The Zombies take over the OECD

Time was when I read avidly everything the OECD produced on public management…..it was so clearly-written and uplifting…..I actually delivered a paper to one of its Paris seminars in 1990 – if on urban management which was then my area of expertise….But it was practitioners who were then the mainstay of OECD operations and gave it its credibility

The World Bank, on the other hand – with its legions of consultant economists - was suspect – particularly its infamous 1997 Annual Development report The State in a Changing World. To their eternal credit, the Japanese had been warning the Bank that it, for one, did not accept the Bank’s neo-liberal view of the State - Robert Wade’s important article by New Left Review in 2001 gives some of the background to the resignation of Joseph Stiglitz, the Bank’s Chief Economist, driven out in 1999 by Larry Summers…..

The OECD seemed to have a more activist stance on the role of the state – to which my attention turned from the mid-1990s as readers know from my 1999 book In Transit – notes on good governance. The OECD’s 2005 report on Modernising Government was the first warning sign that it had perhaps left its benign role behind.

Critical books and articles confirmed our doubts – particularly The OECD and transnational governance; ed Mahon and McBride (2008); and The OECD and global public management reform; L Pal (2009)

This Canadian academic, Leslie Pal, has worked assiduously over the past decade to bring to our attention the nature and scale of the effort global organisations have made to market a concept of the modern state eg Best practices in public mant – a critical assessment; (2013) ; and The OECD and policy transfer; (2014)

Managing Change in OECD Government – an introductory framework; Huerta Melchor (OECD 2008) represents the high point of optimism – drafted as it was before the full implications of the global financial crisis had hit home. I;ve excerpted the opening couple of paras and explain why I’ve highlighted some text after the excerpts…..

Today’s world is highly competitive and demanding. Society is better informed and expects more from public and private organisations alike. Traditional public processes and institutions are less effective in satisfying people’s needs. Globalisation, the wide use of communication and information technologies, and the coming of the knowledge society, among other factors, are rapidly changing the world’s order. This has created new challenges to nation-states as people’s expectations from government have increased, job seekers are more demanding on job content, and societies call for more investment in education, health, and society but are unwilling to pay more taxes ("Modernising Government: the way forward", OECD 2005).

Personnel systems are becoming less adaptive to these new challenges. Indeed, traditional practices in public administration are the product of a different context with different priorities. Now, governments have a new role in society and are taking on new responsibilities but generally without the necessary tools to manage them effectively. Public managers are expected to improve the performance of their organisations focusing on efficiency, effectiveness, and propriety which were not the priorities 50 years ago.

Therefore, to be able to respond to a changing environment the public sector has to transform itsstructures, processes, procedures, and above all, its culture. In this new order, the management of change has been identified as a critical variable for the success or failure of a reform policy. Managing change aims at ensuring that the necessary conditions for the success of a reform initiative are met. A reform policy may fail to achieve change, may generate unintended results or face resistance from organisations and/or individuals whose interests are affected.

For that reason, policy-makers and politicians need to pay special attention to issues such as leadership, shared vision, sequencing, resources for change, and cultural values while designing and implementing a reform initiative.

I’m always suspicious when abstract entities such as “society” are credited with thoughts….it’s called “reification”; presumes uniformity of thought; and assumes away any possibility of differences of opinion let alone social dissent!! Very dangerous….

And just look at the phrase – “new order”!! And the way that “contexts” have developed priorities….I thought it was people who had priorities!

