When governments devolve functions, they transfer authority for decision-making, finance, and management to quasi-autonomous units of local government with corporate status.
Devolution usually transfers responsibilities for services to municipalities that elect their own mayors and councils, raise their own revenues, and have independent authority to make investment decisions. In a devolved system, local governments have clear and legally recognized geographical boundaries over which they exercise authority and within which they perform public functions.
It is this type of administrative decentralization that underlies most political decentralization. Civil Service Reform and Decentralization. Civil service reform is usually a supporting strategy for more general decentralization in government operations or service delivery. One does not decentralize the civil service as an end in itself -- one does so in order to provide services better, manage resources more efficiently, or support other general outcome goals.
The civil service as a whole can be seen as one of the main instruments with which the government fulfills its obligations. In the context of decentralization, this tool must often be reshaped in order to perform a new set of duties efficiently, equitably, and effectively. Reform of the civil service, therefore, is the process of modifying rules and incentives to obtain a more efficient, dedicated and performing government labor-force in newly decentralized environment.
This note will first discuss the various civil service issues that sectoral or general decentralization strategies raise. It will then focus on various reform priorities to cope with the changes decentralization can bring.
How does Decentralization affect the Civil Service? Civil services at all levels of government need a capable, motivated, and efficient staff in order to deliver quality services to its citizens. When civil service functions and structures are decentralized, existing bureaucratic patterns must be reorganized as roles and accountability are shifted. Decentralization thus intensifies the need for capable staff and increases the importance of capacity-building programs. The process of decentralization:.
Disperses power, both geographically and institutionally: Decentralization inevitably changes the location of power and jobs. Movement geographically or across tiers of government is often impeded by issues related to statute, prestige and poor labor mobility. In the Eastern European transition economies, for example, de-legitimation of the central state and the emergence of representative government at local and intermediate levels of government has complicated human resource allocation.
Incentive programs and mechanisms for inter-post mobility, which compound the costs of decentralization, may be required in order to introduce flexibility. Creates new responsibilities for inexperienced actors: Decentralization creates more opportunities for local autonomy and responsiveness to more specialized constituencies, but it also gives subnational governments more room to fail if specific steps are not taken to build local technical and managerial capacity.
Below a certain size, it might be counterproductive or cost inefficient to have specialists or technical personnel. There are methods which can be used to address this issue, one of which is to allow in the context of the decentralization schemes the possibility of empowering local self-governments units to form associations and pool their resources in order to cover activities requiring specialized personnel.
Introduces more levels into the state: Decentralization, especially political decentralization creates a class of government workers which, based on the specific information which they receive feedback from their constituencies may have different preferences than workers at the next higher level. This divergence in views and convictions can create conflict within the civil service that will require mechanisms to manage effectively.
Creates a tension between local autonomy and national standards: Decentralization relaxes national control and creates the potential for more regional variation in civil service conditions.
National salary, eligibility, and performance standards can ensure consistent quality, but they can also lead to personnel expenditures especially for locally administered education and health sectors beyond some local capacities; grant transfer systems will need to take different financing capacities into account in these and other types of mandated expenditures. The Philippines, Indonesia, and Pakistan are examples of decentralized states with essentially uniform terms and conditions of service for government employees in different regions.
Can increase administrative costs: Creating additional layers of government is an expensive proposition, and while the central government - in the best of cases- might reduce its role and shed personnel in the context of decentralization, empirical evidence suggests that these workers are often reabsorbed by local governments. There is thus no net change in public sector employment. In the worst of cases, central government employment remains unchanged, while local government employment grows.
Civil Service Reform to Support Decentralization. The main questions in assessing the civil service reform priorities parallel those in more general decentralization policies: Under what conditions does one deconcentrate or devolve human resource management or organizational responsibilities to lower tiers of government? What requisite capacity does one need at various levels to make a system work?
The twin tasks of building local capacity and adjusting to the changes in intergovernmental coordination needs can be daunting even when budgets allow comprehensive training and all stake-holders support the reforms. The more frequent realities of budget constraints and mixed support, however, practically ensure that large-scale civil service reform will be a long drawn-out, expensive process that does not keep up with the pace of service or sector decentralization.
Building Local Capacity. Local or at least sub-national capacity is one of the most important factors creating a well-functioning decentralized civil service. In countries where local institutions already exist, the challenge will be to reinforce them institutionally and legally as well as to strengthen their personnel management capacities. In places where local government institutions are embryonic or exist only at an informal level, the institutional and legal framework will have to be created before any type of reform of the administration is undertaken.
