The proposal, presented tothe Presidential
administration, is not only an interesting one, but also the correct one, as
without competent people it is impossible to build a new country; however, the
previous attempts by the public authorities’ to update
their cadres brought about no results.
A good concept, “the Presidential Personnel Reserve”
(here inafter – PPR) was launched back
in 2011 during Yanukovych’s administration and its content was an
exact analogue of the proposal submitted by Dmytro Shymkiv.
The Graduate School of Government at Harvard University came up
with the system of selecting individuals for the PPR. It is basedon an analysis
of candidates’ resumes, their motivational essays,
reference letters and a series of different tests. The
reputation, achievements, general erudition,
intelligence and motivation of candidates were assessed. The
majority of the candidates chosen had successful experience in
business or in civil service, had no relation to the “family” and were
eager to change the country.
The preliminary roundtook
place in accordance with the best practices of choosing candidates for
advancement through the vetting process; moreover, the final decision was made
by the Harvard Kennedy School. For the personnel
reserve, 32 people out of hundreds ofapplicants were
selected. After the selection process was finished, PPR
has immediately stated it was preparing for a series of
upcoming activities–training on public administration, trainingat Harvard
and grandiose plans for further continued study at the best universities of the
world.
But the whole idea failed at
the stage of its formalization of the chosen candidates’ status. Since the idea was trendy, its
implementation was precipitously carried out from the very beginning. With the
same kind of rash behavior, it turned into a “suitcase without a handle”, a kind
of clumsy, burdensome object for its initiators. The reason for these developments,
curiously enough, was the very quality of PPR.It “suddenly” appeared that the individuals who were chosen were
a bad fit in the rotten system of civil service that has been built over the years and had congealed even further under
Yanukovych.
In other words, in a country
where governmental posts are originally distributed on the basis of political quotas, and then by an assessment of one’s
personal loyalty and/or for money, in the halls of the
ministries the people who possessed real skills and a
hardworking mindset stood at odds with those of a more “conventional”
background, and turned out to be
superfluous.
Basically, in 2012, the
pompously launched Presidential Personnel Reserve project quietly faded away. Some “reservists”, who still had the passion and desire to get to
work began seeking employment in the government independently, submitting
their applications by the general rules of the game.The issue of what
to do with the other “reservists’ ”employment was sent off to the National Agencyon Civil Service, which was to
decide what to do with the PPR. In the end
they decided there to label the PPR a pilot project and announced its
successful completion.
These bring to mind two questions – what was wrong with the PPR and what
conclusions should be drawn from its history?
From our point of view, there are a few reasons which caused it to fail:
1. Politicians’ perception of the state
administrationas a business tool and government agencies being viewed as a private fiefdom of political parties anda business environment for making
money.
2. The absence of “elevators” and “filters” that would
allow effective public officials to gain due notice and pursue a career solely based on their professionalism,
experience, efficiency, as well as their motivation and
general outlook.
3.
The multiple disincentives for officials to develop
and improve as a result ofthe system of personnel selection and career development having
been completely destroyed in Ukraine. Civil service should cease to be an elective class for politicians or a
form of entertainment for businessmen who entered government for the sole purpose
of enriching themselves.
The entire hierarchy of the government’s personnel policy was not based
on (and, unfortunately, still is not based on) professionalism, but on the
personal loyalty of subordinates and their readiness to fulfill the wishes and commands of their benefactors,
which includes both political parties and individual politicians, at the snap of
their fingers. Consequently, the most important government positions were
awarded to people for whom the phrase “a state approach” was akin to a personal
insult, and partisan or personal proprietary/commericial interests were more
important than the future of the country.
While this same practice continues to exist (and sanctioned to varying
degrees by different individuals – Yanukovych being an outlier for the sheer
scale of his cronyism), even the most talented and motivated managers from
business will not be able to help the state. They will be nicely sent to their
own special little “sandboxes”, where these super-professionals will be able to
play at reforms to their hearts’ content, but upset the current system. In this simple way two objectives
are achieved:
§
the media will continue to shout and holler about the
new faces in the government and the image of reform is spread throughout society;
§
in their “sandboxes” these
enthusiastic reformers will finally discredit themselves because “sandbox reform”
will not have any affect on what is happening in the country.
The aforementioned system in the public administration, in addition to
being a reason for its corruption, sets the whole system of incentives in the
public administration on its head. The problem is not that amongst the
officials there are no effective managers and all that needs to be done
is replacing them all with managers from business. The problem is that the
current system pushes good people to the farthest corners of the government
apparatus and deprives them of virtually any chance of influencingor changing
something. And the main obstacle at hand is the illusion that by simply raising
civil servants’ salaries and attracting a class of “Varangian” things will change,
but in reality it does nothing to destroy this parallel world that exists
alongside it.