I explained some years ago why I am suspicious of manuals and “toolkits”…….And seven years on, the OECD has just issued this booklet (for aspiring EU members) Toolkit for……public admin reforms and sector strategies – guidance for SIGMA partners (OECD 2018). which reads as if it were written by a sixth former….  Apparently the EC introduced (in 2014) “a third pillar” into its enlargement policy – to complement those of “rule of law” and “economic governance” – namely public admin reform….I’m sure the army of EC consultants and their counterparts in Balkan and “neighbourhood” countries are very grateful to have such cookbooks – they save everyone the trouble of having to develop approaches which actually fit the local context……

Examples of the new “Manual”/Guidelines/Toolkit approach

The Principles of Public Administration (OECD – SIGMA 2017)

Systems approaches to public sector challenges – working with change (OECD 2017)

Quality of Public Admin – a factsheet; EC Factsheet (2016)
Quality of Public Administration – a toolkit for Practitioners (EC 2015) 

From Old Public Admin to the New Public Services – implications for public sector reform in developing countries (UNDP 2015)
Making Reform Happen (OECD 2010)

Sequentialism or gradualism? – on the transition to democracy and rule of law (2009)  - a more critical article

Can training make a difference? Part IV

Having suggested that few new Member States in central and eastern Europe seem to have managed yet to establish a proper training system for its public officials – and that the European Commission’s type of Technical Assistance has to take part of the blame for this – the following questions seem to be in order –
• Are there any examples of a relevant and sustainable training system in the new member states?
• If so, how did they manage to achieve this position?
• What is the status of such training systems in the older member states?
• Through what process have they gone to achieve their various present positions?
• What lessons would all this suggest for those countries which are still stuck at the drip-feed stage of development?

These are actually very difficult questions to answer – since so little is available - and I have spent the morning wrestling with them. In 1997 SIGMA published a couple of relevant papers – one setting out the various choices and issues involved in setting up a modern training structure; the second giving vignettes of each of the training centres for civil servants in OECD countries. Since then, nothing.
With all the support given over the decades by the European Commission to networks of practitioners, you would have thought that someone by now (eg Christopher Demmke of EIPA) would have recognised the value of a paper on the subject. And NISPAcee is, after all, the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in central and Eastern Europe but has not undertaken such a comparative (and sensitive) analysis – although its journal does contain the odd profile. There is also the rather elusive Directors of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration (DISPA) whose latest gathering this month in Warsaw was captured on the site of the Hungarian Institute but which, equally, has never risen to the challenge of commissioning a comparative analysis. So I have to venture into this field with all my imperfect knowledge.
The situation of the central PA training institutions in the EU Member States in terms of their role, tasks, funding and other characteristics varies from one country to another. And there have been considerable changes in the legal structure of central bodies for civil service training -
• A Civil Service College in Britain (for senior civil servants) was first part of the Cabinet Office; then became the Centre for Management and Policy Studies; then the National School of Government which was a free-standing Department; was then slated for abolition in March 2011 but was instead transferred back to the Cabinet office.
• The Dutch, Finnish and Swedish Institutes have all been privatized over the past decade.
• Romania’s Institute for National Administration was moved to the Civil Service Agency a couple of years ago after a period of some tension with that body.
• The Bulgarian IPA now finds itself back with the Council of Ministers – having over the past 5 years been part of the (now abolished Ministry for Administrative Reform) and then of the Ministry of Education.
• The Hungarian structure has been subject to major changes recently - with first a university unit being merged with a national training centre and now the integration of national and local government training systems
• The Czech structure was also changed the last year. There were two institutes before: one under the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic, Department of the Institute of the State Administration and an independent Institute for Local Administration in Prague. They merged the last year and now there is only one institute under the Ministry of the Interior – Institute for Public Administration Prague.
• The Estonian IPA seems to have been absorbed into the Prime Minister’s Office

Given that most managerial theorists are a bit cynical about organizational changes, it is perhaps ironic that the training centres which are supposed to be helping state bodies become more effective have themselves been subject to so much structural change.
My recent personal experience of central european training systems is limited to 3-4 countries – otherwise I rely on anecdotal impressions from colleagues. I therefore hesitate to identify success stories. I hear good things about the Lithuanian and Slovenian systems but can say nothing about their trajectories – or the lessons they might have for others. In the next post, I will try, however, to present a "provocation" for those countries stuck at the drip-feed stage of development.
In the meantime I really would welcome comment from those readers who have experience and views in this field. I know you're there! I'm pleased to say that my readership has doubled in the past few weeks - but the blog does need (and appreciates) feedback