Senior Civil Servants Research Articles

Performance Measurement in Malaysian Public Sectors: An Exploratory Study

The purpose of this paper is to look at the adoption of performance measurement in public sectors in Malaysia by specifically examining the extent to which performance measurement is designed, implemented, and used. A survey was conducted to senior civil servants of federal government agencies in Putrajaya, Malaysia. This study found that the public sectors in Malaysia have been to a moderate extent designing their performance measurement system to align to the organizational strategy. This study shows a fairly extensive use of inputs, activities as well as a moderate use of efficiency and quality measures as compared to outcome measures. The results suggest that the Malaysian public sector performance measurement system is seemingly lacking in terms of balanced driver-outcome indicators. Indicators for sustainability, innovation, environmental and social responsibility are also not used extensively. The relatively small sample size causes a limitation to this study which might provide a potential source of bias to generalizability. Besides, the evidence from this study is only descriptive, thus it ignores other variables that can be associated with the performance measurement in use. One important implication of this study is to encourage the Malaysian Government to increase efforts in adopting outcome-based performance monitoring and evaluation method on the governments’ projects and programs. Findings from this study provide insights into the design of performance measurement system and would have drawn attention to its implementation and usage in the public sector.

France's Renewed Commitment to Commercial Diplomacy in the 1960s

AbstractThe political and strategic aspects of General de Gaulle's policies, hisgrandeurrhetoric and his hostility to European integration have between them taken up the attention of historians. It has therefore been overlooked that the 1960s were a period of unprecedented mobilisation by the French state in the promotion of French exports. This policy is not only due to the history of commercial diplomacy. The senior civil servants in charge of this process were interested not only in selling but also in creating a fundamental change to the perception of France by those abroad. It was a keen fight, involving not only official and semi-official bodies, but also private enterprise, who together furthered the neo-corporatist programme of the French state.

Harm Caused by Different Beverage Types—A Recurring Question

This publication is one of two thematic journal issues produced by the project Trouble per liter - The effects of policies favoring lighter beverages. The project's origins date back to March 2007, when Nordic and Russian alcohol researchers met up for a research-based alcohol policy conference in Moscow. During the meeting it became evident that, from a Russian point of view, the historic Nordic drinking trend away from a domination of distilled spirits towards a more mixed pattern, with beer playing a major role, could be interpreted as a successful result of a long-term alcohol policy strategy. Had a conscious steering of the overall consumption towards a preference of lighter-alcohol-content products indeed led to a more moderate and less harmful consumption style in the Nordic countries? The Nordic researchers were struck by the lack of evidence in this area. Could the claim of a successful policy be proven true or false - had larger shares of lighter beverages decreased overall rates of alcohol-related harm - even if the effect was measured, for example, per liter of ethanol consumed?To look into the matter, an international project group was established in 2009 with the support of the Nordic committee of senior civil servants of the social and health field.* At a scientific meeting in Copenhagen in the spring of 2011, results were presented from the separate inquiries. In this issue of Contemporary Drug Problems, five studies by members of the project group examine how consumption of different beverage types are connected to harm. While Ramstedt and Boman, Kerr and Ye, Makela, and Landberg frame their inquiries in a country-specific context, Room et al. investigate study material collected from 19 countries. Each addresses the same issue, i.e. the relationship between beverage choice and harm from drinking, but each from a different viewpoint and type of data. Kerr and Ye review United States studies that have conducted time-series analyses on the connection between per capita consumption of different beverages and various harm rates, and present a new such analysis for motor vehicle accident mortality. Landberg uses time-series data from Sweden to ask whether different beverages have had a different temporal correlation with harm rates, and whether spirits drinking has had an effect on harms over and above the effect of total consumption. Makela, using both aggregate-level and individual-level data, also takes a long-term view, but instead of studying beveragespecific consumption changes, she looks at the history as a test case of whether the change towards milder beverages has brought about the wished-for moderation of drinking patterns and a lowering of harms per liter of total alcohol consumption. Ramstedt and Boman use cross-sectional individual-level data from Sweden to study the interrelationships between beverage choice, drinking patterns, characteristics of drinkers, and harm from drinking. Room et al. present a cross-cultural comparison across a number of countries of the cross-sectional associations between beverage type and harms. On the basis of the results and discussions in the articles, conclusions have been drawn in a summary by Makela et al. at the end of the issue.As a group of studies, these articles illustrate the importance of posing beverage-specific questions in alcohol research. After all, we do not say that we will go out for a glass of alcohol, but rather for a glass of wine or a beer. Likewise, when policy decisions are made regarding taxation or availability restrictions, these are often made on particular beverage types, or groups of products, rather than expressed as restrictions on alcohol.There is a long-lived dream of a better order (Olsson, 1990, p. 193) in the Nordic countries, with the goal epitomized by the wine-drinking cultures of Southern Europe. According to this vision, alcohol plays a central role in such societies, but a less dramatic role, with fewer incidents of intoxication and alcohol-related violence. …

THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISES: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE CANADIAN EXPERIENCE

: Public enterprises have been an integral part of the involvement of the state in the economy for most of the 20th century. After 1980, privatization has been the dominant trend until the 2008–2010 economic crisis when new nationalizations happened. Ownership is only an element of a complex system of relations between a public enterprise and its institutional environment where the role of the board of directors, the mechanisms of coordination, the role of senior civil servants, etc. come to play. Using the Canadian experience with public enterprises, we suggest in this article that public enterprises could be interesting economic policy instruments in the future as in the past if such an economic policy exists. In other words, privatization did not solve the control issue over many large enterprises. Improved corporate governance should be considered. This article aims at improving the understanding of how by focusing on various aspects of the governance of public enterprises on their potential use and work. In Canada, public enterprises have been used to face the recent global crisis but they also come from a long tradition of intervention in the economy, a tradition closer to the European than the American. After reviewing recent developments in their governance, paths for future research are proposed.

The Global Education Village

For four years, I've had the privilege of writing Kappan's bi-monthly In column. Recently, Kappan invited me to write every month and broaden the scope of the column to look at international perspectives on education more generally. I'm delighted to be able to do that, given Kappan's strong track record, excellent writers, and informed readership. I've spent about half my career as an academic and researcher--my current role--and the other half as senior civil servant in education in two different Canadian provinces. I've had the opportunity to see education across Canada and in many other parts of the world. I've been privileged with real opportunities to connect research, policy, and practice, and to see those connections--or their absence--in range of places. My career focus has been on building public education systems that serve all children effectively and have good outcomes in broad range of areas with low levels of inequality. Since that is now the espoused goal of virtually all school systems around the world, it seems to provide good focus for this new assignment. Attention to international experience and perspectives in education is growing rapidly, including in the United States. International comparisons are not new; the Stevenson and Stigler work on teaching in Japan, as one example, received much attention in North America 20 years ago. Remember the assessment by the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) that math curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep? A Google search of that phrase plus the word 'curriculum' turns up 750,000 hits! Even earlier, U.S. education was being compared invidiously to the Soviet Union's, notably in the famous Life magazine cover story of March 24, 1958, in the wake of the Sputnik launch. The trend to international comparison is growing. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the international assessment of 15-year-olds run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), has been substantially responsible for major changes in education policy in many countries. While the first couple of rounds of PISA had little impact in North America, that's changing; it's no accident that the 2009 PISA results were released last December in Washington, D.C. At about the same time, McKinsey & Co. released widely cited report with the modest title How the world's most improved school systems keep getting better (Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010). These high-profile reports and tests are accompanied by growing level of international exchange. There are many conferences and books, both academic and popular, looking at education systems and practices comparatively. Increasingly, education leaders are visiting high-performing systems to study what they do in the hopes of replicating their results, leading to boom in hotel building in Helsinski (just kidding!) to accommodate the thousands of new visitors seeking to learn why Finland perennially occupies PISA's top spot. And last March, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan convened leaders from 15 countries in New York for an International Summit on the Future of the Teaching Profession. This event was co-sponsored by the U.S. education department, both teacher unions, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the OECD, with support from public television station WNET, notable collective effort. Even more, the conference brought some frank international discussion on issues that are very controversial in the U.S.--such as alternative teacher certification, charter schools, and merit pay--yet quite uncommon in other more successful countries. …

