Enhancing civil service performance
Among the biggest long-term challenges for Iraq’s public sector is reining in the wage bill, which increased nine-fold from 2003 to 2018.23 Observers expected to see even greater surges in the size of public employment in 2020 but delays in passing the annual federal budget staved off further payroll expansion. Had the budget passed, government payroll was expected to reach nearly $45 billion because of pledges to hire more young people in response to demonstrations.24 As long as there is no viable private sector to absorb the hundreds of thousands of young people entering the labour market each year, the country’s leaders will struggle to address this issue.
Under the current climate, particularly low oil prices, it may be better for the government to focus on how to improve the performance of ministries that have the potential to generate revenues for the country. All Iraqis understand that low productivity within the civil service is a real problem. A commonly held belief is that public employees work on average 17 minutes each day, and although there may be good reason to doubt this figure, the fact that this is generally accepted reflects the scale of the problem.25
A top-down approach to change the behaviour of senior managers might be a tempting place to begin reforms. However, there are well over 5,000 senior civil servants in Iraq, including directors-general, advisers and deputy ministers, who all have substantial authority and control over government departments. Attempts to professionalize their work would directly threaten their personal vested interests, which are built on informal patronage within the civil service and make any long-term behavioural shifts difficult to achieve. For an illustration, one only needs to look at the meagre results of decentralization initiatives to enhance local governance. Rather than delegating provincial powers to local authorities, governors have opted to concentrate power within their own offices.26
This pattern has been seen globally. A World Bank study showed that civil service and administrative reform programmes produced performance improvements in only half of the 93 borrowing countries. Instead, reining in a culture of patronage requires a bottom-up approach that emphasizes personnel management reforms such as transparent and merit-based recruitment.27 There are well-established links between merit appointments and increased bureaucratic capability and performance, reduced corruption, and improved trust with the public.28
Some forms of merit-based selection already exist in Iraq, albeit in limited numbers. For example, the top-performing university graduates across the country are guaranteed public sector jobs by law. Furthermore, a past international government scholarship scheme introduced in 2009, known as the Higher Commission for Education Development in Iraq (HCED) had encouraging results in terms of awarding scholarships based on academic merit. Although the initiative has been suspended because of budget shortfalls, it was widely admired for its professional approach. Students were awarded scholarships based on a combination of strong academic performance and a face-to-face interview assessment, while in most cases political considerations did not play a part.
The key to HCED’s relative success boils down to a number of factors. First, HCED was established as a new body with the administrative and financial backing of the PMO, while the existing scholarship programme remained within the higher education ministry, which still offered an outlet for political patronage. Second, e-governance systems enabled all applications to be processed online and subsequent communication via email, including arranging interview dates and processing visas. Third, interviews were conducted by diverse panels of prominent professors who scored candidates based on a clear set of assessment criteria.
A potential opportunity for civil service reform emerged recently after parliament elected the members of the constitutionally mandated Federal Public Service Council (FPSC).29 The cabinet submitted the names of 11 nominees to parliament and by the end of October 2019, all had been approved.30 The FPSC’s remit is codified in Law 4 of 2009, charging it with planning authority over the civil service; overseeing training and development of staff; consolidating and unifying the grades of vacant posts in line with government priorities; reviewing pay scales and recommending adjustments; and overseeing recruitment along merit-based standards in a fair and transparent way. The council enjoys financial and administrative independence and reports directly to parliament, while the head of the FPSC holds ministerial powers.31
Debate exists among policy specialists about the dangers of overcentralizing civil service commissions, which can lead to stagnation in performance and delays in recruitment processes. But a common view is that decentralized staffing functions in developing countries can compound corruption because it creates more entry points for these activities to take place.32
Successful reform measures are often opportunistic in nature, exploiting a political crisis that jolts elites into adopting practices they would ordinarily oppose. Parliament’s decision to activate the FPSC, in response to the political crisis caused by public demonstrations, has created an opportunity to invest significant resources into building a professional and effective council that can spearhead civil service reform.
Successful reform measures are often opportunistic in nature, exploiting a political crisis that jolts elites into adopting practices they would ordinarily oppose.
In Bahrain, the Civil Service Bureau – established in 1975 – is an independent government body that falls under the jurisdiction of Cabinet Affairs and has a similar remit to the FPSC. In 2007, it began implementing large-scale HR management reforms that focused on adopting a competency-based model to cover all HR processes including recruitment, promotion and reassignment, training, and performance appraisal. It mapped out the skills, technical competencies and proficiency levels needed for each job as a response to the challenge of competing with the private sector to attract the most qualified candidates.33 Two key steps were crucial to success and are most relevant to Iraq. First, it became mandatory to assign job descriptions for all vacant posts detailing skills and competencies required. Authorities identified a total of 92 competencies that form the basis for performance appraisal and gap analysis was used to determine training needs. Second, the reform process was initially piloted within the Civil Service Bureau before rolling it out to other government institutions.
