Jordan Times
Thursday, November 4, 2004
Plan to offer citizens best
possible services
By Alia Shukri Hamzeh
AMMAN — The government on Wednesday presented its public sector reform programme,
saying the plan was a culmination of a year's work aimed at achieving
administrative development.
Speaking to the press yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for
Prime Ministry Affairs and Government Performance Marwan Muasher drew attention
to the past pitfalls of public sector performance and said the new plan was
designed to move from theory and planning to concrete action.
He said there was no going back on reforms and that the time was opportune for
the government to start implementing this “ambitious,” yet hard and lengthy
process.
“Administrative reform has been a priority of the government since it took
office one year ago. It does not replace any another priorities but goes in
tandem with them. And after concluding a study on administrative reform it's
time for implementation,” Muasher said.
The objectives of the plan include ensuring greater transparency and
accountability of government performance.
Muasher also spoke of joint efforts by Cabinet ministers and all public
departments in order to form a cohesive body that can draft strategic plans and
ensure their efficient implementation.
He said there are future plans to reduce the number of ministries following
careful study of those whose responsibilities overlap or are redundant.
Muasher noted that previous attempts at merging ministries were nothing more
than adding a portfolio to a minister already handling another ministry. “This
resulted in a huge administrative load and burden on the ministers,” he said.
The new programme, said to be an overhaul of the present sluggish bureaucratic
public sector, is expected to offer citizens the best possible services.
According to the programme, the four main principles for reforming the public
sector include developing mechanisms that can achieve concrete results in the
development process, ensuring accountability, decentralising decision making and
guaranteeing good utilisation of financial resources.
Muasher pointed to obstacles facing good government performance: Centralisation
of the decision making process, a focus on developing measures rather than
achieving results, failure to distribute human and financial resources in
accordance with national strategic priorities, individualism in dealing with
issues, and preoccupation with technical matters rather than strategic planning
and policy making.
The first step is to outline a national agenda that can respond to challenges
facing the country over the next 10 years, Muasher said.
The national agenda — to take up to eight months of preparation and expected to
kick off in the third quarter of 2005 — will be worked on by the largest number
of public and private sector institutions and will define Jordan's economic,
social and political shape for the coming 10 years.
Muasher said the agenda will set the country's national policies and strategies
and would be implemented by all successive governments. He said government
oversight and continuity were critical to the plan's success. The programme
delineated five axis to public reform: Enhancing the decision making and policy
setting process, restructuring public institutions, performance management and
developing services offered to citizens, as well as financial and human
resources management.
Enhancing the decision making process is meant to enable ministries and high
level administrative departments to take part in policy making and reduce the
load centred on the prime minister and the Cabinet.
This entails setting up four committees that work as backups for the Cabinet,
and examine legislation related to administrative, economic and social reforms
and provide the government with advice and recommendations.
A chart given to the press on Wednesday shows that out of 2,778 decisions made
by the Cabinet in 2003, 37 were related to policies, while 811 were related to
management and employee affairs.
Restructuring public departments entails a revision of their operations and
starting an institutionalisation process by which the government performs in a
more effective and transparent manner.
The programme will be followed through on the strategic and executive levels.
The Ministry of Government Performance and three related units will coordinate
among ministries and work on setting plans to ensure national agenda goals are
met. While the Ministry of Public Sector Reform, and its new two departments,
work on executing the charted policies.
“There is no magic wand to achieve administrative reforms overnight. Perhaps
there were good ideas previously that never materialised because there was no
clear mechanism to implement them. Now we have that mechanism,” said Minister of
State for Public Sector Reform Ahmad Massadeh.