Decision-making and Contested Heritage in Northern Ireland: The Former Maze Prison/Long Kesh

The former Maze Prison/Long Kesh in Lisburn, near Belfast, is one of the primary sites associated with the ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Controversy about the site's future makes it clear that the redevelopment of contested heritage cannot be divorced from the policy process of a negotiated settlement between opposed communities and parties. However, research indicates that, despite the stated ‘inclusive’ intent of the Maze/Long Kesh redevelopment, decision-making about the site is often viewed as removed from stakeholder interests and input. Instead, many see plans for, as well as ongoing arguments about, the site redevelopment as determined by party politics, as well as parochial interests pitting those based in Lisburn against others in Belfast. Thus, community-level and other stakeholder interests are often perceived to be ignored. Findings are informed by in-depth interviews with representatives from two loyalist and three republican ex-prisoner groups, each representing different paramilitary factions, as well as a loyalist cultural organisation, a cross-community victims'/survivors' group and a community relations charity. The material is balanced by further interviews with senior civil servants and politicians from both nationalist and unionist parties.

Prevalence of abdominal obesity in senior civil servants in Asaba, Nigeria.

Objective :To study the prevalence of abdominal obesity [using waist circumference measurement], in senior civil servants in Asaba, Nigeria.Subjects and Method: Two hundred apparently healthy civil servants were recruited for the study by stratified random sampling. They consisted of98 males and 102 females. Their biodata was recorded and their waist circumference was measured and recorded.Results: Age of subjects ranged from 29 to 58 years, with a mean of 41.59 ± 8.22 years. Male: Female ratio was 1:1.04. Male subjects had a meanage of 44.06 ± 8.7 years, while that of females was 38.4 ± 6.8 years.Prevalence of abdominal obesity in the study population was 47%. Prevalence of obesity in female subjects was 68.8%, while in males it was 24.5%.This study found that the obesity prevalence increased progressively with age in both male and female subjects.Conclusion: There is high prevalence of obesity in professionals in Asaba, Nigeria.

Les élites de la réforme

Elites of the Reform The RGPP Programme Review has been implemented by a specific administrative elite. This article distinguishes between three circles of innovators, which are grouped according to their involvement in the reform process and ability to influence it. The reform pursued since 2007 is supported by new networks, and the “top circle” of innovators has been extensively renewed. The article shows that the RGPP has been implemented by a very tight core network of senior civil servants. They do not have the same profile as young civil servants from the corps techniques and the middle classes who seek to use new public management methods in order to counter the power of the grands corps. Quite the contrary, they are members of the grand corps administratifs, who have acquired professional experience in the private sector and ministers’private offices. They constitute a unique network of specialists in financial matters. Their profile is thus very different from the civil servants who are members of the two other circles responsible for implementing the reform.

The Public Service Bargain in the United Kingdom: The Whitehall Model in Decline?

Three decades of public sector reform have altered politico/administrative relations in the UK. This article looks into the changing relationships between senior civil servants and their ministers in British central administration. Using the concept of the public service bargain (PBS), three dimensions of this relationship are investigated: rewards, competencies and loyalty/responsibility. The main findings of the research point towards an emerging ‘hybrid’ public service bargain, instead of a full blown ‘managerial’ bargain, as much of the current literature suggests. The article concludes with some future prospects for the public service bargain in the United Kingdom.

Canada’s Senior Public Service and the Typology of Bargains: from the Hierarchy of Senior Civil Servants to A Community of ‘‘Controlled’’ Entrepreneurs

New Public Management (NPM) developments have changed the way the Canadian public service works. Specifically, they have changed a number of aspects of the work, role and management of the senior public service and its relationship with politicians. Hood and Lodge have proposed a typology of these relationships, and if their typology is applied to Canada, we find that senior officials used to adopt a hierarchist-type position with respect to political leaders. But has their position changed since the advent of NPM? The evidence shows that senior executive profiles and practices have become managerialized. In terms of the typology, the change has been relatively small, and the push toward entrepreneurship and individualism has been offset by an increasing number of systemic controls.

