Public sector reforms struggling with mentality issues, but progress under way — Khawaldeh

AMMAN — The government has developed several policies and will continue to take further measures to improve the performance and productivity of the public sector to deliver better services for Jordanians, communities and businesses, Minister of Public Sector Development Khleef Al Khawaldeh said.

Indicating that restoring public trust in government agencies is a top government priority, Khawaldeh called on civil servants to perform their duties with a high sense of responsibility to render civil service effective and efficient. 

In an interview with The Jordan Times at his office, Khawaldeh acknowledged that Jordan’s public sector is bloated and that the quality of public service has been on a decline; however, he insisted that there has been tangible progress recently, particularly in the legislative and regulatory areas governing the performance of government agencies. 

What went wrong?

The official said that there are several factors to blame for the decline in the productivity and performance of the Kingdom’s public agencies, once used to export skilled human resources to regional countries. 

Lack of proper legal and administrative regulations to control the work and duties of public entities was among the factors that resulted in poorer performance, he said, explaining that one of the challenges that faced the government was multiple agencies with shared or overlapping responsibilities. 

He elaborated that decline in performance differed from one agency to another as each agency has its own problems that could be related to human and financial resources and infrastructure. 

As official figures estimate the size of the public sector to total employment in the Kingdom at over 40 per cent, Khawaldeh blamed “negative practices” by some state agencies and individuals for increasing the number of employees in the government body. 

Previously the government used to hire around 12,000 people a year in a bid to reduce unemployment, but that was at the expense of the budget, he said, adding that in recent years recruitment in the public sector was halted except for certain vacancies needed in the sectors of health and education.   

He also pointed out that in some cases there is a mismatch between the role of a government agency and the skills of its employees.   

“We have addressed all these issues but the toughest task facing not only Jordan but elsewhere is to change the culture of work for underperforming civil servants,” the official noted. 

Employees’ behaviour  

The minister explained that issues related to underperforming employees could be lack of knowledge or expertise — which he said could be solved by training — or related to behaviour. 

“Changing the behaviour of negative employees is always a tough challenge,” he added.  

Khawaldeh said that reforming the public sector by implementing best international practices is not enough as there should be a mix of regulations and strategies that aim at achieving transparency and good governance. 

Among these regulations would be restricting the discretionary power of officials and adopting rewards and incentives for well-performing civil servants and disciplinary measures against their colleagues who fail to do their jobs properly, he explained.   

“If employees perform their duties in an efficient manner there would be no need for the Ministry of Public Sector Development,” the minister said. 

Restructuring plan     

The official said that studies show that there was an expansion in the size of the government sector as there are over 120 public agencies, including ministries.

The expansion was mostly in public entities that enjoy financial and administrative independence, he noted.  

In response to this shortcoming, the government, through the Ministry of Public Sector Development, has developed plans to reduce the government size such as merging six independent public agencies with shared responsibilities and cancelling another five such entities, he said. 

Khawaldeh said that the ministry is also working on restructuring several government organisations and merging some regulatory bodies for each sector into one entity. 

The restructuring plan also aims at restricting the establishment of public agencies to a regulatory framework to control expansion, adding that lack of such framework was behind the inflation in the governmental sector. 

Combating wasta (nepotism)

Responding to a question on what measures the ministry has taken to fight wasta when people go to a public entity to receive services, he said that there is a project to identify the type of services offered by each government department and set criteria to define the required quality of these services. 

A total of 20 guidebooks for services have been completed covering a total of 674 services, he said, adding that if civil servants do not do their jobs accordingly, people can resort to complaint boxes available at each department or contact the central unit concerned with processing complaints at the ministry. 

He pointed out that a team from the ministry carries out unannounced visits to public departments to listen to people and evaluate the performance of these agencies. 

Electronic services is also another way the ministry is working on in a bid to enable people to complete their transactions without the need to visit government agencies. 

‘Optimistic’ 

The minister expressed optimism that in the short to medium term people will see progress in the quality of services offered by government organisations and that the size of the government would go down. 

There has been some progress recently but more needs to be done, particularly when it comes to the duties of senior officials, Khawaldeh added. 

High-ranking officials used to be busy with technical issues instead of focusing more on developing strategies and policies to improve the performance of their departments, he said.