaches: NPM, performance-based CSR, and introducing ‘voice’

Next Steps• Seminar on PAR in Bratislava to:

– Build an understanding of and consensus behind the positions espoused in the PN

– Elaborate Primers such as:•Lessons from advances in PAR in

Francophone countries•Gender mainstreaming in PAR•PAR in countries worst affected by

HIV/AIDS– Roll out the PN– Enhance the guidance in the PN for a future