As a follow up to her 2009 interview, Sri Mulyani Indrawati revisits her years as Indonesia’s minister of finance to discuss the challenges of building her economic reform team and institutionalizing performance management at the ministry.  She describes how she worked closely with key members of the KPK (Corruption Eradication Commission) to cultivate motivation and teamwork among government employees.  With the support of her reform team, she established institutional mechanisms to reduce corruption and raise the credibility of the government.  And although Indonesia’s bureaucracy proved to challenge the reform team at times, she explains how performance indicators and standard operating procedures were instrumental to identify and overcome weaknesses in the Ministry of Finance.  In conclusion, Sri Mulyani reflects on the more personal attributes required to move sustainable reform forward: a strong vision along with the trust and commitment of her fellow reformers.   She describes the practice of public asset disclosure as one of the most sustainable reforms her team implemented at the ministry. 

Muniru Kawa discusses his work as the project manager of the Records Management Improvement Program at the Public Service Reform Unit of Sierra Leone, particularly the verification of personnel records and removal of "ghost" employees from the civil service payroll.  Kawa details the efforts of the program in interviewing civil servants to ensure appropriate grade levels and qualifications and cites the U.K.'s  Department for International Development funding of these efforts.  As independent contractors, the program's team members were able to maintain credibility with the civil service and accomplish far more than an internal civil service effort.  

Jaba Ebanoidze talks about the reform of Georgia's Public Registry office, an agency that records all information associated with property ownership in the country. Under his tenure, the office streamlined various processes and undertook the computerization of all records and applications. This has allowed citizens to submit applications through the Internet and track the progress of their applications. Ebanoidze hired top Georgian programmers to develop a Georgia-specific software system.  He looked at other countries in Europe, drawing inspiration from Estonia and taking lessons from places where he felt things didn’t work so well. He raised salaries of his key staff so as not to lose them to the private sector, while at the same time he worked on institutionalizing procedures so they were not person-specific. He also discusses the challenges and successes in extending the new system to rural and outlying areas. Ebanoidze talks about training a core group of people to work with new systems, and then unrolling it slowly. He was able to minimize expenses by having a training team go from region to region rather than trying to train all regions simultaneously. He also talks about successful attempts to combat corruption by minimizing citizen-staff interaction, and through the more direct means of firing staff resistant to increased transparency.

Case Study:  Rejuvenating the Public Registry: Republic of Georgia, 2006-2008

Nasir El-Rufai narrates his entry into public service in the context of the return to democracy under President Olusegun Obasanjo.  As an outsider to the political scene, he managed to advocate for privatization and eventually drafted and implemented a concrete multistage plan.  El-Rufai identifies the “easy” cases for privatization as companies that are (1) already listed on the stock exchange, (2) easy to value, (3) already operational in competitive markets, and/or (4) not politically contentious.  In contrast, the “hard” cases require progressive policy reform including regulatory sector review, enactment of legislation for independent oversight, implementation of antitrust measures and, notably, the creation of a pension system.  In dealing with trade unions and special interest groups, El-Rufai highlights the importance of legal tools and the support of the media, the general public and figures with considerable political capital, such as Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar.  He also describes his office’s instrumental collaboration with the newly created Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in the fight against money laundering and, in particular, the Nigerian letter scams.  During Obasanjo’s second term, El-Rufai joined the Economic Management Team that successfully renegotiated the Nigerian external debt and pursued wide-ranging reform.  He attributes the success to the trust, sacrifice and synergy established within the team; their capacity to understand and integrate Obasanjo’s political goals into a reform plan; and their ability to capitalize on booming oil prices by using revenues to strengthen fiscal rule.  His commitment to reform continued during his tenure as minister for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT Abuja).  To improve the quality of service delivery, he promoted the involvement of the private sector in service provision and increased the range of options for public staff training, including attachment with public and private entities in Nigeria and abroad, and post-graduate training at Harvard Business School.  El-Rufai also sought to disincentivize engagement in corruption by increasing remuneration. He addressed the challenge of limited resources by focusing on civil service downsizing and reduction of state expenditure followed by a pay increase across the board.  The necessary downsizing was achieved through a double strategy.  First, following the computerization of personnel management, ghost workers were identified and eliminated from the system.  Second, permanent secretaries were tasked with identifying underperforming or corrupt civil servants, who were offered retirement packages.  As the administration could reject resignations, the drain of the best public servants was prevented, and El-Rufai aimed to address the sources of their discontent, such as shortcomings in the promotion system.  On the other hand, cost reduction mainly entailed the transfer of government-provided housing and vehicles to private ownership by civil servants, amortized through a newly created mortgage system and installment plans.  El-Rufai then discusses another major and controversial achievements of his tenure, namely the land titling initiative, highlighting the role of democratizing information to manage public pressure and increase transparency.  In closing, his personal reflections on public policy making include the need for immersion in the political scene to ensure the continuity of reform across administrations, and the importance of formal training in public administration to understand how to frame policy to overcome resistance and biases.