Redesigning a Public Agency: Social Security in Morocco, 2001-2010

Abstract
Until 2001, Morocco’s Caisse Nationale de Sécurité Sociale (CNSS, or National Social Security Fund) did its job unevenly, inefficiently, and, critics said, often unfairly. Although the fund was meant to provide insurance for all private sector employees, it covered only about half of them. It had no proper accounting and was mismanaged and corrupt to the extent that it had lost the trust of companies, workers, and politicians. In 2001, the CNSS’s new director general, Mounir Chraïbi, moved to improve service delivery and increase enrollment in response to a parliamentary investigation committee report that had revealed the agency’s shortcomings. Chraïbi and his successor, Saïd Ahmidouch, reorganized the CNSS to enhance accountability and efficiency, rebuilt the staff to raise skill levels, introduced an electronic system for handling many of the fund’s interactions with businesses, and changed the design of the auditing process. By 2010, when Ahmidouch implemented the final measures of the reform plan, the agency had sharply increased its enrollment of private sector companies and their employees and regained the trust of its partners.
 
Romain Ferrali drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Casablanca and Rabat, Morocco, in June and July 2013. Case published October 2013.
Keywords
Morocco
CNSS
UMT
social security
retirement
parliamentary investigation committee
Mounir Chraibi
Said Ahmidouch
Damancom
Focus Area(s)
Civil Service
Critical Tasks
Civil service recruitment
Computerization of records
Downsizing
Evaluating performance
Public management reform
Single agency turnaround
Core Challenge
Principal-agent problem (delegation)
Country of Reform
Morocco
Type
Case Studies
Author
Romain Ferrali