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International
Council on Social Welfare
Statement
on the Priority Theme of the Commission for Social Development
Improving Public Sector Effectiveness
42nd Session 4-13th February 2004
The
International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW) represents
through its members in over fifty countries ten of thousands of
civil society organisations. ICSW’s members are involved in
advocacy for and the provision of social development, social
welfare and social justice.
ICSW
analyses the issues raised throughout its member network in
order to develop representative policies which it then advocates
to governments at the national, regional and global level.
Much
of ICSW’s advocacy is undertaken within the context of
international institutions. For example, ICSW maintains the
highest level of consultative status with the Economic and
Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations.
This
presence ensures ICSW’s involvement in global discussions
concerning issues of social development, social welfare and
social justice in the United Nations and especially within the
Commission for Social Development, a functional Commission of
ECOSOC.
The
following statement is prepared for the 42nd Session of the
Commission for Social Development (CSD) and represents ICSW’s
current policy on CSD’s priority theme of Improving Public
Sector Effectiveness.
This
statement focuses on the points where the International Council
on Social Welfare’s (ICSW) basic mission intersects with the
priority theme of the CSD’s 42nd Session Improving Public Sector Effectiveness. For ease of reference, it follows the same division into aspects of
that theme as does the Report of the Expert Group Meeting from
their 16-19th June 2003, Dublin Ireland meeting. In
the context of this statement, ICSW defines the Public Sector in
terms of the functions it exercises. Any essential social
service, then, the provision of which is, under the
relevant constitutional provisions, national legislation and
international agreements the responsibility of government whatever the legal form of the entity
or entities involved in providing that service to the end user
is a Public Sector service.
I. Objectives of the Public
Sector
i.
Issue:
Improving Public Sector effectiveness may be said to have any
number of objectives.
Position:
An effective Public Sector is the single most important
determinant of a state’s capacity to fulfil its obligations
under the relevant constitutional provisions, national
legislation and international agreements to provide its
residents with essential social services such as universal and
equitable access to quality education, primary healthcare,
adequate food, safe water and sanitation. The measure of an
effective Public Sector and its improvement or not is how well
the state which it serves has fulfilled its obligations under,
for example, the major international Human Rights’
instruments, the Copenhagen Commitments and the Millennium
Declaration. Therefore, the ultimate outcome of Public Sector
improvement should be:
a)
The creation of
an economic, political, social, cultural and legal environment
that will enable people to achieve social development.
b) The eradication of absolute poverty.
c)
Intergenerational achievement of equality and equity between
men, women, children and people with disabilities.
d)
The attainment of universal and equitable access to quality
education, primary healthcare (e.g. access to treatments such as
anti-retroviral drugs), adequate food, safe water and
sanitation.
That
said, the minimum measure of an effective Public Sector is
always whether or not the essentials for life (e.g. safe water,
adequate food, sanitation and primary healthcare), as well as
those necessary for social development (e.g. universal access to
quality education) are available to all a country’s residents
without discrimination.
II. Improving Effectiveness:
Issues, Strategies and Recommendations
A.
Factors that strengthen or weaken the capacity for public
sector effectiveness
ii.
Issue: The
provision of essential social services is negatively impacted
when inefficiencies and inequities exist in a state’s tax
administration (e.g. under-taxation of assets, over-taxation of
wage labour or inefficient collection mechanisms).
Position:
The United Nations already has a process under way in relation
to corruption. ECOSOC should request existing bodies or
Independent Expert Advisory Panels to develop draft standards in
the areas of national taxation administration best practice and
to investigate ways of harmonising domestic tax systems which
while being respectful of national sovereignty address economic
resource problems exacerbated by devices of tax avoidance and
evasion (e.g. transfer pricing, secret bank accounts,
non-reporting of foreign income, uncoordinated taxation of
transnational enterprises and no internationally accepted
minimum tax rates).
iii. Issue: Salary levels
and their linkage to performance are directly related to the
prevalence of corruption and efficiency in the Public Sector.
Position:
Understanding of the exact nature of this relationship in
particular national circumstances must be integrated into
processes of national Public Sector reform.
iv. Issue: Capacity
constraints can hinder a state’s potential to develop (e.g.
they can negatively impact a state’s ability to absorb
Overseas Development Assistance). Capacity building involves
physical (e.g. roads) and institutional aspects (e.g. improving
Public Sector effectiveness). However, purported solutions to
capacity constraints (e.g. Privatisations or Public-Private
finance initiatives) can also become a fetter on governments’
fulfilment of their essential social service provision
obligations under the relevant constitutional provisions,
national legislation and international agreements.
Position:
It would be useful for individual states, for regional and
sub-regional groups of such states to identify a limited number
of top priorities in Public Sector reform to address such
capacity constraints (e.g. tax reform, urban poor bias,
long-term/short-term planning imbalance, inappropriate
decentralisation, Public Sector remuneration, opaque budgetary
processes, defective privatisations or deficient evaluative
mechanisms). Purported solutions to capacity constraints must
contain safeguards to ensure that even when Private Sector
actors are involved in the provision of such essential social
services as quality education, primary healthcare, access to
adequate food, safe water and sanitation governments retain
responsibility for ensuring access to such essential social
services is universal and non-discriminatory.
v. Issue: Lack of
transparency in national budgetary and policy-making processes
(not least because this is an obstacle to Civil Society
participation in such processes) is a constraint on the
effectiveness of the Public Sector. Particularly in the
provision of essential social services, the burden of the risk
of bad decisions being made and the inefficient use of existing
resources is unfairly borne by the poor.
