Publication: Ghana's New Approach to Public Sector Reform : Focusing on Delivery
Loading...
Published
2010-11
ISSN
Date
2013-03-21
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Ghana has developed a "New Approach to Public Sector Reform", which seeks to focus reforms on results, particularly the delivery of the Government's main priorities for (i) job creation and (ii) food production, distribution and processing. The impetus for the reform is being led from the center of Government, by the Presidency and through the strengthening of collective cabinet level coordination, while recognizing that implementation will continue to be the responsibility of the line Ministries that typically already have well articulated sector strategies. These sector strategies are largely consistent with two main priorities and are supported by Ghana's main international partners. The New Approach emphasizes the need for greater coordination of the Government's activities, combined with mechanisms to encourage greater performance and accountability amongst senior managers, combined with innovative partnerships with the private sector that could help to ease the binding financial constraints. This report summarizes the results of a four-day fact finding mission conducted 4-8 October 2010. The Report is divided into four parts as follows: Part A - Short term opportunities: The report welcomes the focus on delivering specific change in job creation and food production, distribution and processing. The Government should consider further developing its Delivery Model, as partly implied under the 'New Approach,' by creating a delivery unit in the President's Policy Unit to help promote coordination at the center of Government and to remove bottlenecks to critical reforms.The Report also suggests ways that Ghana might tackle some specific challenges in strengthening the role of the Presidency in promoting delivery. Part B - Identifying and monitoring the delivery chains for food production and job creation and Illustrating the delivery chain for food production as well as Illustrating the delivery chain for PPPs, a key component of job creation. Part C - Implications of the adoption of the Single Pay Spine, the report notes that the single pay spine model adopted in Ghana is somewhat different to those implemented in other countries in terms of design and sequencing - and urges that consideration is given to a delayed implementation while these challenges are resolved. The costs of implementing the Ghana Single Pay Spine are likely to be very significant.There are significant future refinements of the single pay spine arrangements which will likely be necessary - and some very urgent steps will need to be taken in the light of the fiscal situation and managing from the center of government, One part of the report identifies two key roles of the center of government (defined as the offices of the President and Vice President, and the Cabinet Office) - ensuring that government is "reliable" and overseeing reform. There are significant capacity gaps in undertaking these roles, requiring a more detailed technical review of staff and organizational structures. This is an urgent priority. If a high-level institution/mechanism - such as a delivery unit - is to be established at the Presidency level then it must be sufficiently robust to remain in place across political transitions to help drive reforms. It will be important to minimize the risks associated with such an approach, specifically, in terms of the duplication of units and roles and responsibilities, and the need for broader buy-in from key actors across Government. The broader public sector reforms that will likely be necessary include further work on improving inter- and intra-sectoral coordination, performance management, and using PPPs and more to achieve efficiency savings in the light of the fiscal consequences of the Single Pay Spine.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2010. Ghana's New Approach to Public Sector Reform : Focusing on Delivery. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/12811 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Serbia - Right-Sizing the Government Wage Bill(World Bank, 2010-10-12)Serbia's public sector wage bill constitutes a significant share of total government expenditure. At present, it is significantly higher than in most neighboring European Union (EU) member countries. This is largely due to higher average levels of compensation, rather than higher levels of staffing. While wage spending has fallen recently this is not the occasion to be sanguine about the Government's wage and employment policies. There are two reasons. First, continuing control over the wage bill is a key part of the Government's overall deficit reduction strategy. Given the Government's reluctance to raise taxes and the difficulty it confronts in reducing other major categories of expenditures (particularly pensions), restraining the wage bill is critical to fiscal sustainability. In connection with its standby arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government is committed to enacting fiscal responsibility legislation which would cap wage bill spending at eight percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over the medium term. To date, the Government has been relying on blunt instruments to achieve this target; most importantly a freeze on nominal wages and a partial freeze on the creation of new positions, both introduced in 2009. As the current recession eases, pressures to increase wages are mounting. The wage freeze is becoming politically unsustainable. More nuanced methods of restraining the wage bill are required. Second, over the longer term, the present policy of continuous wage and position freezes would undermine the quality of public administration. Persistent wage freezes would make it difficult to attract and retain competent staff. Persistent position freezes would lock in existing patterns of over- and under staffing. On the other hand, a reversion to the former system of ad hoc adjustments in staffing and wages could set the stage for unsustainable wage bill growth in the future. Structural reforms are therefore