How Does The Civil Service System Improve The Quality Of Government

Getting the basics right: How to manage civil servants in developing countries

| May 09, 2018

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Reform progress has been hampered in part by the lack of robust evidence on 'what works in civil service management'. How tin institutions manage people in developing country governments in ways that heighten motivation and performance, while reducing corruption? Several contempo studies accept looked at specific interventions in item countries (see here, here and here, for case). However, what works across countries and ceremonious service management practices has been less clear.

To shed calorie-free on this, we surveyed 23,000 ceremonious servants in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe (with funding from the British Academy – UK Department for International Evolution (DFID) Anti-Corruption Evidence Program).[i] This is the largest published cross-state survey of civil servants in developing countries to-date.

What can we learn from the survey information near how to manage civil servants to go a more motivated, committed and ethical civil service? The statistical analyses of our survey data (detailed in our contempo report) underscore that getting three basics correct has consequent positive furnishings :

1. Prioritize professional person merit over political and personal considerations in civil service management decisions. Civil servants who are recruited or promoted through political or personal connections (for instance through support from friends and family) engage more frequently in abuse on the chore, and perform more poorly. Our survey suggests that the politicization and personalization of ceremonious service management decisions is far from uncommon. In the ten countries surveyed, 41% of civil servants got their first task at least in part thanks to personal connections; for 34% of civil servants, they helped them go promoted and for 22% they mattered for their pay rises. At the same fourth dimension, 20% had help from political connections to go recruited and promoted, and fifteen% to get pay rises.

**Political (left console) and personal (right console) connexion-based hiring (share of civil servants)**

On an upside, our survey information besides points to a articulate antidote against politicization and nepotism in civil service management decisions. Formal 'merit' procedures curb politicization and nepotism in ceremonious service direction: for instance, publicly advertising public sector jobs and systematically assessing candidates through written examinations and personal interviews. By curbing nepotism and politicization, these procedures intermittently help enhance functioning and integrity among ceremonious servants in developing countries.

2. Ensure that performance management systems genuinely promote functioning-oriented ceremonious service management decisions. Contrary to popular stereotypes, our data suggests that civil servants appreciate performance-oriented civil service management: they are more satisfied and perform amend when they sense that hard work matters for their promotion prospects, pay raises or task stability. Formal performance direction systems are often introduced to give civil servants the sense that functioning matters. In our information, we assess whether one component of such systems – performance evaluations – create this perception.We find that they practice, only that this effect depends on whether they are implemented well. Where operation is evaluated against objectives identified in accelerate and where operation results are perceived to matter for promotions, pay rises or task stability, operation evaluations take positive effects. Where this is not the case, the opposite is the case – performance evaluations injure operation perceptions and thus intermittently civil service functioning and motivation.

iii. Pay enough to retain more than motivated civil servants and prevent large-scale turnover of high performers. Most civil servants in developing countries are concerned almost their pay. In our survey, just 37% of civil servants are satisfied with their salary; and only 40% think that their bacon alone is sufficient to sustain their household. However, this does not seem to imply that college pay motivates staff: in our data, it is non associated with greater piece of work motivation. All the same, we do find an indirect positive effect of pay.

More motivated civil servants are plant to have better-paid job opportunities outside the public sector, and civil servants with better exterior task offers in turn are more intent on leaving public sector institutions.Paying more motivated civil servants enough to retain them is thus important to safeguard civil service performance. This, notwithstanding, does non suggest the need to pay anybody more than. In fact, merely a minority of civil servants (39%) in our survey would find it easy to find a meliorate-paid private sector job. Public sector institutions would practice well to target pay rises, and do so after assessing turnover and performance data.

Civil servants' bacon perceptions

Implementing these three practices are, of course, not the but ones that matter for more effective civil services. Our data, however, suggests that they are important "basics" that should be consistently in place across public sector institutions. These "nuts" are remarkably consequent with the Earth Bank's – and other lender's – traditional civil service reform agenda. The failure of these reforms might thus stem more from implementation failures and political obstacles than design.

One important caveat is due: our information shows that the attitudes and behaviours of ceremonious servants and the way they are managed vary sharply across public sector institutions within countries. Other surveys evidence like patterns. On which "basic" civil service reforms countries should focus on therefore depends on the institutional realities that the reforms seek to modify.

For policy-makers, this implies a need to engage in systematic evidence gathering on existing civil service management practices and civil servant attitudes, using tools such as civil service surveys, before designing reforms to shape the attitudes of ceremonious servants for the better. Given the large variation in direction practices and civil servant attitudes, reforms are likely to be more effective where they are targeted to individual institutions – rather than the public sector as a whole.

[i] The x surveyed countries are Malawi, Uganda and Republic of ghana in Africa, Bangladesh and Nepal in Asia, Brazil and Chile in Latin America and Estonia, Kosovo and Albania in Eastern Europe.

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