Jordan Times
Tuesday, February 8, 2005
Public sector
performance to get facelift this year
By Mahmoud Al Abed
AMMAN — The Kingdom's administrative reform plans are home-grown with no direct
foreign input involved, Minister of State for Public Reforms Ahmad Masadeh said
on Monday.
“There is no foreign recipe,” the minister told
reporters at the weekly press briefing held by Government Spokesperson Asma
Khader.
“What we have at hand are Jordanian projects initiated by the government,” he
added.
Masadeh said reform planners had examined others' experiences in the field and
consulted Arab and foreign parties, “but we only take what meets our own
requirements.”
During his presentation, Masadeh outlined the raison d'?tre, mission, plans and
work mechanisms of the newly established General Department for Public Reforms,
which replaced the abolished Ministry of Administrative Reform.
Masadeh said the department, would report to the prime minister, which would
ensure accelerated steps towards reforming the public sector due to the
constitutional authorities vested in the premier.
He said the department, which was established under a regulation issued earlier
this year, works on two aspects of reform: Improving the quality of services
offered to the public and upgrading human resource policies.
“The department seeks to deliver government services to citizens on the basis of
sound criteria and away from double standards,” he said. Towards that end, the
department has chosen several ministries and other state agencies that offer
direct services to the public. According to the action plan, the department will
issue guides for citizens on the nature of these services and the quality people
can expect.
Other objectives the department seeks to achieve, to give a facelift to public
sector performance, are ensuring the principle of job equality, overhauling the
salary system to include incentives for civil servants who show progress in
their work and continuing with training programmes to upgrade the skills of
government employees.
On Saturday, Masadeh announced nine pilot public projects that won support
extended by his department's Challenge Fund, which extends technical and
financial assistance to public departments to help them achieve certain goals of
the reform plan, in particular improving the quality of their services.
Each department will now secure a sum of JD50,000-60,000 to implement its
proposed project under the direct supervision of the fund.