required.Publication Labor Policy to Promote Good Jobs in Tunisia : Revisiting Labor Regulation, Social Security, and Active Labor Market Programs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015)Tunisians are striving for the opportunity to realize their potential and aspirations in a country that is rich in both human and physical capital, but whose recent economic growth has failed to create enough opportunities in the form of good and productive jobs. This report highlights the main barriers that hinder the Tunisian labor market from providing income, protection, and prosperity to its citizens and proposes a set of labor policies that could facilitate the creation of better, more inclusive, and more productive jobs. The weak economic performance and insufficient and low-quality job creation in Tunisia is primarily the result of an economic environment permeated by distortions, barriers to competition, and excessive red tape, including in the labor market. This has resulted in the creation of a insufficient number of jobs, especially in the formal sector. To change this situation, policy makers need to address five strategic directives that can promote long-term inclusive growth and formality: foster competition; realign incentives, pay, and benefit packages in the public sector; move toward labor regulations that promote labor mobility and provide support to workers in periods of transition; enhance the productivity of informal workers through training and skills building; and reform existing social insurance systems and introduce new instruments to attain broader coverage.Publication Sierra Leone Growth Pole Diagnostic : The Growth Poles Program(Washington, DC, 2013-08)This First Phase Report on Sierra Leone growth poles is the result of a 9 months consultative process led by the Office of the President which specifically requested that the output of this diagnostic be in an engaging format. The fundamental concept of growth poles is that they exploit agglomeration economies and spillover effects to spread resulting prosperity from the core of the pole to the periphery. At the basis of this theory is the assumption that economic development is not uniform over a region. Rather, it concentrates around a geographic feature or economic hub. In particular, it frequently concentrates around a key industry, around which linked industries develop. A growth pole can be used to nurture direct and indirect linkages from the flagship industry to supporting sectors, which vastly expands the employment generation potential of new investments in said flagship industry. The expansion of this key industry implies the expansion of output, employment, related investments, as well as new technologies and new industrial sectors.Publication Engaging for Results in Civil Service Reforms : Early Lessons from a Problem-Driven Engagement in Sierra Leone(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05)Two related propositions have been central in the recent debates on public sector reforms. The first of these is that the appropriate measure of institutional strength is the ability of public sector management systems to deliver ("functionality") rather than the institutional "form" or what these institutions look like. This is a central idea in the World Bank's Public Sector Management (PSM) Approach 2011-2020. Second, and consistent with this, is the recognition that the process of engagement matters in the sense that how problems, solutions, and reform approaches are identified matters at least as much as what the solution is. This suggests that development institutions should focus on bringing a broad range of stakeholders together and facilitate a process of collective problem and solution identification. Recent contributions to the literature describe a "Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation" approach as a means of putting this idea into practice. While both of these propositions have considerable intellectual and intuitive appeal, they are based on an inductive logic and neither is currently backed with a large body of robust evidence. This paper contributes to this literature by documenting the experience of a civil service reform project -- the World Bank-financed Sierra Leone Pay and Performance Project -- the objective of which is to improve the performance of the civil service in Sierra Leone by targeting a narrowly defined set of critical reforms. The paper concludes that intensive, client-led engagement together with use of a results-based lending instrument provide a promising way forward on a difficult reform agenda.Publication Estimating the Fiscal Costs of Implementing Ghana’s Single Pay Spine Reform(2009-12-01)Public sector pay policy is one of the main decisions facing a government, as it determines the ability to attract, retain, and motivate staff needed to fulfill its service delivery objectives. One option usually considered is relying on a single pay spine for all services into which jobs would be slotted, thus ensuring greater comparability of similar jobs across the public sector. This paper examines the single spine pay reform currently being considered in Ghana, highlighting the differences between the Ghanaian proposal and similarly named proposals elsewhere, and underscoring the potential cost of implementing the proposal -- which is expected to be significant. There are three main findings: (i) the implementation of the single spine pay reform would raise the base pay wage bill (salaries plus category one allowances) in Ghana to GHC2.8 billion by January 1, 2010 -- an almost 50 percent increase compared with an equivalent figures of GHC1.9 billion at end-2008; (ii) because these estimates focus narrowly on the base pay wage bill, they should be regarded as a lower bound estimate of the overall increase in the wage bill; and (iii) because these estimates are derived from assumptions regarding (1) the distribution of public sector employees across public sector services and institutions; (2) the minimum public sector wage; and the (3) the relativity of all other public sector wages with respect to this minimum wage, they are subject to changes any time these assumptions also change.