Secondly, the untrained and undisciplined public service does not understand its role as completely subordinated soldiers in the civil service of the country: to transform the political objectives of the President’s program into administrative procedures and to carry them out immediately. Mr. Yanukovych’s team has incorrectly identified “the enemy.” Instead of ensuring that the outlined objectives are precisely carried out, it has focused all its energy on killing the ratings and influence of the President’s political opponents, although these politicians are actually no real threat to Mr. Yanukovych. Moreover, the methods being used are largely repressive, which can only increase resistance and do further damage to the ratings of the current government. Once they evaluate the actions of officials at all levels negatively, voters will inevitably also give the President a bad rating.
Thirdly, there is no public campaign in support of the President. All that is being organized is “Potemkin villages,” which will hardly provide the necessary
support. Instead, they are guaranteed to lead major conflicts in the not-too-distant future.
An encyclopedic economic reform program
The President’s Economic Reform Program takes on commitments that are impossible to fulfill. The Program offers the same objectives and slogans that have been copied from program to program for the last 15 years, none of which has to date been fulfilled. Quite simply, this is not a program but an encyclopedia of the good life. It is nearly 100% certain that all of the list of goals and objectives in the Program would be impossible to completely fulfill.
This will inevitably lead to severe criticism of the President for not having fulfilled his Program. The Program needs to concentrate on two or three absolutely priority goals that will be promoted to and understood by every Ukrainian voter as the President’s goals. Then, voters will see every action
and every step taken by the government as steps to achieve these goals. The President constantly talks about quality of life as a priority, but none of the speeches by those closest to him, the Cabinet leadership or his party have mentioned this priority. Nor has it been translated into specific steps that their various agencies will undertake. Meanwhile, improving quality of life entails inescapable conditions: instituting a single standard of healthcare and environmental protection, creating new jobs, providing targeted social assistance, providing equal access to a quality public education, transforming Ukraine’s hundreds of universities into a dozen of the top universities in Eastern Europe, improving transport and infrastructure so that the workforce becomes more mobile, and providing safe public utility services. Reaching any one of these priorities requires a concentration of all resources, reformatting the Budget to match the President’s priorities, and putting an end to the scattering of public finances.
An undisciplined public service
The 350,000-strong government bureaucracy in Ukraine today personifies the President’s worst enemies, as they do not work to carry out his decisions
and the low quality of the services they provide are turning the general public against the President. This army of bureaucrats is completely unanswerable to anyone and faces no risk of being punished for corruption or for failing to execute decisions. Moreover, it lacks the skills to plan how the President’s program might be undertaken. Moreover, the country has no unified system for training civil servants. Public administration programs
today have turned into a very convenient publicly-funded business that is threatening the President’s future.
Today’s bureaucrats hold all the keys to national wealth in their hands, are unlikely to be punished for corruption, and can always provide politicians
with an excuse why this or that decision cannot be carried out. They obviously feel no understanding, need or pressure to plan how to carry out a Presidential program, to manage its execution, or to track its progress on a regular basis. Despite the fact that the President publicly announces
his policy decisions and that they should normally be immediately carried out, any bureaucrats can completely legitimately allow themselves to launch a new study into the feasibility of any given decision. The entire government machine is structured in such a way that tens and even hundreds of approvals are still needed after the publication of a Presidential decision. In short, it’s not the President who runs the country, but the civil service. The latest administrative reform has only made the situation worse. It amounted to little more than a reduction in civil servants and is likely to lead to complete loss of control over public administration, because it included no qualitative reforms at all.
Even if the President manages to cut back the ranks of civil servants, all the other problems will remain the same. Cutbacks alone cannot change the quality of public administration. Only the strict definition of new standards for how public administration should work and competitive compliance with these standards will make it possible for good governance and the necessary reductions to be achieved. There is only one single purpose to reforming public administration: to ensure administrative capacity to carry out policy decisions. This includes the planning and execution of public policy decisions and the provision of high-quality public services. For a bureaucrat, any public policy decision of the President’s should be like a military command: “For immediate implementation.”
