Senior public service appointments

One of the biggest challenges facing the Fenech Adami administration on taking office in 1987 was "to examine the organisation of the public service" and to establish how the service could "efficiently respond to the changing needs of effective...

On May 27, 1988, the government appointed a five-man commission known as the Public Service Reform Commission (PSRC) to submit recommendations on how this problem could be effectively tackled. The commission submitted a first-stage report on July 14, 1989, and then proceeded to advance further proposals on "administrative structures, grading, staff development, selection and compensation" in February of the following year.

In its first report, the PSRC emphasised the need to develop a broad-based understanding among different social forces on the nature and scope of the required changes. Dialogue was considered essential and, although there had been a measure of consultation at various levels, it could not be said that there was enough consultation either at the lower levels of the public service or with the customers.

There was a general invitation to institutions and members of the public to submit their views. Many did so but, having dropped their memoranda in the commission's letter box, many organisations heard no more until the commission published its report and supplementary papers in the form of a fait accompli.

Initial impressions

The Reform Commission stated that on taking up its assignment, the first impressions presented to it by the service were 'disturbing'. The service was caught in the throes of a prolonged crisis of morale; it appeared to lack a sense of mission; it lacked effective leadership; it was hindered by an organisational culture inimical to change and was burdened by difficult experiences.

Above all, its relations with politicians and the public were marred by mutual distrust and misunderstanding, and it presented an image of neglect or indifference to its members, prospective recruits and customers.

These were the obviouis considerations that led the newly-elected administration to tackle the problem of reform. On the other hand, the public service had its own strengths, having been at the centre of national development and having had within its ranks a number of distinguished officers who had given proof of their undoubted ability, dedication and adaptability under adverse and deteriorating conditions.

Goals and strategies

The PSRC identified a number of goals and strategies for change. It proposed bold ideas to improve the quality of management, upgrade the technology and plant necessary for efficient performance, and introduce modern planning and audit systems and procedures.

In so doing, the commission did not deal all its cards. It skirted round and never divulged the details of an operations review which was central to the reform. One got the impression this was considered from the outset to be akin to a state secret. This was not consistent with transparency.

To make matters worse, the PSRC made use of an extra joker in its pack of cards. It introduced for the first time the concept of a Management Systems Unit (MSU) within the service. It was supposed to be a "multi-disciplinary" group providing consulting expertise in the areas of general management, human resources, and financial and technical management, with a view to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness of departmental operations.

As it happened, the MSU was constituted as an autonomous commercial organisation in terms of the Commercial Partnerships Act. Many considered it to be the tail that wagged the dog administering substantial public funds outside the direct control of the head of the civil service. The MSU has since perished, having choked in the grandiloquence of its own ambitions. Its demise has been unwept, unhonoured and unsung.

Reform proposals

This said, it must be registered that the commission tried to tackle its core task. Most important of all was the reorganisation of grades within the service. The successful introduction of the reform, with the full agreement of the interested staff unions followed, and a Staff Development Organisation and Management Personnel Office were subsequently in place.

The commission went further. It advanced some radical proposals relating to the appointment of department heads. Apart from decentralising authority over operational matters, it suggested that a position in the senior category of civil servants, in the grade of director and above, should be contractual terms of definite periods.

This meant that the civil service ceased to be a career service from top to bottom. The PSRC proposed that the top positions be filled by persons of "proven ability" from within or outside the service, all posts to be held on short tenure, and appointments could therefore conceivably be renewed or otherwise, depending on considerations of efficiency, politics and other reasons.

This point was the subject of a fairly elaborate minority report when the PSRC submitted its first-stage document to the Prime Minister. The reservations expressed in that minority report were waved aside and buried queitly without as much as an obituary notice. The rest is history.

Assessment

With handsight, it is now clear that the PSRC initiative petered out and fell much short of the initial objectives. So much so that today the civil service lacks managment flexibility and its delivering performance is woefully poor in senstitive areas. This weakness has repeatedly come to the fore as Malta proceeded to gear up to EU standards in anticipation of EU membership. Time and time again, the EU stressed the need to strengthen Malta's administrative capacity to implement and enforce the acquis.

Considering that the first stages of reform were launched as long ago as 1989, the prevailing deficiencies of the civil service are to be deplored. Responsibility for the weakness belongs to the top leadership, which did not rise to the occasion, and which is now deemed to need yet another injection in the form of a revamped legal enactment.

It has turned out that the 1989 reform opened the way for civil service promotions and enhanced remuneration (plus the introduction of incentive bonuses) without ascertaining simultaneous improvements in productivity and performance.

Notwithstanding major outlays to automate and computerise the service, it was not slimmed down. All the big talk about making improvements in financial management, notably through the supposed introduction of a system of three-year business and financial planning, the government has been staggering from one deficit to another and surviving on borrowed money. It would be unfair to lay all the blame on poor management abilities. The situation has deteriorated because of political interference and incompetence.

Double game

It was not enough to "decapitate" the civil service by introducing a system of three-year renewable contractual appointments for senior management positions and by making these positions accessible to outsiders. The government proceeded to set up "foundations", "authorities" and other regulatory institutions and to exercise its patronage with abandon.

