Gord Evans, as an examiner for the World Bank, discusses the improvement of the effectiveness of cabinet offices. He explains why the head of the state would want to improve their cabinet, detailing how they need the machinery of government to work well for them to help them govern. He talks about how the improvements of the respective cabinets depend on the type of government dynamics that are present. Evans talks about how there are high-level and low-level reforms. The high-level reforms are those that are ambitious, and challenging due to their complexity. In great contrast, the low-level reforms often pertain to administrative issues, those that are less difficult to adjust, such as not enough people to complete a certain task. He talks and elaborates about the biggest implementation challenges he has seen across countries referring to both levels of reform. Evan explains how there are not universal steps or changes that usually produce the biggest improvements in cabinet office performance, and how it is dependent upon the devotion of the prime minister and how sold they are in the reform’s initial proposal. Evans then talks about delivery units, and gives his opinion on the matter, stating how their ability to work is different in a parliamentary system versus a presidential system. He also talks about how official prioritize issues that they focus upon.
At the time of this interview, Gord Evans was an examiner of the effectiveness of cabinet offices for the World Bank. He had extensive experience studying and supporting cabinet office effectiveness. He had prior experience, working in the cabinet office in the government of Ontario, Canada. There he had the title of Deputy Clerk of the Executive Council, where he sat in on the cabinet and committee meetings and took the minutes. After doing this for eight years, he thought it would be time for a career switch and believed that it would be interesting to go out and work internationally. He desired to work with cabinet offices around the world; and luckily around this time the World Bank gained interest in studying things like prime minister, cabinets, and cabinet offices. Therefore, Evans was able to work with the World Bank and help them develop an approach to the examination of cabinet offices. Now, 14-15 years later, the program has been successful, and Evans has worked in approximately 30 countries.
When Andrius Kubilius became prime minister of Lithuania in November 1999, he faced dual crises. Russia’s economic crash a year earlier had thrown Lithuania’s economy into a tailspin, and the government was in danger of losing its ability to borrow on international financial markets after running a large deficit the previous year. Furthermore, the European Commission had informed Lithuania that the country was falling short in its efforts to join the European Union (EU)—a key element in the Baltic state’s economic and political future. Kubilius’ government devised a plan to manage those crises, but systemic weaknesses in the center of government made it difficult to execute the agenda. The government was unable to ensure that line ministries set aside pet projects, was focused on supporting the goal of EU accession, and was unable to channel the government’s diminished resources to the most important projects. To address these challenges, Kubilius instructed State Chancellor Petras Auštrevi?ius and Government Secretary Algirdas Šemeta to reform the policy planning process to focus ministries on EU accession and other strategic goals, and to synchronize the budget and policy planning processes so that government spending flowed more reliably to where it was most needed. With less than a year until elections that were widely expected to bring in new leadership, Auštrevi?ius and Šemeta implemented reforms that put Lithuania back on track in negotiations to join the EU and back on its feet financially. Successive governments led by Lithuania’s other major political parties helped sustain and institutionalize the early gains.
In 2006, Lithuania was in the midst of its most robust period of economic growth and political stability since independence. The Baltic nation was a model of administrative capacity among new European Union members. But after years of energetic reform, weaknesses started to emerge in the strategic planning system the government had developed to meet the requirements for European Union accession. Civil servants increasingly viewed planning procedures as technical requirements rather than useful tools. And although planning documents proliferated, the system did not provide decision makers with the information required to assess policy impacts and performance. Officials from the prime minister’s office and the Ministry of Finance engaged other ministries in an effort to strengthen the strategic planning system. They refocused government on priority policies and improved the quality of information that decision makers needed. They improved the data management systems, reduced the number of policy priorities and impact assessments required, and empowered ministers in their sectors. In 2008, when a global financial crisis hit, new leaders endorsed and expanded the reform effort.
Jonathan (Yoni) Friedman drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Vilnius, Lithuania, during January and February 2012. Case published June 2012. A separate case study, “Focusing on Priority Goals: Strategic Planning in Lithuania, 2000-2004,” deals with the initial implementation of the strategic planning system in Lithuania.
