Document Library

Government Employment and Compensation - Facts and Policies

Author: S Shiavo-Campo and P Sundaram
Date: 2001
Size: 54 pages (250 KB)

Access full text: available online

Summary

How can a good civil service contribute to good governance? This chapter from 'To Serve and To Preserve: Improving Public Administration in a Competitive World' reports little success in reducing government employment and limiting the wage bill in developing countries. Instead of minimising employment and compressing wages in the civil service, more attention should be paid to longer term issues of accountability, skills, motivation and ethos.

Worldwide, government civilian employment averages five percent of the population. It is relatively larger in industrial countries and smallest in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. The right size of government employment depends on country-specific factors. Wage policies aim to ensure equal pay for equal work and comparability of government and private pay. While a good civil service is not sufficient to produce good governance, experience shows that a very bad civil service is sufficient to produce bad governance.

In trying to move away from an underperforming and underpaid civil service, the following lessons emerge from international practice:

• Seeking new blood for the civil service can create a two-tier system. New staff recruited at a new salary scale are expected to meet higher standards. This approach only works if it is transitory.
• Even at low salaries, skilled young people can be induced into government service for limited periods if given challenging responsibilities and solid training.
• Transitional arrangements for contract employees can be workable. Contractual posts to government bodies must be decided at high levels and be part of a transition to overall salary reform.
• Capacity constraints in developing and transitional countries suggest that unified classification and pay systems are more desirable than differentiated classifications for different entities.
• Individual negotiations between staff and ministries result in distortions and inequities and compromise prospects for sustainable improvement.
• The fragmentation of the civil service into separate entities hampers mobility and communication. Upward feedback through confidential surveys of subordinates allows evaluation of managers’ performance.

A combination of immediate, short-term, medium-term and long-term measures are recommended for a successful transition to an efficient civil service. This process can create incentives for government entities to improve their organisation and operation. Ideally, all government entities should operate in accordance with the new system:

• Immediate measures include: a freeze on recruitment; sequestering future vacancies arising out of retirement, termination, death, or resignation; a temporary halt in promotions apart from in exceptional cases; and a halt on the absorption of contractual and temporary employees into permanent positions.
• Short-term measures include: a census of all types of employees; the removal of ghost workers from the payroll; an improved personnel management information system; and the completion of studies on job classification, personnel procedures, and salary structure.
• Medium-term measures include: implementation of recommendations from the previous phase; streamlining personnel regulations; a review of the functions, organisation and operational effectiveness of key ministries; a mechanism for re-certifying government employees to screen out those without adequate qualifications and redeployment of other employees.
• Long-term measures include: the submission of ministerial restructuring plans, including objectives, strategies, a staffing programme, a timetable, and indices of administrative performance, training needs, and financial requirements. Once this plan is approved at the highest level and irreversible steps have been taken, restrictions on recruitment and wages can be relaxed.

Access full text: available online

Source: Schiavo-Campo, S. and Sundaram, P. (eds.), 2001, 'Government Employment and Compensation - Facts and Policies', Chapter 10 in To Serve and To Preserve: Improving Public Administration in a Competitive World, Asian Development Bank, Manila, pp. 368-419
Author: Asian Development Bank (ADB), http://www.adb.org/