building a reform team and staff

Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Ref Batch
C
Focus Area(s)
Civil Service
Ref Batch Number
4
Critical Tasks
Civil service corruption
Country of Reform
Indonesia
Interviewers
Matthew Devlin, Andrew Schalkwyk
Name
Sri Mulyani Indrawati
Interviewee's Position
Minister of Finance
Interviewee's Organization
Indonesia
Language
English
Nationality of Interviewee
Indonesia
Town/City
Jakarta
Country
Indonesia
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
Yes
Keywords
building a reform team and staff
getting the news out/managing expectations
containing patronage pressures
Abstract

Sri Mulyani Indrawati talks about the sweeping reforms she introduced in the Ministry of Finance in Indonesia.  She talks about how she took over the Ministry of Finance and built a team that was capable of pushing through challenging reforms. She reflects on the crucial support of Indonesia's president, who backed the tough decisions she needed to make in order to make the Ministry of Finance more effective.  She also talks about the complicated relationship between the Ministry of Finance and Parliament, whose members generally supported reform in the abstract but sometimes balked at the steps she felt needed to be taken, such as raising salaries.  She notes that the reforms maintained the support of the president and other high-level officials because she kept a close eye on costs and benefits; in fact, tax revenue increased sharply after the beginning of the reforms.  In some detail, Mulyani describes the steps she took to tackle corruption.  She made it clear that corruption would not be tolerated, and she fired whole departments where corruption occurred, to send the message that she was serious. She was able to contain patronage pressures by securing the president’s backing for decisions that were expected to draw a backlash from powerful people.  She also made the tough decision to go against cultural norms and the strong bureaucratic esprit de corps, removing poorly performing bureaucrats rather than relocating them or waiting for them to retire.  Throughout these changes, she built a strong and productive relationship with the media, encouraging them to hold her accountable and monitor the activities of her ministry.  She ends with reflections on the importance of building coalitions through consultations, and why authority should be exercised only as a last resort.

Case Study:  Instilling Order and Accountability: Standard Operating Procedures at Indonesia's Ministry of Finance, 2006-2007 

Transcript
Sri_Indrawati.pdf
Sri_Indrawati.txt
Headshot
Sri_Indrawati.jpg
Profile

Sri  Mulyani Indrawati received her doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  She served as an executive director of the International Monetary Fund, representing 12 economies in Southeast Asia.  She worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and lectured on the Indonesian economy at the University of Georgia, in the U.S.   At the time of this interview, she was head of Indonesia's Ministry of Finance, where she build a reputation for integrity and was credited with reducing corruption and increasing efficiency.  In August 2008, she was ranked by Forbes Magazine as the 23rd most powerful woman in the world, and the most powerful in Indonesia.

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34 MB
Audio Subsections
URL
Size
1.6Mb
Title
Getting The Word Out
Full Audio Title
Sri Mulyani Indrawati - Full Interview

Dapo Olorunyomi

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H
Focus Area(s)
Building a Reform Team and Staff
Ref Batch Number
9
Country of Reform
Nigeria
Interviewers
Itumeleng Makgetla
Name
Dapo Olorunyomi
Interviewee's Position
Chief of Staff
Interviewee's Organization
Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)
Language
English
Nationality of Interviewee
Nigerian
Town/City
Abuja
Country
Nigeria
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
No
Keywords
media relations
managing expectations
getting the news out
building a reform team and staff
training
recruitment
Abstract
Dapo Olorunyomi discusses his work as chief of staff for Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). He details the evolution of the EFCC’s work with different segments of Nigerian society and focuses on the role of community and media outreach in the EFCC’s anticorruption work. Olorunyomi particularly focuses on the role of religious groups and leaders in supporting anti-corruption efforts, as well as engaging public figures and celebrities to endorse the commission’s work. He also discusses strategies for working with local government officials. Olorunyomi also touches on staff training and retention issues, the political tensions that were sparked when the commission targeted politicians, and the necessity of looking beyond Nigeria’s borders for inspiration and lessons.
 
Transcript
Dapo_Olorunyomi.pdf
Dapo_Olorunyomi.txt
Headshot
dapo_olorunyomi.jpg
Profile
At the time of this interview, Dapo Olorunyomi was the enterprise editor at Next Newspapers and executive director of the Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism. He served as chief of staff of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission from 2005 until he left the EFCC after Chairman Nuhu Ribadu’s dismissal in 2008. He also worked on Ribadu’s 2011 presidential campaign.  Olorunyomi worked as a journalist and human rights activist in Nigeria during the military regime of Sani Abacha before moving to the United States, where he worked as the Nigeria Project Director for Freedom House. He returned to Nigeria in 2005 in order to work for the EFCC.  He has won numerous awards for his work in journalism, including the PEN Freedom to Write Award in 1996 and the International Editors Award in 1995.
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76 MB
Full Audio Title
Dapo Olorunyomi Interview

Humberto Falcao Martins

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V
Focus Area(s)
Civil Service
Ref Batch Number
6
Critical Tasks
Computerization of records
Country of Reform
Brazil
Interviewers
Rushda Majeed
Name
Humberto Falcao Martins
Interviewee's Position
Managing Director
Interviewee's Organization
Instituto Publix
Language
Portuguese
Nationality of Interviewee
Brazil
Town/City
Brasilia
Country
Brazil
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
No
Keywords
technical assistance
computerization
Reform sequencing
building a reform team and staff
getting the news out/managing expectations
performance management
decentralization
Abstract