As pointed out recently by Professor Edward Scicluna, quangos have continued to grow over the years and their functions and powers have increased, with the public having little realistic chance of forming and keeping a clear picture of what these bodies are doing exactly. Appointments are secret and sometimes patently unfair in the name of the minister sponsoring the quango. This has marginalised the civil service and demoralised its aspiring stars.

The situation has been further confounded by the appointment of a bevy of ministerial consultants at fanciful rates of remuneration. A full-time consultant specially employed "to follow the activities of the European Parliament" is paid €54,454 (Lm23,380) a year and a part-time consultant in the office of the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Ministry is paid an annual salary of Lm6,570 for a 25-hour week.

No wonder that this overall situation has induced a hardening of the arteries of the civil service and that another brave attempt is being made to institute a "public service for the 21st century". The pity is that, after missing the bus in 1989, it looks as if the government is going to play the same losing game all over again.

It proposes to develop civil service authority even further through the proliferation of more "agencies" and to empower departmental heads to negotiate on, and establish the conditions of employment of public officers within their departments.

While the proposed set-up is supposed to share the basic feature of the Westminster-Whitehall model of government, it provides for layer over layer of superimposed authority and wheels within wheels of intricate management.

Ancillary, or maybe subordinate to, the public service commission, new extras are being proposed to strengthen the machinery of government. It is proposed to establish the office of Principal Permanent Sercretary and, moreover, it set up a so-called "senior executive service" about which little is said. There is also provision for the appearance of two additional birds of paradise: a "public service management committee", acting like a civil service general staff, and a "merit protection commission", which is intended "to ensure integrity and probity at all times in the newly decentralised public sector framework".

Real implications

The uninitiated reader will find all the above a bit too intricate, if not altogether confusing. Two simple and clear-cut deductions could be instantly made. The proposed Public Service Act will lead in two directions:

¤ it will create new openings at the top layers of the civil service; and

¤ it will create new possibilities for political patronage across the length and breadth of the public sector.

With a population equivalent to that of a small city in Europe, Malta has an oversized civil service. Our civil service has a tradition that makes it proud. It once had the resilience to work under stress. It worked best when it was tightly knitted and well led. Sadly, it is no longer so.

A new interest group has emerged. It is interested in the kind of change which will allow top civil service posts to be filled in future by candidates whom they considered to be "one of us". To hark back to the words of the PSRC, certain politicians who are subjected to diverse pressures may succumb, as they have succumbed in the past, to the temptation to factor the service into the strategies of power politics. Willingly or unwillingly, the public service came to be associated with the use of public resources for partisan or private gain.

There are those, within or outside the service, with an interest in deploying human resources to suit political party interests. None of this is consonant or consistent with the national good or with the interest of the service and its customers.

Real role

The role of the civil service is to serve under the direction of democratically-elected ministers. Elected ministers and the electorate are entitled to be served by a competent civil service which responds flexibly and efficiently to the exigencies of the times. This role could best be served by an apolitical career service, protected by the safeguards of the consitution.

In cases where the necessary managerial or technical expertise is lacking, there must be provisions for recruitment from outside, if need be for a contractual term for a definite period. When this is done, there should be simultaneous provision for an under-study from within the service to take over at the end of the contract.

Meanwhile, the civil service should be so organised as to run training and development programmes to upgrade its human resources, thereby enabling the service to cope with its own responsibilities.

This would motivate young people to join the service in the knowledge that they could make their way up to the top. Middle managers would know that they would not be bottled up and excluded from promotion to the higher reaches of the service.

Local conditions

The concept that the post of department head and above could not be tenured, but should be held for definite two- or three-year periods on contractural terms, is unsuitable for Malta. The brightest and the ablest in the Maltese private sector are not likely to be easily attracted to the civil service if their two-year contract is legally subject to termination with a change of government or, say, in the case of incompatibility with a minister.

In larger countries, a manager who leaves an organisation like Motorola or Unilever to take up a top civil service post, will find a post elsewhere in the industry or in the financial services sector with relative ease.

A Maltese manager with a family would be by no means certain of a private sector job on the termination of a two-year contract as head of a government department. At best, such short contracts would suit managers who are within two or three years of reaching pensionable age and are looking forward to an easy job at the end of their career.

Longer-term considerations

There is another sound argument in favour of a permanent civil service. Senior heads must be seen as managers as well as policy strategists. Besides being a "doer" by reason of implementing official policy, the member of the top team must be a "thinker" with the capacity to match up to the requirements of the next half-century.

He must have the capacity and the disposition to apply himself to long-term problems that range beyond the horizon of an electoral manifesto or a single parliament - issues such as a structure plan, funding and the scope of the welfare state, energy, ecology policy and so on. High-flyers in senior posts on definite two-year contracts are likely to be interested in the long-term view.

In the days ahead, the government of the day could hardly look forward to tranquil, sound policy-making if the civil-service is bottled up and isolated from promotion at the highest levels and is, therefore, demotivated, while ministers are prodded by high-flying, two-year term cowboys.

The civil service should be reconstructed on a permanent career basis around the nucleus of officials who will give the service the strength of continuity and will continue its fine tradition of service. The PSRC's original assignment was, as its name implied, to reform the public service and not to replace it with a new one.