 Reform of public administration in the region continues to face a number of key challenges, including ongoing political transformation in many countries, entrenched and often balkanized government structures, the proliferation of informal --- rather than institutional -- mechanisms for policy-making, and a persistent culture of command control versus service delivery. While many countries have made progress on updating the legal framework for public employment and rightsizing the civil service, much remains to be done to achieve modern, efficient and transparent public services.
The challenge of reforming centralized, party-dominated bureaucracies has involved refocusing old institutions and creating new structures to perform new functions, re-equipping civil servants with new tools and approaches, and not least, replacing a culture that emphasizes administrative controls with one that focuses on delivery of services to the public. Almost all the countries have embarked on this road, with varying success to date. In some cases, conflicts between entrenched party bureaucrats and newly-elected reformers has slowed the rationalization of government structures. In others, frequent unanticipated changes of political leadership have interrupted programs to modernize administrative practices. Finally, consensus on public pay and employment reforms is notoriously difficult to achieve, even in non-transition countries. Three general challenges are foremost if the public services are to be able to sustain and extend reform programs in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.  The first is the need to improve mechanisms for policy making and implementation. The demise of party structures left a void in the mechanisms for policy coordination. The result has been poorly-managed and non-transparent decision making processes, and lack of clearly defined roles for different players in the central policy deliberation process. One manifestation is in the relationship between central and local levels of government where, in many cases, resource transfers to regional and municipal governments has been the result of competitive, and often informal, negotiations, rather than a transparent institutional framework and objective policies. Transition countries inherited well-developed information gathering machinery in government. And many have now established new political and executive institutions to manage central decision making. The challenge is ensure that these inputs translate into transparent and contestable decision making on national policies.
The second major challenge is to complete the realignment of government structures with the new role of the state. This has involved the need to restructure the public sector both horizontally and vertically. However, in the vacuum left by party structures at the onset of transition, balkanized administrative structures have often become entrenched, thus slowing this process. After a first stage in which many countries rationalized the number of ministries and agencies, work continues to deepen the organizational changes within these bodies. More recently, governments in the region are taking steps to extend administrative reforms too decentralized levels of the public sector. The third major challenge is the reform of public employment and pay policies to align government employee incentives, the size of the public service and the wage bill with the new policy goals of government. Many countries in the region have made significant progress on rightsizing central government. In some cases, the next step is to depoliticize and professionalize public employment, by introducing merit-based recruitment and promotions, and expand training programs. Several countries have passed new Civil Service Laws, others have targeted an decreasing number of political appointments over time. Finally, countries are working toward introducing effective performance management systems. Finally, it is important to note that administrative and civil service reform cannot be developed in isolation from other reforms such as budget and intergovernmental fiscal reform. Sequencing and ownership of these types of institutional reforms remains crucial to their success. |
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