Chatham House briefing
Published 18 June 2020
Updated 11 December 2020
ISBN: 978 1 78413 408 2
Iraq’s public sector has shown formidable resistance to reform. The goal of this briefing is to guide policymakers, international financial institutions and development agencies in their design and implementation of public sector reform programmes in Iraq.
Informed policymaking is powerless without an effective administrative structure to carry out policy recommendations. Iraq needs a delivery unit at the centre of government that is responsible for ensuring the implementation of the country’s policy priorities. The existing mechanisms for follow-up of executive decisions are scattered and disconnected, with a vast number of committees and agencies responsible for coordinating between the various arms of government. This has meant that although strategic plans do exist, they are rarely put into practice.
Three bodies are responsible for determining and coordinating government-wide policy in Iraq: the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), a relatively small unit led by the PM’s chief-of-staff, which includes his closest advisers; the Council of Ministers Secretariat (COMSEC), a much larger bureaucracy that coordinates between all state institutions; and the Prime Minister’s Advisory Commission (PMAC), tasked with developing expert counsel for the PMO on specialized public policy issues.
To avoid duplication of work and ensure efforts are channelled in the same direction, the government of Adil Abdul Mahdi established a centralized coordinating body known as the Council of Ministers Commission. In addition to streamlining the work of the PMO, COMSEC and PMAC, the commission was tasked with fast-tracking projects of strategic importance, and its members would meet regularly to overcome outstanding impediments.
According to a government official familiar with the commission’s work, cooperation began to break down after tensions emerged between senior officials with different political affiliations and conflicting views on priorities. There was also a culture of indecisiveness, which ultimately led to a lack of follow-up.19
A characteristic approach to resolving executive and administrative backlogs in Iraq is to form specialized ad hoc committees. Naturally, this results in senior officials, including ministers, presiding over and participating in multiple committees with no real focus and little to show for their efforts. This broad approach is the main problem with the Council of Ministers Commission. Not only is it responsible for follow-up and implementation across government, members of the commission also have executive and administrative responsibilities within respective departments.
A far more effective approach would be to transform the commission into a delivery unit (DU) – a model that was first pioneered in the UK by the government of Tony Blair during the early 2000s. The purpose of the DU was to implement Blair’s domestic policy agenda that prioritized, among other things, improving healthcare outcomes, a reduction in crime and enhanced railway services. Through the DU’s direct involvement, the number of patients waiting more than a year for a surgical operation fell from over 40,000 in 2001 to under 10,000 in 2003.20
A far more effective approach would be to transform the commission into a delivery unit – a model that was first pioneered in the UK by the government of Tony Blair during the early 2000s.
A DU is typically a small, agile unit at the heart of government, which is mandated to use the authority of the chief executive to improve public service delivery by pursuing a select number of policy priorities and ensuring their implementation. The DU team looks at the delivery process and works to unblock any obstacles that prevent state agencies from working together to deliver the government’s priorities. Where there are shortfalls in institutional capacity, the DU’s task is to figure out how to pool resources and incentivize collaboration across the public sector.
DUs have evolved over time and are established in many governments around the world. Among the most renowned is Malaysia’s Performance Management & Delivery Unit (PEMANDU) because of its well-documented success. Formed in 2009, it was tasked with overseeing the implementation of the government’s strategic priorities known as the National Transformation Programme. PEMANDU’s role was to first break down the priorities into specific interventions that were then assigned as key performance indicators (KPI) to each state institution involved in the process. PEMANDU would then track and monitor the work of each institution, addressing bottlenecks that could be escalated to the chief executive if necessary. The administration used a consultative process that incorporated the private sector and civil society organizations to design solutions to policy challenges. The unit adopted a rigorous monitoring and reporting regime to incentivize stakeholders and published weekly scorecards for each ministry showing their KPI progress. Additionally, PEMANDU sought to build public engagement by establishing an online portal for public feedback on overall progress with the reforms.21
Among its credited successes, PEMANDU helped drive down reported street crime in Malaysia by 35 per cent within one year; some 2 million people in rural areas benefited from projects that provided improved basic services including the provision of potable water and power supply; and public perceptions of the government’s anti-corruption efforts improved by 20 per cent within 12 months.22
The DU proposal relates to this paper’s second assumption – that small, measurable successes are vital to generating the necessary momentum to tackle larger problems. Embracing the DU model would encourage successive Iraqi governments to move away from the existing approach of setting too many ambitious and unachievable goals. Furthermore, it would serve as a dedicated vehicle to challenge and unblock government intransigence in a strategic and measurable way. Establishing the DU would not require new legislation since it would sit within the PMO and be headed by a senior adviser to the prime minister. Crucially, the unit’s staff could be seconded from other ministries to bolster institutional knowledge, and the head of the DU would be authorized to attend cabinet meetings. The proposed data analytics unit would provide the DU with timely data in order to monitor progress. Regular reporting on performance targets would also enhance accountability within the public sector.
Clearly Iraq’s political context differs greatly from that of the UK and Malaysia, but a DU could be tailored to local circumstances. As with other DU models, its authority would derive from its proximity to the prime minister and it would need to harness the power of executive orders to overcome resistance from ministries.