Human Capital Management in Government: Replacing Government Retirees

Faced with high levels of senior civil servant retirement in the coming years and limited by civil service requirements, government organizations often struggle to maintain the knowledge base of previous processes and results while promoting people who are truly interested in being leaders in an agency. Upcoming generations of public sector workers do not share the same motivation and workplace characteristics of current exiting civil servants, further complicating smooth transitions of leadership. Government personnel systems for the most part are inflexible and slow to hire, and retention methods for workers do not encourage succession planning. Against this backdrop, a five-phased human capital management system, using some of the best practices found in both public and private sector organizations, is proposed as a solution for replacing government retirees with workers who are prepared for their leadership and management roles.

Advising the State: Bureaucratic Leadership and the Crisis of Governance in Pakistan, 1952–2000

AbstractThis article examines four important turning points (1952, 1961, 1982 and 2000) in Pakistan's history. In each case, the government of the day, faced with serious challenges, solicited/received advice from the bureaucratic leadership. In each case, the latter placed before the former options that, though often different from conventional wisdom or popular prescriptions, offered real hope of a long-term solution to some of Pakistan's problems. And on each occasion, this advice was rejected or ignored by the politicians, arguably at great cost to the country and to its rulers. This article employs a historian's hindsight and argues that at key points in Pakistan's history the bureaucratic leadership did what it was supposed to – provide sound advice based on empirical appreciation of Pakistan's predicament and the enlightened self-interest of the government. Today, it is widely perceived that Pakistan's senior civil servants do not even bother to advise the politicians in power. Indeed, Pakistan's crisis of state cannot be overcome unless the esprit de corps and professional integrity of the civil service are rebuilt. The consequences of failure on this front are so greatly negative for the entire region that focused and sustained efforts are needed to rehabilitate Pakistan's bureaucratic leadership.

Can a Senior Civil Servant Adapt to Managing by Contract? Reform and Civil Servants' Preferences in Lithuanian Government

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Yes or No Minister: The Importance of the Politician-Senior Civil Servant Dyad in Irish Prison Policy

Irish prison policy is notable for the absence of an ideological agenda driving its direction and content. This article examines the impact of the relationship between Minister for Justice, the member of Cabinet responsible for the criminal justice system and prisons in Ireland, and the most senior civil servant within that Department, in the creation of this policy landscape. The Minister-Secretary General dyad in the area of Irish prison policy during the early 1960s is explored in order to assess the importance of this relationship in the formation of prison policy. This period was one of the few in Irish penal history when momentum to change the prison system was evident. The article draws on emerging scholarship on policy analysis within criminology. It suggests that engagement with the policy-making process can provide meaningful data to explain the nature of criminal justice policy.

Women's perception as a barrier to focused antenatal care in Nigeria: the issue of fewer antenatal visits

The attitude of pregnant women to a new antenatal care model with four antenatal visits (focused antenatal care) is examined using a cross-sectional survey in Enugu, Nigeria. Only 20.3% of the parturients desired a change to the new model. Parturients who defaulted from antenatal care three or more times, those dissatisfied with their current antenatal care, senior civil servants and parturients who received secondary school education or less most commonly desired a change to the new model (P < 0.05). Default from antenatal care and dissatisfaction with current antenatal care were most predictive of the desire for change in multiple logistic regression analysis. The most common reasons for desiring the change were convenience (65.1%) and cost considerations (24.1%). Reasons given for the rejection of the new model were: fear of inadequate learning during antenatal care (45.7%), the suspicion that four visits were inadequate for familiarization with care providers (12.9%), the need for early detection of disease (6.7%) and social satisfaction from antenatal visits (6.7%). These concerns are amenable to change by health education and social mobilization.

Perceived behavioural determinants of participation in leisure activities of junior and senior civil servants of Sokoto State

The success of any recreation programme organised either by private sector or by public sector depends largely on the acceptability, and affordability of the participants. It is therefore necessarily to...

Has the Whitehall Model survived?