The civil servant is supposed to provide services from the workplace, not to sell them. No political campaign in support of the President. The President’s Program is being promoted in strictly soviet propaganda style, rather than as a broadbased public campaign by a democratic Government. The current format of promulgation does not involve any people who are prepared to support the program as a matter of course. Debates on talk shows continue to focus on shop-worn themes. Meanwhile, there is no analysis of the cost of inaction or the cost of problems that might be caused to various groups of the population.
The public presence of the President and the way that his activities are presented are clearly intended to establish a favorable impression of Mr. Yanukovych. However, the repressive methods being used today cannot possibly foster a positive impression. Persecuting people will inevitably lead to resistance, social tension and conflict. Ensuring voter support for western Heads of State is not just a matter of PR campaigns, but also a job requirement of all civil servants who are involved in consultations with voters and interest groups, who provide counterarguments to the arguments of the opposition, who analyze the cost of inaction, and who draft public documents.
The lack of support among voters will lead to a growing number of confrontations. To prevent this, the government needs to properly consult with all stakeholders in the society. Otherwise, its only alternative will be to start shooting. When you can’t shoot people, you need to be talking with them.
Neutralizing risks
To neutralize these risks, a number of surgical interventions are called for. Start taking control over the bureaucracy:
– all the existing oversight and audit organs in every state agency need to be turned into internal audit groups;
– a National Oversight and Audit Agency needs to be set up under the auspices of the President and to be independent of the managers of state entities;
– special training for oversight agencies needs to be organized with the support of the EU and the US.
Isolate and concretize the President’s main priority, quality of life, and toss the current encyclopedic economic reform program: well-being:
– economic growth, innovation, state regulation, good conditions for business, a healthy business climate, R&D;
– high-quality community services: healthcare, education, including equal access and competitiveness at the university level, social services, residential services (utilities and maintenance);
– a comfortable and safe environment: social parity, distribution of incomes, gender equality, minimal corruption, security, law and order, the environment.
In line with quality of life, all the objectives and reforms that are essential to achieve this priority need to be reorganized. All the actions of the President’s
team and Government need to demonstrate, with every single step, how they will improve the quality of life of ordinary Ukrainians.
Combine the application of the scientific and intellectual potential of the nation into a single strategic management process:
– science and scientific research need to be combined with industry and commerce. This is actually the mission of the Department of Commerce in Great Britain, for instance.
– the Ministry of Economy and Trade should become a Ministry of Research, Industry and Trade and function as the President’s coordinator. It should be tasked with combining funding, organization and activities into a single process that will bring the country revenues. Science needs to work on behalf of industry, while industry should be oriented on the needs of commerce: RESEARCH→leads to innovations that become industrial goods; INDUSTRY→manufactures new products that become saleable goods; COMMERCE→ sells goods that provide money for further research.
Centralize the system for professional development in the civil service:
– the Main Administration of the Civil Service needs complete reform: remove all financial functions from this agency and turn it into a proper department for the development of human resources for the civil service, a modern personnel department;
– all public administration institutions of learning should be removed from the Government’s control and made part of the system of the National Academy of Public Administration under the Office of the President of Ukraine;
– a National Center for the Regional Civil Service needs to be set up;
– state programs for training civil servants need to be immediately and radically reoriented toward providing a specific skill set necessary for such professionals: policy impact analysis, consultation with stakeholders and interest groups, the provision of analysis of public consultations.
Launch a nationwide debate about the need for non-partisanship and public loyalty within the government bureaucracy by showing that:
– democracy is not chaos but a strict hierarchy in the executive branch, subordination and immediate severe penalties for not carrying out orders and procedures;
– democracy means the rule of law, free elections, the right to freedom of speech and confession. The guarantor of democratic freedoms is the President;
– every civil servant who works with the public should have clearly posted information about the kinds of services provided and the steps that the individual citizen needs to take in order to receive those services. Voters should not have to beg for services from civil servants.
These steps will improve the international reputation of Ukraine’s President and increase his popularity among voters at home. Ordinary Ukrainians will find more jobs available and a higher quality of life. At the same time, these actions will release a huge amount of resources, which will make it possible to pay for the necessary reforms.
Vira Nanivska is a Director of the Kyiv-based International Centre for Policy Studies. Originally published in the news.liga.net, 24 December 2010.