Humberto Falcao Martins offers his perspective on the Brazilian civil service reforms of the 1990s.  He credits Bresser-Pereira for single-handedly putting civil service reform on the agenda.  As a specialist on state an institutional issues in the Secretariat for Strategic Affairs, he was involved in the initial review of the Plano Diretor, or blueprint for reform, produced by Bresser-Pereira.  Martins says he was impressed with the decentralization scheme that would create a strategic core, a second group of activities handled exclusively by the state, a third group that would perform activities through partnerships with NGOs and social organizations, and a fourth group focused on market-oriented service provision by state-owned agencies.  Although he recognized the potential of the proposed initiatives, Martins was concerned with reduction of political interference in the implementation stage.  He identifies economists in the government as one of the main sources of opposition, which translated into generalized resistance to the reform.  Divergent views on managerial reform within the executive branch also contributed to resistance.  Martins further argues that consensus building during the drafting process would have circumvented opposition within the civil service.  Operational and legal obstacles plagued the implementation stage as well, but were somewhat successfully addressed in the social organization initiative in which Martins participated personally.  Specific strategies involved passage of constitutional amendments to restructure the civil service, but they came at the cost of increasing opposition.  Martins emphasizes the role of the reform in bringing about a paradigm shift in public administration rather than in effecting specific change.  In that sense, the ultimate result of the Brazilian managerial reform was to inspire other reformers across the country, with the state of Minas Gerais emerging as a paradigmatic success.  In the end, Martins attributes failure of specific implementation to fragmentation arising from concomitant and somewhat divergent views on state reform that were happening at the same time under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Case Study:  Strengthening Public Administration: Brazil, 1995-1998

Transcript
Humberto_Martins.pdf
Humberto_Martins.txt
Headshot
humberto_martins.jpg
Profile

At the time of this interview, Humberto Falcao Martins was the managing director of the Instituto Publix, which focuses on consulting and corporate education in public management.  He served as a specialist on state institutional issues in the Secretariat for Strategic Affairs under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and he reviewed initial proposals for national reform.  Inspired by the potential of the Plano Diretor, he joined the Ministry of Administration and State Reform himself as a member of the social organizations team.
 

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Full Audio File Size
80 MB
Full Audio Title
Humberto Martins Interview

Jaime Castro Castro

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J
Focus Area(s)
City Management
Ref Batch Number
4
Critical Tasks
Municipal centers of government
Overcoming corruption
Country of Reform
Colombia
Interviewers
Matthew Devlin and Sebastian Chaskel
Name
Jaime Castro Castro
Interviewee's Position
Mayor of Bogotá, 1992-1994
Language
Spanish
Nationality of Interviewee
Colombian
Town/City
Bogotá
Country
Colombia
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
No
Keywords
depoliticization
decentralization
reform planning
containing patronage pressures
building a reform team and staff
city reform
organizing a municipal center of government
Abstract
In this Interview, Castro describes his role in issuing the 1993 Organic Statute of Bogotá that put an end to decades of governability deficit and bankruptcy in the city. He credits the Constitutional amendments of 1991 for enabling the reform process without garnering prohibitive resistance early on, but he attributes that lack of opposition to indifference and underestimation of the future impact of the changes rather than agreement with the project for Bogotá. Once the constitutional mandate for passage of the statute was in place, drafting was initially delegated to Congress, while Castro found himself participating in what he describes as a de facto joint administration with the Bogotá Concejo (city council) that exceeded the limits established by constitutional separation of powers. He dedicated his first year in office to assembling a highly competent and depoliticized team, in what amounted to a break with Colombian tradition. He managed to deal with pressures in this respect by appointing Concejo members’ protégés for politically inconsequential  posts. During his first year, Castro also acquired the practical experience that would inform his draft of the statute once Congress failed to produce a viable document. The Organic Statute passed by decree in late 1993, and became the road map for Bogotá by formalizing the separation of powers between the mayor’s office and the Concejo down to the implementation level, introducing a decentralized regime within the city and setting the bases for comprehensive taxation reform.  Castro was then confronted with high political costs—including the possibility of impeachment—that were compounded when the statute came into force at the same time that the electoral campaign of 1994 started.  Castro points to the lack of immediate visibility of the reform that made him especially vulnerable to criticism by political opportunists, particularly on taxation matters. Despite campaign promises to the contrary, the statute was left untouched as it began to deliver results. In discussing potential shortcomings of the final statute, Castro highlights the lack of attention to the regional dimension. On that note, he calls for a unified approach to address common problems across issue areas that plague Bogotá and the surrounding municipalities in Cundimarca. In closing, he encourages other reformers to take office ready to spend rather than increase their political capital by passing unpopular but necessary measures.
 
Transcript
jaime_castro.pdf
J4_GT_MD_Castro_Final2.txt
Headshot
jaime_castro.jpg
Profile

A lawyer and statistician by training, Jaime Castro Castro had a distinguished academic career in public administration.  In 1968, he was appointed as Presidential Secretary for Administrative Reform under President Carlos Lleras Restrepo. Two years later, he became President Misael Pastrana’s Legal Secretary to the Office of the Presidency before being promoted to Minister of Justice and Law in 1973. A year later, he was elected Senator and later served as Minister of Government for Belisario Betancur. He was a member of the National Constitutional Assembly of 1991 before being elected as mayor of Bogotá in 1992. After completing his term in 1994, he has remained active in politics and academia. 

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