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Digital Progress and Trends Report 2023(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-05)Digitalization is the transformational opportunity of our time. The digital sector has become a powerhouse of innovation, economic growth, and job creation. Value added in the IT services sector grew at 8 percent annually during 2000–22, nearly twice as fast as the global economy. Employment growth in IT services reached 7 percent annually, six times higher than total employment growth. The diffusion and adoption of digital technologies are just as critical as their invention. Digital uptake has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1.5 billion new internet users added from 2018 to 2022. The share of firms investing in digital solutions around the world has more than doubled from 2020 to 2022. Low-income countries, vulnerable populations, and small firms, however, have been falling behind, while transformative digital innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) have been accelerating in higher-income countries. Although more than 90 percent of the population in high-income countries was online in 2022, only one in four people in low-income countries used the internet, and the speed of their connection was typically only a small fraction of that in wealthier countries. As businesses in technologically advanced countries integrate generative AI into their products and services, less than half of the businesses in many low- and middle-income countries have an internet connection. The growing digital divide is exacerbating the poverty and productivity gaps between richer and poorer economies. The Digital Progress and Trends Report series will track global digitalization progress and highlight policy trends, debates, and implications for low- and middle-income countries. The series adds to the global efforts to study the progress and trends of digitalization in two main ways: · By compiling, curating, and analyzing data from diverse sources to present a comprehensive picture of digitalization in low- and middle-income countries, including in-depth analyses on understudied topics. · By developing insights on policy opportunities, challenges, and debates and reflecting the perspectives of various stakeholders and the World Bank’s operational experiences. This report, the first in the series, aims to inform evidence-based policy making and motivate action among internal and external audiences and stakeholders. The report will bring global attention to high-performing countries that have valuable experience to share as well as to areas where efforts will need to be redoubled.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Global Economic Prospects, June 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-11)After several years of negative shocks, global growth is expected to hold steady in 2024 and then edge up in the next couple of years, in part aided by cautious monetary policy easing as inflation gradually declines. However, economic prospects are envisaged to remain tepid, especially in the most vulnerable countries. Risks to the outlook, while more balanced, are still tilted to the downside, including the possibility of escalating geopolitical tensions, further trade fragmentation, and higher-for-longer interest rates. Natural disasters related to climate change could also hinder activity. Subdued growth prospects across many emerging market and developing economies and continued risks underscore the need for decisive policy action at the global and national levels. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). Each edition includes analytical pieces on topical policy challenges faced by these economies.Publication World Development Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-01)Middle-income countries are in a race against time. Many of them have done well since the 1990s to escape low-income levels and eradicate extreme poverty, leading to the perception that the last three decades have been great for development. But the ambition of the more than 100 economies with incomes per capita between US$1,100 and US$14,000 is to reach high-income status within the next generation. When assessed against this goal, their record is discouraging. Since the 1970s, income per capita in the median middle-income country has stagnated at less than a tenth of the US level. With aging populations, growing protectionism, and escalating pressures to speed up the energy transition, today’s middle-income economies face ever more daunting odds. To become advanced economies despite the growing headwinds, they will have to make miracles. Drawing on the development experience and advances in economic analysis since the 1950s, World Development Report 2024 identifies pathways for developing economies to avoid the “middle-income trap.” It points to the need for not one but two transitions for those at the middle-income level: the first from investment to infusion and the second from infusion to innovation. Governments in lower-middle-income countries must drop the habit of repeating the same investment-driven strategies and work instead to infuse modern technologies and successful business processes from around the world into their economies. This requires reshaping large swaths of those economies into globally competitive suppliers of goods and services. Upper-middle-income countries that have mastered infusion can accelerate the shift to innovation—not just borrowing ideas from the global frontiers of technology but also beginning to push the frontiers outward. This requires restructuring enterprise, work, and energy use once again, with an even greater emphasis on economic freedom, social mobility, and political contestability. Neither transition is automatic. The handful of economies that made speedy transitions from middle- to high-income status have encouraged enterprise by disciplining powerful incumbents, developed talent by rewarding merit, and capitalized on crises to alter policies and institutions that no longer suit the purposes they were once designed to serve. Today’s middle-income countries will have to do the same.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.