Clay Wescott draws on his global experience and talks about civil service reform programs in countries around the world.  He talks about his involvement in such programs in Vietnam, including aspects such as downsizing and the introduction of one-stop shops.  He also recalls the introduction of an effective but contentious computer-based budgeting system in Kenya in the 1980s.  Wescott reflects on the difficulty of reforming a civil service that had been used as a tool of a peace process, such as in Cambodia, where positions were parceled out in order to get different factions to buy into the process.  He also identifies the importance of building reforms to last beyond a current window of opportunity, and of selling a vision of reform that people want to buy into.  He also talks about civil service censuses and outsourcing in Nepal and capacity-building programs in Eritrea, Timor-Leste and Afghanistan.

Case Study:  Policy Leaps and Implementation Obstacles: Civil Service Reform in Vietnam, 1998-2009

Peter Eicher talks about his involvement in the Bangladeshi election that was originally scheduled for January 2007 but was ultimately held in December 2008.  He details the many challenges that led to the election being postponed, including prolific corruption, widespread electoral violence and significant problems with the Election Commission and dispute-resolution mechanisms.  Eicher goes on to explain how the caretaker government rebuilt trust in the Bangladeshi electoral system between 2007 and 2008 by redoing the voter registry, fighting corruption across government and restructuring the Election Commission.  He also highlights Bangladesh’s system of having an interim government assume power three months before an election, suggesting it as a potentially useful approach for other countries struggling with neutrality issues in the electoral process.

Rajiv Bora discusses some of the major issues and challenges the Assam government faced in terms of law and order, counterinsurgency, and illegal immigration. The Indian state has confronted demographic pressures stemming from the migration of people from what is now Bangladesh. The state has also witnessed several insurgencies, including the United Front for the Liberation of Asom and the Bodo minority. Bora describes his role in monitoring and implementing ceasefire agreements with these groups. He talks about government decentralization efforts as well as steps to secure the India-Bangladesh border. These efforts included constructing a border fence, increasing the number of border outposts, establishing tribunals for foreigners, and creating a national registry of citizens. Bora also outlines the objectives and outcomes of the recently implemented Police Act and the institutional steps taken to reduce police excesses. He describes several tribal and communal conflicts and how the government responded. He also highlights the debate about the effectiveness of offering rehabilitation packages for extremists who have surrendered.

Case Study: Promoting Peace Through Development: Assam State, India, 2001-2009

Manzoor Hasan identifies three main challenges for the Bangladeshi civil service: lack of sufficient training, structural problems arising from a colonial legacy of extensive hierarchization and growing politicization leading to corruption and decreased accountability.  He discusses the curriculum and admission policies of the Master’s Program in Governance and Development at the Institute of Governance Services, which aims to address these concerns.  Its multi-step applicant selection strategy aims to increase representation across genders and sectors of civil service, and to identify candidates who are innovative and willing to forego financial and career advancement objectives during the length of training.  The program thus contributes to a growing pool of qualified Bangladeshi civil servants who will be ready to implement reform when the necessary political vision comes about.  To this end, networking capacity is one of the target skills.  Hasan points to a need to increase governmental commitment to training and reform by  relying on state funding rather than donor funding.  This would counteract a trend toward superficial reform measures by which commissions are set up to issue policy recommendations but few concrete steps are taken.

Syed Tanveer Hussain discusses a report on Bangladeshi government downsizing and restructuring he authored for the Office of the Prime Minister in 2002.  This document examined the implementation status and relative urgency of recommendations issued by 17 prior administrative reform committees and reorganization commissions.  Hussain describes a number of reasons for unsuccessful or incomplete implementation: lack of political will across party lines, insufficient explanation of reform rationale, finger-pointing at civil servants that generates built-in resistance, a reform committee system that fosters procrastination, and a distribution of power that at times favors the interests of a stable bureaucracy.  Hussain characterizes his ideal for the bureaucracy and describes a four-step process to achieve that ideal through planning, structural reform, capacity building and constant monitoring.  He then explains in detail each of his concrete proposals.  Among successfully implemented recommendations he counts separation of the Supreme Court and judiciary from other branches of government, and the establishment of quotas for civil service employment of the handicapped. Pending recommendations include administrative downsizing through elimination of function redundancy and outsourcing of some tasks to the private sector, appointment of an ombudsman, creation of financial incentives for civil servant relocation to remote areas of the country, computerization of ministries, employment of local manpower at Bangladeshi embassies for efficiency, retirement age increase in response to improvements in life expectancy, a constitutional mandate for a Civil Service Act, division of civil service into functional clusters to facilitate competition for awards and promotion, and creation of a senior-management pool.  While the government forwarded the report to the Establishment Division for implementation, it neglected its recommendation to streamline reform through an Administrative Performance Services Division modeled after its Malaysian equivalent and set up under the Prime Minister’s Office. Hussain believes centralization is key for successful administrative reform.  

Case Study:  Energizing the Civil Service: Managing at the Top 2, Bangladesh, 2006-2011