The degree of local capacity determines the kind of human-resource management strategies that will be feasible and desirable. Decentralization of human resource management is more likely to succeed in cases where lower-level authorities have the financial and managerial ability to set competitive compensation packages and salary levels that will attract local talent. In these cases, the flexibility advantages of allowing local governments the to set hiring levels might outweigh the risk of increasing inter-regional inequalities.
Where talent and skills are lacking at the local level, a unitary hiring system might be preferred to ensure that the necessary skills are present locally in all regions. In these cases where the center retains more control over human resources, caution should be paid to ensure that the management options of local stake-holders are not curtailed. The legal framework should clearly define responsibilities and standards. The creation of a strong legal framework- to address issues related to financing and reporting, to determine the type of control mechanisms especially financial that are necessary and who is accountable for them, to evaluate hiring practices and compensation schemes as well as address issues related to the procurement of public works - must be a priority in any reform effort to ensure sound utilization of public resources and minimize corruption.
Consistency and transparency gain support. On matters of staffing, compensation or oversight of local administration, and most importantly in the delivery of services, it is very important to ensure that there is transparency and that changes in the administration and therefore the civil service are not seen as an instrument to disenfranchise some groups or favor another.
Reporting mechanisms need to be clear and precise. In the medium and longer-term, audit courts can be a useful regulatory mechanism. Transitions from the existing system to new systems have to be carefully planned to avoid conflict between new reporting arrangements and enduring mechanisms. Channels for citizen-civil servant communication need to be created. By including more citizens in the process of monitoring civil service performance, decentralization creates more opportunities for friction between civil servants and citizens.
Harassment by private interest groups can prevent honest and dedicated civil servants from performing their duties, while civil servants can use their positions to threaten citizens. These tensions can be avoided by relatively quick and inexpensive methods and structures for redressing grievances, whether these come from civil servants or from the citizens. Training should contribute to the formation of new working relationships. In addition to building local capacity, training can be a tool for creating personal networks among various levels of government, regions, or types of government workers.
One recommendation, for example, might be to train career civil servants and local politicians together to insure that they better understand what is expected of them and what they can expect from each other. All levels of government should be encouraged to define and plan for the types of workers they will need in order to carry out new responsibilities. In the short term, these sorts of rough plans substitute for the computerized establishment management capacity and human resource management staff that so many countries lack and can help eliminate duplicate workers, unnecessary hires, and other expensive mistakes.
At the very least, they can be an exercise in longer-term planning and role definition. Decentralization can be a way of improving access to services, tailoring government actions to private needs, and increasing the opportunities for state-society interactions. The research is the result of document analysis, participatory observation and semi-structured interviews. The article reconstructs the impacts of devolution and deconcentration processes on the emergence of policy and management capacity in two regions Rhone-Alpes and Piedmont in the cultural sector.
Santagati, M. Report bugs here. Please share your general feedback. It is often associated with pluralistic politics and representative government, but it can also support democratization by giving citizens, or their representatives, more influence in the formulation and implementation of policies.
Advocates of political decentralization assume that decisions made with greater participation will be better informed and more relevant to diverse interests in society than those made only by national political authorities.
The concept implies that the selection of representatives from local electoral jurisdictions allows citizens to know better their political representatives and allows elected officials to know better the needs and desires of their constituents. Political decentralization often requires constitutional or statutory reforms, the development of pluralistic political parties, the strengthening of legislatures, creation of local political units, and the encouragement of effective public interest groups.
Administrative Decentralization. Administrative decentralization seeks to redistribute authority, responsibility and financial resources for providing public services among different levels of government. It is the transfer of responsibility for the planning, financing and management of certain public functions from the central government and its agencies to field units of government agencies, subordinate units or levels of government, semi-autonomous public authorities or corporations, or area-wide, regional or functional authorities.
The three major forms of administrative decentralization -- deconcentration, delegation, and devolution -- each have different characteristics. Deconcentration--which is often considered to be the weakest form of decentralization and is used most frequently in unitary states-- redistributes decision making authority and financial and management responsibilities among different levels of the central government.
It can merely shift responsibilities from central government officials in the capital city to those working in regions, provinces or districts, or it can create strong field administration or local administrative capacity under the supervision of central government ministries.
Delegation is a more extensive form of decentralization. Through delegation central governments transfer responsibility for decision-making and administration of public functions to semi-autonomous organizations not wholly controlled by the central government, but ultimately accountable to it.
Governments delegate responsibilities when they create public enterprises or corporations, housing authorities, transportation authorities, special service districts, semi-autonomous school districts, regional development corporations, or special project implementation units. Usually these organizations have a great deal of discretion in decision-making.
They may be exempt from constraints on regular civil service personnel and may be able to charge users directly for services. A third type of administrative decentralization is devolution. When governments devolve functions, they transfer authority for decision-making, finance, and management to quasi-autonomous units of local government with corporate status.
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