The expression ‘Whitehall Model’ has a certain heuristic value for describing four key features of the British civil service, namely political neutrality, generalism, life-long career paths and a strong policy advisory role. This model has been challenged by politicization, changes in career management and recruitment as well as increasing competition from other sources of policy advice. The UK civil service’s role in relation to ministers seems to have become increasingly defined in managerial terms and decreasingly as policy advisers, not least because a range of other individuals and bodies (advisers, consultants, think tanks, party research departments) now share this role. While it appears to be enjoying a diminishing policy role, the senior civil service has not, at least so far, managed to occupy the high ground in its managerial role. The biggest change in the model is a collapse of confidence in the civil service, not only among citizens, but also among politicians and civil servants themselves. Points for practitioners In many of its features, the Whitehall Model, describing the UK civil service and its political role, has been remarkably resilient in the face of major changes to the UK politico-administrative system. Top civil servants have traditionally avoided becoming involved in managing the detailed development of policy. With the decline in the political power of the civil service as the most noticeable of the changes in the Whitehall Model, greater attention to this policy development role might help improve the quality of decision-making.

Leadership at all levels: Leading public sector organisations in an age of austerity

Summary One of the main challenges for the public sector in the developed world is to deliver improved services through a motivated workforce in an age of austerity. This age of austerity has been brought on by the financial crisis that has left governments running enormous budget deficits, but facing electorates still expecting increased standards in public services, especially as the tax burden rises. We interviewed and surveyed 50 senior civil servants and local government officers, mainly in the UK, but also obtained input from successful examples of financial turnaround by governments in Sweden and Canada. In addition, we obtained detailed feedback and hypotheses from intensive leadership development programmes that we have designed and delivered in the UK public sector. We tested our findings in a series of workshops bringing together think-tanks, civil servants, local government, consultants and academics. We found a startling degree of consensus that meeting this challenge does not require the identification of more people into new leadership roles nor identifying innate leadership attributes – it is about exercising more leadership at all levels. As with Dr. Sims (Looking for the Key to leadership under the lamp post) and Dr. Grint (The cuckoo clock syndrome: Addicted to elegance, allergic to leadership) we believe that the term leadership is best defined through activities or decisions rather than through looking purely at positional power or traits. Leadership for us is tied into the successful delivery of results and, importantly, requires multiple actors across an organisation or system. Thus leadership is not about an individual in a senior role, it is about many people across an organisation involved in leadership activities for which core capabilities are required. Senior public sector leaders will need to demonstrate four key leadership capabilities: 1. Developing the insights necessary for successful change within complex systems 2. Building the cognitive skills to manage effectively in demanding environments 3. Demonstrating the emotional intelligence to motivate their people 4. Building leadership at all levels of the organisation, by developing capability and ensuring that overly complex structures do not impede the ability of individuals across the organisation to exercise leadership. Public sector organisations have benefited from a huge injection of funding in recent years, yet with budgets being radically reduced while citizen expectations continue to rise, public sector leaders will be challenged to demonstrate a set of capabilities that will be unfamiliar to the current leadership of most public sector organisations at both central and local levels. In contrast to many private-sector organisations, public services demonstrate enduring strengths in quality, motivation and independence – although the quality of delivery in major policy areas remains mixed. A number of pervasive myths can impede effective delivery and hinder effective leadership at all levels. This paper explores some of these myths about leadership in the public sector and outlines the emerging realities that leaders need to face and the key leadership capabilities they need to exercise.

Professional Autonomy versus Political Control

The paper is an attempt to assess the impact of New Public Management (NPM) — inspired reforms on the trade-off between bureaucratic professional autonomy and political control. It investigates the extent to which administrative reforms have affected traditional political and administrative roles, based upon an empirical account of the main changes in the Italian Senior Civil Service. The Italian central government was involved in a significant NPM reform process during the 1990s, which introduced the principle of the separation of administration and politics. The separation of politics and administration has paradoxically resulted in the search for new forms of political control and mechanisms of integration between political and bureaucratic elites. The gradual introduction of reforms combined with attempts to obtain a more responsive bureaucracy by increasing political control seems to have had a positive effect on the level of professionalisation of the Italian Senior Civil Service.

The impact of land use conversion on a residential district in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

This paper examines the changes in land use and economic activities between 1986 and 2005 in a residential development in Port Harcourt that was originally developed for senior civil servants and military personnel. It shows how land ownership has changed and also the rapid expansion of commercial activities within what was exclusively a residential development. With no enforcement of land use regulations, this has led to a decline in the quality of life for the residents.