Public Affairs

OECD advise on Northern Ireland public sector

 Following the publication of detailed recommendations for public sector reform, set out as a condition of the 2014 Stormont House Agreement, agendaNi provides an overview of the key features detailed within the 512 pages.

 In December 2014 the Stormont House Agreement (SHA), which dealt with issues then dividing the Northern Ireland Executive and which secured extra spending power from London, was concluded between the Northern Ireland political parties and the UK Government. A general condition of securing the additional resources was a renewed commitment to public sector reform, essentially a commitment to change, which would allow the Northern Ireland Executive to provide better public services, more efficiently, while making best use of existing resources. A more specific undertaking in the SHA was to have OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) carry out a full review of Northern Ireland’s public sector reform programme and report back in late 2015.

The review has now been completed and last month the OECD published its detailed report titled Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) Implementing Joined Up Governance for a Common Purpose. The 512-page report, the first OECD has carried out at a sub-national level, provides a detailed commentary across the spectrum of governance and public administration in Northern Ireland and draws in examples of best practice from around the world which Northern Ireland could perhaps learn from. The Report also made 30 separate recommendations which ranged from quite sweeping and general propositions, to more specific and focused proposals.

All of the work of the OECD review team, including the 30 recommendations, was guided by three principal ‘improvement’ themes:

The first was identifying how to improve strategic approaches to Government such as better coordination at the centre of Government (OFMDFM and DFP) and mechanisms for early intervention and prevention. This also includes strengthening data driven analysis for improving service design and delivery. Overall the emphasis was on adopting the best possible evidence-driven approach to policymaking so that policy goals could be identified clearly and performance in advancing towards them accurately monitored. Specifically, OECD recommended an outcomes-based approach to the Programme for Government (which the Northern Ireland Executive had already started prior to publication of the report, perhaps with some advance knowledge of what the review might recommend) for better more meaningful metrics to assist planning and a beefing up of the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, NISRA’s ability to produce better data for performance monitoring.

Perhaps the strongest theme in improving strategic approaches at the Centre of Government was driving culture change toward ‘horizontalisation’ i.e. ending the traditional thinking in silos. This would require greater prioritisation of cross-cutting policy delivery, greater challenge and better programme management from the centre and even incentivisation of senior civil servants to make horizontal delivery their personal priority.

The second improvement theme was improving engagement with people, where OECD identified a need to strengthen transparency and accountability mechanisms as well as improving dialogue with key stakeholders, most notably in the voluntary and community sector. The review concludes that stakeholder engagement in Northern Ireland has been “at best uneven” and that “there is considerable scope in Northern Ireland to broaden the number of actors involved in citizen engagement”. The OECD team recommend culture change to strengthen citizen engagement and greater use of social media and technology generally to improve dialogue and feedback.

The third improvement theme was improving operational delivery. This required a particular focus on rethinking how things were done and aiming for better responsiveness, better quality and better value for money. Again, perhaps because it was published late, the OECD review includes some proposals which the Northern Ireland Executive has already taken on board like the efficient restructuring of departments or the idea of investing in skills to support innovation. However, in terms of delivery, the review calls on the Executive to make partnering with the third sector a more central feature of service delivery and even to invest in building the capacity of the third sector to carry out this more substantial role. The review recommends more use of the Innovation Lab approach as a facilitator and also as an expert resource for improving delivery in the public sector itself.

Emphasising the importance of public procurement in service delivery, OECD recommends stronger governance around the procurement function and at the same time greater use of public procurement to further the Government’s social objectives. While pointing to the need to improve aspects of procurement, the Paris-based team notes that the use of social clauses in Northern Ireland has been “successful” and that “the procurement process in Northern Ireland has improved”, while diplomatically avoiding any mention of some of Northern Ireland’s well documented public procurement failures of recent years.

The review also points to the importance of improved regulation across public and private sectors and recommends the development of an overarching ‘better regulation’ strategy including the establishment of a special Better Regulation Unit in OFMDFM.

The 30th and final review recommendation suggests an approach to managing the implementation of the OECD recommendations themselves. It includes the establishment of an overall project office/delivery unit jointly headed by OFMDFM and DFP reporting to an implementation committee comprised of Permanent Secretaries and heads of major public bodies. The chair of the implementation body would be the head of the Civil Service, who would report regularly to the Executive, which in turn would report annually to the Assembly. All senior personnel would be performance-appraised against reform objectives.

Overall, the OECD report represents a substantial, well-resourced effort to survey the whole area of public sector governance and reform and to throw up some ideas for improvement based on what has worked elsewhere.

Nonetheless there is the sense that the OECD report has not truly got to grips with the real malaise in the governance of Northern Ireland. Although it recommends culture change for civil servants and even compulsory training (in the rules of engagement) for ministers, it does not sufficiently address the ongoing deep division and distrust (as well as honest difference) in the political arena. Nor does it fully appreciate the nature of a Civil Service seemingly hardwired to a rigid concept of management by rulebook, hierarchy and precedent.

The OECD review makes up for the absence of this quality, with quantity. The report is therefore at the same time both worthy and wordy. The extract highlighted (in quotation marks below) is actually the penultimate sentence of the review’s conclusion, and its 103 words illustrate the point perfectly.

The Executive has said no to the proposed new Better Regulation Unit (unnecessary additional bureaucracy at the centre) and to the institutionalisation of the ‘challenge’ function proposed for the Centre of Government (conflicts with the Ministerial Code) but has otherwise welcomed the review. It proposes to implement 28 of the 30 recommendations and there is no reason to believe that it will not.

Nonetheless it will be interesting to follow the extent to which this weighty OECD review actually leads to better Government and to a genuinely improved experience for citizens.


“As stated at the beginning of this assessment, sound public governance – the ability of a government to identify and plan strategically to address existing and emerging multi-dimensional policy challenges using sound evidence, mobilising internal and external resources, starting with citizens, to execute these plans efficiently and effectively with services that actually improve outcomes for people, and use and communicate robust performance information to adjust course if results are not being achieved properly – can help position Northern Ireland to achieve its aim of improving public services to meet people’s needs, thereby enhancing its ability to improve multi-dimensional outcomes for citizens and businesses over time.” OECD review team

 

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