The very idea of having people
transition into civil service from the business community deserves special
emphasis. In as much as there are at
least three problems:
§
civil serviceis a very peculiar kind
of professional activity and people who have jumped into it will require a reasonably
long adjustment period to simply get used to bureaucratic procedures;
§
a
person who has excelled in profit-maximizing in business
has a different orientation than the “ideal” state employee,
a phenomenon which has led to the unpleasant events surrounding Pavlo
Sheremeta and Denys Brodskyi;
§
civil service, ideally, implies a
completely different set of values and much more pressing issues that need to be solved, and are much more
complex than simply looking to increase one’s profit margins or the growth of
one’s market share. Not every business person can accept the ‘statist’ philosophy,
and will not be able to transform the state apparatus into a
thriving business structure. After all, civil service is one devoting themselves
to the community and the interests of the state, even if it is harmful for one’s
own public image or potential personal benefits.
What, then, should be done to ensure that cadre
reform can finally succeed and Dmytro Shymkiv will not have
topersonally guide each of the new officials into their offices? Three
key things need to happen:
(1) Create a mechanism that would separate the wheat from the chaff, primarily in the framework of the existingstate apparatus. This might sound hard to believe to some people, but we still have
officials with an overt statist ideology. Likely any
reasonable person can recall a head of department or office upon whom
everything depends. We are talking about people here. Presumably,the
National Agency on Civil Service should be determine who becomes a civil servant.
But before it do this properly, this structure itself needs be completely
rearranged (in fact, a brand new HR-agency who is responsible for recruiting managers is indispensible here). Even just at this entry point a group of fresh faces from outside of the system would be
very useful.
(2) It is necessary to establish
a mechanism for nurturinga new generation of officials. That is the people who have
never participated in various corrupt or fraudlent schemes, those who want to
help the country develop and who do not think in terms of profit
maximization.This process will take years, but it will be
precisely this reservoir of individuals that will form the basis of modern civil
service in Ukraine.
(3)
Finally, the state administration should not be
a business-tool
for those in power. This phenomenon will
not fade out of existence quickly, but strengthening control
over the political party financing, enforcing the public monitoring
of the budget process and the spending of taxpayers’ money
can all create the means by which this vile phenomenon will simply
disappear.
In place of an epilogue – when talking about personnel reform,
its fundamental problem –the behaviorof senior government
officials – cannot be ignored. We keep
saying that they should not be businessmen. Neither the President nor the Prime
Minister or ministers or governors should have other interests than that of the state.
And what do we seein reality? After all, as the saying goes:
do not educate children, they
will be like you any way –
educate yourself.
***
Dr. Bogdan Balasynovych – PhD in economics, graduated from the Chernivtsi
State University and Taras Shevchenko National University
of Kyiv. In 2001 he graduated from Ruhr
University (Germany), in different years studied and held internships at
universities of Austria, Germany and the USA. He has extensive experience of civil
service, in particular in the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, Ministry of
Economy and Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. In 2007-2010 he was Deputy
Chairman of the State Committee of Ukraine for Technical Regulation and
Consumer Policy. Currently he is an advisor of Kyiv mayor.
Victor Maziarchuk – an expert
in public administration, analyst of Foundation “Open Dialogue” He is a Master
of International Economic Relationsat Lviv Academy of Commerce and executive education JFKennedy School of
Government Harvard University. He worked at various positions
at investment consulting commercial organizations, in
project management and held a position of director of the
Departmentof Economic Analysis of the International center of advanced research. Since
2010 he worked in the civil service and served as an advisor of the Minister of
Economy of Ukraine, Deputy Head of financial
security department of SESU of Ukraine and others.
Dmytro Boiarchuk – an executive
director of CASE Ukraine and a leading expert on macroeconomic forecasting and fiscal
policy in Ukraine. He has extensive experience in advising for government
agencies on issues of economic policy both in Ukraine and in other countries of the
region. Dmytro has managed projects of technical assistance of
macroeconomic reforms, reforms of fiscal sphere,reforms of
social protection. He is regularly published in the media, highlighting his attitude toward economic policyof Ukraine. Dmytro Boiarchuk received a
degree of Master of Economics, graduated from the Kyiv School of Economics at Kyiv-Mohyla
Academy.
VoxUkraine for Kyivpost
Bogdan Balasynovych, advisor of Kyiv mayor Victor Maziarchuk, analyst of Foundation “Open Dialogue”
Dmytro Boyarchuk, member of the Editorial Bord of VoxUkraine, director of CASE Ukraine
