Ladies
and Gentlemen:
I am pleased to have been
invited to participate in this Conference on Changing
Governance and Public Sector Reform in the Americas and
to give this luncheon address on the Public Sector
Reform Agenda in the Caribbean.
I should say at the
outset, that while I will make references to reform
efforts in other parts of the Commonwealth Caribbean, my
focus will be primarily on Jamaica, my home country and
where, in my position as Cabinet Secretary, I am fully
involved in a leadership role in the reform efforts.
Some of you may be aware
of an article in a Commonwealth Secretariat publication1
which reminds us that public sector reforms have been
part and parcel of the activities of the public sector
for many years.
The article states in
part:
"Public sector
reform is not new. It has rolled over governments in
successive waves for over a century." It goes on to
cite the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms in Britain in the
mid 19th century; the wave of reforms in the early 1900s
when independent public service commissions were created
as a means of ensuring the development of a
'merit-based' public service; the reforms influenced by
the Keynesian economic policies which laid the
foundations for the welfare state and transformed the
state apparatus in all developed countries; and the more
recent reforms influenced by among other things,
financial pressures on governments; the erosion of
public confidence in governments and state institutions;
technological change; and global economics.
As inheritors of the
Whitehall/Westminister System of Government, the
Commonwealth Caribbean countries would have experienced
some of the changes mentioned; and, indeed, they do have
a long history of public sector reform or in some
instances reports (which for one reason or the other
were not always noted on) proposing some form of reform
or the other.
For example, in respect
of Jamaica, a review showed that there were no less than
twenty-one reports on matters such as pay,
classification, training, and the creation of a Ministry
of the Public Service. 2
In regard to Trinidad and
Tobago, a recent paper 3 cited eight reports (among
others) in the period 1954 to 1986. The paper stated
that all the reports agreed that there was over-centralisation
of the public service, leading to inefficient service
delivery and that many of the personnel systems needed
to be reformed.
In the early 1990s, a
Caribbean Roundtable 4 resulted in a so-called Kingston
Declaration of Public Management. The Declaration
recommended a number of issues/themes for the urgent
attention of Caribbean Governments. These included:
- a clear
definition or redefinition of the functions and form, size, scope and role of the state;
- organizational
review and modernization of the state apparatus;
- development
of human resource policies which emphasized performance and merit-based compensation;
- improvement
of financial management systems, procedures and policies to ensure greater accountability
and transparency;
- introduction
of information technology for more efficient decision-making public administration and
policy implementation.
The Jamaican Government
for its part (with the support of the Canadian
Government) held a Roundtable on the Emerging Role of
the State 5 in the summer of 1993. This Roundtable was
attended by representatives of the public sector, led by
the Prime Minister, other members of his Government;
Permanent Secretaries and Heads of Departments; the
private sector; and NGOs. It recommended among other
things, the sort of activities the state should be
involved in, and the best organizational arrangements to
undertake these activities.
The next wave of reforms
(which more or less coincided with my tenure of office
as Cabinet Secretary) was to be influenced (not all at
the beginning) by a number of factors from within and
without.
One of these was the
experience of past reforms. We learnt from these earlier
reforms that, however well-meaning (such as increased
pay to the compete with the private sector) we should
avoid at all cost a piecemeal approach. We learnt too
that the essential stakeholders (the Prime Minister
(most importantly) and his Government, the Opposition
parties, rank-and-file public service staff and their
trades unions; the private sector; civil society; and
the media) should be involved in the process early.
We learnt, too, that for
the reforms to succeed on a sustainable basis, there
must be a continuous pressure to perform, because as
largely monopoly provider of services, it was easy for
the public service to get back to old and inefficient
ways of doing things.
A second consideration,
(which was mentioned earlier, as a driving force for the
reforms in many countries) was the fiscal austerity we
faced, and that this had to be addressed by getting more
value from the money spent on the public service (15% of
GDP at the time of writing) and getting it to perform in
a way to enhance the prospect of economic growth and
development.
A third consideration
(also mentioned earlier), was the need to deal with
rising expectations of the society in terms of the
efficiency and customer friendliness with which services
are provided by the public sector.
A fourth consideration
mentioned earlier, was the impact of globalization which
admittedly was not all seen at the beginning of the
process of the current wave of reforms. We now know that
such things as: (a) the lowering of trade barriers; (b)
new systems of valuation; (c) liberalization of the
world capital markets; (d) increased competition for
knowledge workers; and (e) matters of human rights and
the environment are issues of globalisation with which
our public sector must be equipped to deal.
A fifth consideration
(again mentioned earlier), was that of information
technology with its pervasive and profound impacts in
respect of such things as the ability to communicate
within and without almost instantaneously; the storage
and retrieval of information; training; physical
planning and so on.
Overall, the Government
was determined that the public sector reforms per se as
well as a number of others, (such as reforms of the
electoral system and 'modernising' the Constitution by
among other things incorporating a Charter of Rights
which should lead to an improved quality of governance.
The term 'governance', as
some of you may be aware, is defined, more or less
similarly, by both the World Bank and the Canadian
International Development Agency (CIDA) as "the
manner in which power is exercised in the management of
a country's economic and social resources for
development"; and CIDA, in particular, defined
"good governance" as the exercise of power by
various levels of government in a manner that is
effective, honest, equitable, transparent and
accountable".
With all these objectives
in mind the Government set about a series of sweeping
reforms which individually and collectively must seek to
meet the benchmarks of good governance. These reforms
included: |