Position:
The identification of clearly stated priorities, of appropriate
targets to ensure measures adopted actually achieve substantial
improvements and their translation into budgetary processes
facilitates transparency, better governance, more accountability
and greater democracy. Rating systems to assign differing
weights to goals according to their importance to the ultimate
outcome of improved Public Sector effectiveness (as in i. above)
must be established as a matter of urgency. Civil Society must
exercise what ‘freedom of information’ rights exist in
particular contexts to monitor accountability related
information. And where such rights do not exist or are
deficient, in concert with international organisations and
regional groupings, Civil Society must work towards their
establishment and amelioration.
B.
Government social expenditures
vi.
Issue: The poorest are disproportionately located in rural areas
and engaged in subsistence agriculture and associated
activities. At the same time, it has been noted that Public
Sector resource allocation often favours the urban poor.
Position:
Strategies for improving Public Sector effectiveness must
recognise this issue and integrate ways of addressing it.
vii. Issue: Governments’
short-term priority, via the Public Sector, under the relevant
constitutional provisions, national legislation and
international agreements, is to provide and maintain an
environment in which the fundamental Human Rights of its
residents can be exercised. On the other hand, governments’
long-term priority is to respond effectively to the underlying
causes of poverty within their jurisdictions.
Position:
The Public Sector must balance its resource allocations towards
essential social service provision that takes account of these
competing priorities.
C.
Alternative means for public service provision:
decentralization, marketization, public-private partnerships and
privatization
viii. Issue:
Decentralisation in the provision of Public Sector services is,
broadly speaking, to be welcomed since it can lead to better
governance, more accountability and greater democracy. However,
a state’s regional governments are not always sufficiently
experienced or effectively enabled to take advantage of the
benefits such subsidiarity can provide.
Position:
Regional governments must be adequate to deal with such
decentralisation, especially in the area of essential social
service provision, before it is put into place.
ix. Issue: Privatisation
of essential social service provision can be advantageous where,
for example, market elements are introduced resulting in
improved physical and institutional infrastructure. Governments,
under the relevant constitutional provisions, national
legislation and international agreements, have a duty to ensure
residents under their jurisdiction have access to such essential
social services without discrimination.
Position:
Defects in essential social service provision (e.g.
non-universality of access or market-failures) are, under the
relevant constitutional provisions, national legislation and
international agreements, never the ultimate responsibility of
Private Sector actors. Governments must therefore institute
appropriate fail-safe mechanisms before ‘contracting-out’
essential social service provision (or where such provision is
already contracted out they must do so immediately). Such
fail-safe mechanisms must ensure that the conditions (e.g.
access to quality education, primary healthcare, adequate food,
safe water and sanitation) which underlie the exercise of
residents’ fundamental Human Rights continue to be present in
the event such defects occur.
D.
Improving leadership, managerial effectiveness and human
resource management
x.
Issue:
Appropriate systems of evaluation are necessary in order to
measure how well the Public Sector is contributing to the
discharge of governments’ essential social service related
duties to their residents under the relevant constitutional
provisions, national legislation and international agreements.
Position:
Evaluation of services must become a core element at all points
in Public Sector provision systems (including the points where
Private Sector or Community actors are providing those
services). Criteria against which appropriate evaluation may
take place must be carefully formulated to take account of forms
of delivery, adequacy to needs, quality, access, availability,
affordability, rights to services, participation, cooperation
between the state, market and civil society, responsibility of
provider and government alike and subsidiarity. Appropriate
criteria include: universality of provision, responsiveness,
equity, reducing access impediments, transparent information and
probity. Civil Society can play a valuable role in monitoring
such evaluative mechanisms where they are transparent and the
right to information exists.
E.
Caveat Concerning Measuring effectiveness
xi.
Issue: The poor
do not always experience the benefit of cost savings from a more
effective Public Sector.
Position:
It is imperative that any cost savings which are the result of
improvements in the provision of such essential social services
as universal and equitable access to quality education, primary
healthcare, adequate food, safe water and sanitation are
identified and ploughed back into social welfare provision and
social development. Social cost-benefit analysis and not just
financial or economic cost-benefit analysis should be used as a
basic analytical tool to ensure inclusion of social aspects and
the social perspective in measuring and enhancing effectiveness
in both the short- and long-term.
F. Improving the public perception of the
public sector
xii. Issue: The Public
Sector is always a best-practice example to all actors in a
particular state.
Position:
The Public
Sector is one of the main areas in which the degree of democracy
and gender inequality prevalent in a state may be measured.
Accordingly, the degree of participation and empowerment of the
community in the Public Sector and its reform is an important
measure of how democratic a state is. In addition, the Public
Sector plays an essential role in addressing gender inequality
and minority discrimination, not least by ensuring that women
and minorities are equitably represented at all levels within
it.
Sources: In
the preparation of this statement reference was, inter alia,
made to previous ICSW publications, particularly those arising
from the World Summit on Social Development (available at www.icsw.org).
Documents relating to the UN Expert Group Meeting on
‘Improving Public Sector Effectiveness’ in Dublin in June
2003 were also referred to. The Platform of European Social
NGO’s 2003 ‘Response to the European Commission Green Paper
on Services of General Interest’ (www.socialplatform.org)
provided helpful background detail, as did the World Bank Study
‘Private Participation in Infrastructure in Developing
Countries’ and the Public
Sector Effectiveness section of the Irish Competitiveness
Council’s ‘Annual Competitiveness Challenge Report 2001’ (www.forfas.ie).
These goals are as
ambitious as they are important. The difficulty of achieving
them makes prompt and vigorous campaigning even more important.
I hope that this conference will inspire all of us to fight
against the underlying causes of hardship, as well as to help
meet the immediate needs of individual people. This applies
especially to the fight against poverty. I look forward to working
with you and your organisations in pursuit of social welfare,
social development and social justice throughout the region
and the world.
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