When Momo Rogers became director general of Liberia’s Cabinet Secretariat in June 2009, he thought the office could begin to support President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and her team of ministers much more effectively than it had done previously. Cabinet offices generally aimed to improve the quality of decision making and coordination at the center of government. That function was especially important in Liberia, where President Sirleaf wanted to advance an ambitious development agenda—six years after the end of a protracted civil war—yet before Rogers stepped into his role, many Cabinet meetings were long and unfocused and often yielded few tangible results. For example, policy decisions reached in the Cabinet meetings were not often communicated to the people responsible for implementing policy. Moreover, the relevance of decisions about the government’s priorities was sometimes unclear even to those who had participated in the meetings. Recognizing those challenges, Sirleaf tasked Rogers with responsibility for making the office—and the Cabinet itself—work better. Rogers built a team at the Secretariat and introduced procedural changes like circulating agendas and policy papers in advance of Cabinet meetings. By 2012, the Cabinet was functioning more effectively: agendas circulated in advance, discussions were more focused, and the Secretariat followed up on action items agreed to in the meetings. But shortcomings remained, including a persistent need to improve the quality of policy proposals submitted to Cabinet.
Michael Scharff drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Monrovia, Liberia, and the United States in April and May 2012. Case published in September 2012.
Case published 11/16/2012 by SM.
Case updated 02/13/2013 by SM.
Case minorly updated 03/06/2013 by SM.
Abstract
When Indiana governor Mitch Daniels took office in January 2005, he sought to change the performance and culture of state government. The state’s economy was stagnant, and the accumulated budget deficit was topping $600 million on a total budget of $22.7 billion for 2003–05. (The state legislature passed a new budget every other year.) State agencies received funding without having to show results, and when funds were available, state workers received pay raises in some years regardless of performance. Daniels recognized that the delivery of bold reforms, including the promise to close the deficit and improve economic growth, required changing the way state government worked. A former corporate executive, Daniels had served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, which, among other responsibilities, helps the US government’s executive branch prepare its version of the federal budget, but he had never held elected office. To implement his agenda, Daniels needed new systems and new processes in his office, the center of Indiana state government. He created an Indiana office of management and budget and established a new group within that office to set goals, monitor performance, and link budgets to outcomes. Policy teams in Daniels’s office reported progress on agency-level reforms and helped unclog bottlenecks. And Daniels created a performance-based pay system to encourage state workers to focus on results. Daniels’s reforms were not without controversy. For example, he scrapped state workers’ rights to collective bargaining, and he privatized services previously delivered by government, which led to employee layoffs. By 2012, the final year of his second term, Daniels’s reforms had produced marked changes, including a budget surplus every year from 2006 to 2012, and he won praise from both his own Republican Party and opposition Democrats.
Michael Scharff drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana in July 2012. Rick Messick—formerly of the World Bank, and chief counsel and research director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee from 1983-84 when Governor Daniels was executive director—provided guidance, editorial suggestions, and interview support. Case originally published November 2012. Case revised to clarify budgetary results and republished in February 2013.
From the 1960s to the early 1990s, Ghana’s Cabinet-level policy management system deteriorated as multiple coups d’état produced abrupt changes in government. Many competent civil servants either left or were pushed out. Ministries submitted policy documents to the Cabinet that lacked essential information ministers required to evaluate the wisdom and feasibility of proposals. Ministries rarely cooperated with each other. But beginning in 2003, a newly formed policy unit in the presidency partnered with the Canadian International Development Agency to strengthen Ghana’s policy management system. The unit helped coordinate policy planning between ministries and reported on implementation to the president. The Cabinet Secretariat introduced standardized formats to guide ministries in policy development and ensure that proposals contained all essential information. The Office of the Head of the Civil Service and the University of Ghana Business School worked together to train hundreds of civil servants in the practical skills of researching, writing, and communicating policies. By 2008, the new system was in place and the policy management process had improved, but sustaining the reforms through the tumultuous government transition that followed the country’s 2008 elections posed additional challenges. Looking back on the effort, Samuel Somuah, who helped lead the Ghana Central Governance Project, underscored the importance of an effective policy management system by saying, “If there’s one project every African country needs, or every developing country needs, it’s this project.”
Jonathan Friedman drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Accra, Ghana, during April 2013. Case published October 2013.
