Publication: Public Services and COVID-19 - Reflections from the Pacific: Sustainable Wage Bills
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2022-12
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2023-01-09
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The purpose of this note is to identify good practice in public sector management drawn from Pacific Island public service experiences of navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences were brought together through a World Bank engagement with Pacific Island countries in 2021 and 2022. The engagement identified five core aspects of Pacific Island public service management in response to COVID-19: trust, preparation, adaptable system settings, adaptable operating models, and sustainable wage bills. This first note in the series of five focuses on the importance of trust. The primary audience is public service leaders in Pacific Islands. The note will also be of interest to anyone working on designing and leading public sector management systems through rapid change, uncertainty and crises.
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“World Bank. 2022. Public Services and COVID-19 - Reflections from the Pacific: Sustainable Wage Bills. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/38401 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Public Services and COVID-19 - Reflections from the Pacific(Washington, DC, 2022-12)The purpose of this note is to identify good practice in public sector management drawn from Pacific Island public service experiences of navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences were brought together through a World Bank engagement with Pacific Island countries in 2021 and 2022. The engagement identified five core aspects of Pacific Island public service management in response to COVID-19: trust, preparation, adaptable system settings, adaptable operating models, and sustainable wage bills. This first note in the series of five focuses on the importance of trust. The primary audience is public service leaders in Pacific Islands. The note will also be of interest to anyone working on designing and leading public sector management systems through rapid change, uncertainty and crises.Publication Public Services and COVID-19 - Reflections from the Pacific(World Bank, 2022-12)The purpose of this note is to identify good practice in public sector management drawn from Pacific Island public service experiences of navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences were brought together through a World Bank engagement with Pacific Island countries in 2021 and 2022. The engagement identified five core aspects of Pacific Island public service management in response to COVID-19: trust, preparation, adaptable system settings, adaptable operating models, and sustainable wage bills. This first note in the series of five focuses on the importance of trust. The primary audience is public service leaders in Pacific Islands. The note will also be of interest to anyone working on designing and leading public sector management systems through rapid change, uncertainty and crises.Publication Public Services & COVID-19 – Reflections from the Pacific(Washington, DC, 2022-12)The purpose of this note is to identify good practice in public sector management drawn from Pacific Island public service experiences of navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences were brought together through a World Bank engagement with Pacific Island countries in 2021 and 2022. The engagement identified five core aspects of Pacific Island public service management in response to COVID-19: trust, preparation, adaptable system settings, adaptable operating models, and sustainable wage bills. This first note in the series of five focuses on the importance of trust. The primary audience is public service leaders in Pacific Islands. The note will also be of interest to anyone working on designing and leading public sector management systems through rapid change, uncertainty and crises.Publication Guinea-Bissau - Public Expenditure Review Update : Enhancing Growth and Fiscal Adjustment Through Civil Service Reform(World Bank, 2007-05-23)Guinea-Bissau's large public sector wage bill poses a major threat to the country's macroeconomic stability: it hampers growth, limits the government's ability to service the domestic and external debt, and crowds out private investments. For this reason, the government decided in early 2006 to retrench more than 2,800 civil servants in a first phase, and about 1,600 military later. The objectives of this public expenditure review (PER) update are to: (i) review progress in macroeconomic and fiscal management since the previous PER; (ii) analyze the issue of compensation benefits in the context of the ongoing civil service reform; and (ii) update the debt sustainability analysis for Guinea-Bissau. Besides this introduction, the report includes three main chapters on macroeconomic management, improving the fiscal situation, and debt sustainability. The report also gives a final conclusion and discusses the way forward.Publication Kyrgyz Republic Public Expenditure Review Policy Notes : Public Wage Bill(Washington, DC, 2014-05)Restraining the growing wage bill expenditures while enhancing the performance of the public sector remains one of the government's major development priorities. Wage bill levels in the Kyrgyz Republic are high compared to the majority of Europe and Central Asia (ECA) countries, constituting almost one third of government expenditures. Over the last few years, the government has undertaken important steps towards enhancing pay systems and improving competitiveness of pay in public health and education sectors accounting for almost 66 percent of the wage bill. The Kyrgyz Republic confronts the need to restrain its public wage bill as part of its mid-term fiscal strategy, as well as the need to improve the performance of the public sector. The analysis, undertaken in this policy note, suggests that the government should consider the following measures and reforms: improve predictability of the wage bill and avoid further ad hoc increase in wages; moderate and gradual consolidation of employment; any increase of the base pay elements has to be linked to modest and gradual consolidation of public sector employment, and should be limited to inflation as needed; establishment controls need to be strengthened through sound monitoring of the number of employees and payroll in all parts of the public sector; and civil service pay reform has to be undertaken with a unified pay system, gradually introduced at all levels of the government. This note discusses public sector wage management in the Kyrgyz Republic, by analyzing wage bill expenditure levels over the last decade with a closer examination of dynamics in 2008-2011.
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