The FPSC’s immediate priority should be to establish a centralized employment census for all public employees that captures data on geographical spread. This should not only include permanent civil servants, but also contractual and daily wage earners across all state institutions. Crucially, it should incorporate workers within state-owned enterprises, an area that has notoriously represented a black hole for public spending. Every individual receiving remunerations from the state should be assigned a unique identification number so that the government can root out ghost employees and double entrees. In addition, analysis of the employment census data could be used to identify skills gaps and women’s representation within the workforce. It would also feed into the proposed data analytics unit, enabling policymakers to plan for future employment grades and training programmes.
Building on the experience of internationally funded capacity-building programmes, formal Iraqi institutional structures should manage training and development of public servants to ensure consistency and implementation. The FPSC’s first task should be to develop training programmes that could be rolled out across all government departments, such as those focused on hard skills including IT literacy. Law 4 mandates for the establishment of an Institute for Public Service that should assume training and development responsibilities. Filling the skills gap could also be complemented by drawing on expatriates with specialized expertise to provide training and mentoring services. Previous attempts to attract highly qualified Iraqi expatriates have been ad hoc and proved largely unsuccessful. Few can permanently relocate to Iraq, particularly when the security situation was tenuous, and matching salaries is another obstacle. Among the few exceptions has been the diplomatic service, which has enticed many expatriates to serve within the middle and higher ranks. But unlike other countries that developed a parallel pay scale for expatriates, this approach would prove unfeasible from an administrative point of view and likely cause resentment within the civil service.
Expatriate recruitment needs to be formalized within a specialized programme, as has been the case with other fragile, conflict-affected countries. Following the end of the second civil war in 2004, Liberia was faced with major capacity gaps and adopted a UNDP-funded programme known as Transfer of Knowledge through Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN). Liberian expatriates were hired to work as consultants alongside civil servants to offer mentoring and skills training to bridge gaps in expertise. The programme was managed by a specialized unit within Liberia’s Civil Service Agency and, by 2014, nearly 100 expatriates had contributed to improving budgeting and planning, macroeconomic management, and healthcare delivery.34
Across the Iraqi civil service, there are dozens of young, highly educated employees that possess advanced skills and technical know-how within their respective fields. In the absence of professional HR practices, these individuals are left languishing within large departments that do not value their talents and stifle their professional development. Creating incentives for employees to embrace change is difficult when collective buy-in is required on such a large scale. An alternative approach is to identify individuals who are already motivated and open to change, and pool them into small functioning units that answer directly to the Council of Ministers. As these units accrue experience and expertise over time, they can slowly absorb the role of outdated departments and the rewards that come with them, spurring on other ambitious employees to follow suit.
A longer-term approach would be to establish a professional civil service fast-track programme for those who show the greatest potential. Egypt has had good results with this approach through their Change Leaders Initiative, a four-year plan that sought to raise the capacity of some 8,000 of the top echelon of senior civil servants. The idea is to prioritize training and development for a younger group of senior managers who embrace reform known as ‘change leaders’ in order to prepare them to assume the responsibilities of those close to retiring. Crucially, training certification has become a precondition for promotion to senior grades.35
Governments should certainly aspire to implement merit-based recruitment but, during a period of transition and reform, trade-offs are inevitable. As UNDP cautions, ‘moving too fast toward a merit-based system of recruitment might even undermine state credibility’ and a ‘pragmatic compromise’ should be pursued.36 One way is to earmark some senior posts for political appointees, but safeguarding merit-based recruitment for young graduates in order to build public trust and credibility in the civil service.
23 Al-Mawlawi, A. (2019), Public Payroll Expansion in Iraq: Causes and Consequences.
24 Interview with Iraqi government official, who wished to remain anonymous, on 10 March 2020.
25 Al-Mada Paper (2014), ‘Expert: Average productivity of public employees is 17 minutes each day out of 8 hours’, 1 November 2014, https://almadapaper.net/view.php?cat=115294 (accessed 17 May 2020).
26 Al-Mawlawi, A. (2019), ‘Is the Decentralisation Process in Iraq Being Reversed?’, LSE Blog, 2 December 2019, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2019/12/02/is-the-decentralisation-process-in-iraq-being-reversed/ (accessed 6 May 2020).
27 Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) (2008), Public Sector Reform: What Works and Why?
28 McCourt, W. (2000), ‘Public Appointments: From Patronage to Merit’, Working Paper 09, Manchester: Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/gdi/publications/workingpapers/archive/hr/hr_wp09.pdf (accessed 17 May 2020).
29 Article 107 of the Iraqi Constitution: ‘A council named the Federal Public Service Council shall be established and shall regulate the affairs of the federal public service, including appointments and promotions, and its formation and competencies shall be regulated by law.’
30 Iraq Council of Representatives (2019), ‘Minutes of Meetings’, https://bit.ly/3d4UdEc (accessed 7 May 2020).
31 Iraq Council of Representatives (2009), Federal Public Service Council Law, https://bit.ly/38W6NSG (accessed 7 May 2020).
32 McCourt (2000), ‘Public Appointments’.
33 OECD (2010), Progress in Public Management in the Middle East and North Africa.
34 Salovan (2019), Iraq Public Sector Modernisation Programme.
35 OECD (2010), Progress in Public Management in the Middle East and North Africa.
36 Salovan (2019), Iraq Public Sector Modernisation Programme.