Managing the civil service : what LDCs can learn from developed country reforms

The author examines current civil service management (CSM) practices in advanced countries to provide guidance for developing country governments that face the dilemma of how to recruit, retain, and motivate appropriately skilled staff at affordable costs, given a limited human resource base. Advanced country administrations are following two distinct paths to improving CSM. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, are engaged insweeping"managerialist"reforms to decentralize civil service functions and make them more responsive to the client public. By introducing complex financial reporting systems, managers have increased autonomy; some functions are spun off into semi-autonomous agencies operating on an increasingly commercial basis. By contrast, other industrialized countries, such as Singapore, have retained more traditional, largely centralized civil service structures, pursuing only incremental improvements in specific aspects of CSM. The author speculates about what is likely to work best in developing country administrations: Centralized civil service management models provide the best starting point for most developing countries because decentralized agency systems require technological and human resources beyond their capabilities. Some better-endowed countries could use certain agency-type features selectively. Such administrations could establish strategic plans to move toward a fuller agency system as their institutional capabilities increase. Developing countries face trade-offs in choosing which CSM functions should be strengthened first. Two functions - personnel establishment control and staff recruitment - are essential for civil service performance and should get top priority. Senior Executive Services have proved difficult to design and implement in advanced countries, but many flaws can be corrected in adapting them to developing countries, where there is often an urgent need to groom higher-level staff. Assuming minimal, essential levels of personnel establishment and budgetary control, unified pay and classification could be relaxed in developing countries, following the lead of increasing numbers of advanced countries that have done this. Given the urgency of other CSM tasks, lower priority should be assigned to reform involving performance pay, the benefits of which have yet to be demonstrated in the public sectors of developed countries. The management requirements and costs of installingperformance pay systems can be considerable and employee resistance may subvert such efforts. But performance-related promotion systems, even if imperfectly implemented, can help move developing country civil service values toward standards of competence and merit.National Governance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Work&Working Conditions,Governance Indicators,Public Sector Economics&Finance

Public sector management issues in structural adjustment lending

This paper reviews the Bank's experience in implementing public sector management reforms through structural adjustment lending. The study focuses on those institutional aspects of adjustment that deal with"macro-management"issues related to improvements in the management performance of core central government institutions and to systemic changes in public adminstrations. The paper reached the following broad conclusions; (a) public sector management components of SALs progressed unevenly and outcomes varied with diverse political, administrative and economic conditions; (b) reforms for which routinized methodologies and systems were introduced and those that could be linked to actionable steps were more likely to be sustained over time; (c) short time horizons of SALs posed severe constraints on the effective implementation of public sector management reforms; and (d) reforms through SALs are more successful when supported by specific technical assistance projects. It also concluded that: (e) the haste of SAL schedules and the lack of dynamism and focus of traditional technical assistance argues for the creation of a new lending instrument; (f) country economic and sector work is crucial to successful reforms undertaken through SALs; and (g) monitoring and supervision of institutional components of SALs needs to be systemized and the quality of documentation improved.Public Sector Economics&Finance,National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Economic Policy, Institutions and Governance

Civil service reform and the World Bank

The emphasis placed by the World Bank in recent years on the major overhaul of developing country economies has accentuated the importance of adequate public sector administrative capacity, especially within the central core of government, that is, the civil service. This paper surveys recent Bank experience in civil service reform, and begins to assess the progress made. The paper focuses on two separate but related aspects of civil service reform work. One deals with the shorter term, emergency steps to reform public pay and employment policies. These reforms usually focus on measures to contain the cost and size of the civil service, mostly in the context of structural adjustment lending. The other set of reforms are those dealing with longer range civil service strengthening efforts, some of which may support various nearer term cost containment measures, but most of which are directed toward ongoing, sustained management improvements. Many of these reforms have been included in technical assistance projects, either those that stand alone as"development management"operations or those that constitute direct institutional support for specific actions taken in SALs.Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Labor Management and Relations,National Governance

Public sector pay and employment reform : a review of World Bank experience

This paper offers an interim review of the Bank's experience with public sector pay and employment reform. Its aim is to establish what has been done and what has been learnt to date. The objectives of the paper are to inventory and analyze Bank operational work in selected countries and to provide a brief guide to Bank research and policy work on this subject. The review covers the period between 1981 and February 1987. The paper tries to draw attention to issues that have emerged in the early phases of these activities and to make some tentative suggestions about directions for future Bank work; rather than draw conclusions about the impact of these efforts. The paper covers only the Bank's experience with pay and employment policy issues in central governments (generally with particular reference to the civil service).Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Labor Management and Relations,Environmental Economics&Policies

Managing the civil service: reform lessons from advanced industrialized countries

Texto que analisa aspectos diversos relativos aos Recursos Humanos do Serviço Público nos países industrializados, visando contribuir para a solução dos dilemas enfrentados pelos países em desenvolvimento nos seus atuais processos de reforma do Estado.Número de páginas: 90 p.Gestão de PessoasSérie monográfica: Cadernos ENAP, 1

Oral and Tympanic Membrane Temperatures are Inaccurate to Identify Fever in Emergency Department Adults

Introduction: Identifying fever can influence management of the emergency department (ED) patient, including diagnostic testing, treatment, and disposition. We set out to determine how well oral and tympanic membrane (TM) temperatures compared with rectal measurements. Methods: A convenience sample of consecutively adult ED patients had oral, TM, and rectal temperatures performed within several minutes of each other. Descriptive statistics, Bland–Altman agreement matrices with 95% confidence interval (CI), and measures of test performance, including sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, and interval likelihood ratios were performed. Results: A total of 457 patients were enrolled with an average age of 64 years (standard deviation: 19 years). Mean temperatures were: oral (98.38F), TM (99.68F), and rectal (99.48F). The mean difference in rectal and oral temperatures was 1.18F, although there was considerable lack of agreement between oral and rectal temperatures, with the oral temperature as much as 2.918F lower or 0.748F higher than the rectal measurement (95% CI). Although the difference in mean temperature between right TM and rectal temperature was only 0.228F, the right TM was lower than rectal by up to 1.618F or greater by up to 2.058F (95% CI). Test performance varied as the positive predictive value of the oral temperature was 97% and for tympanic temperature was 55% (relative to a rectal temperature of 100.48F or higher). Comparative findings differed even at temperatures considered in the normal range; among patients with an oral temperature of 98.0 to 98.9, 38% (25/65) were found to have a rectal temperature of 100.4 or higher, while among patients with a TM of 98.0 to 98.9, only 7% (10/134) were found to have a rectal temperature of 100.4 or higher. Conclusion: In conclusion, the oral and tympanic temperature readings are not equivalent to rectal thermometry readings. Oral thermometry frequently underestimates the temperature relative to rectal readings, and TM values can either under- or overestimate the rectal temperature. The clinician needs to be aware of the varying relationship between oral, TM, and rectal temperatures when interpreting readings. [West J Emerg Med. 2011;12(4):505–511.]</p