In the early 1990s, Tanzania launched one of the most wide-ranging civil service reform programs ever undertaken in a low-income country. Over a period of 15 years, reform leaders worked to create a government the country could afford and that would deliver services more effectively. They reduced the size of the civil service, reorganized some functions into separate agencies, changed recruitment practices, adjusted pay scales, and launched initiatives to improve performance. Reform leaders scored some notable successes, reducing the size of the civil service by more than 25% and dramatically improving some core economic services such as business licensing. They also encountered obstacles and made slow progress in some aspects of their program, particularly performance management. This case focuses mainly on the period 1995-1998.

In 2004 Ifueko Omoigui Okauru, a management consultant with no previous government experience, took on the challenge of fixing Nigeria’s corrupt and dysfunctional tax system. As executive chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, she was responsible for reforming a weak and ineffective organization to meet the needs of a changing country. To reduce its heavy dependence on oil, Nigeria needed to diversify its revenue streams beyond the petroleum sector. Improved tax administration offered an avenue toward achieving that goal. In overhauling the tax system, Omoigui Okauru had to overcome entrenched opposition from private consultants who earned high pay under the existing system, defeat the institutional inertia that characterized the revenue service, and curb the corruption that fueled citizens’ distrust and hampered tax collection. To advance her vision for modernized tax administration, she recruited talented professionals and instituted specialized career tracks for employees, alongside additional training modules for existing staff and a reorganization of departments and functions. This case study chronicles the first five years of Omoigui Okauru’s efforts to improve tax collection in Nigeria and offers an example of how an outside leader working with a team of experienced professionals can build the coalitions necessary for legislative, policy and administrative reforms.