Recap from the e-learning

Vladimír Kváča

Feed back from e-learning 1

• Total number of respondents: 5• The most interesting parts:

Chapter 4 - Two Cases - TANF and Federal Ministry (4 respondents)

Chapter 7 – Accountability (3 respondents)Chapter 5 – Motivation, Chapter 6 -

Complexity (2 respondents for each)

• „The best part was how it connects several understandings of human behaviour and today’s dynamic society together.“

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Feed back from e-learning 2

• The most difficult parts:Chapter 6 - Complexity (2 respondents)Nothing (2 respondents)Chapter 2 - Deliver results! But how?, Chapter

3 - Results Based Management, Chapter 7 – Accountability, Chapter 8 The new synthesis (1 respondent for each)

• Problems: difficult language, lack of examples in chapters 2 and 3, difficult themes at the end of the e-learning

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April, 2009: Independent report “An Agenda for a Reformed Cohesion Policy” delivered at the request of Commissioner for Regional Policy, Ms Hübner

• “The most evident weaknesses which indicate the need for reform of cohesion policy are:A remarkable lack of political and policy

debate on results in terms of the well-being of people, at both local and EU level, most of the attention being focused on financial absorption and irregularities.”

• European Commission’s DG REGIO:

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“The intended result is the specific dimension of well-

being and progress for people that motivates

policy action…”. …an assessment of needs is required to identify the

results!

the decision on which unmet needs should be tackled is the result of a deliberative social

process (a "political decision")!

Name of your presentation

“need” being defined as observable significant differencebetween the status quo and a situation as it should be (need is then the gap in results) (cf. Kaufman: World Bank)

What others say about needs….

Name of your presentation

“need” being defined as observable significant differencebetween the status quo and a situation as it should be (need is then the gap in results) (cf. Kaufman: World Bank)

What others say about needs….But how can the gap in results

(need) be the basis for defining the results?

We “need” an ICT system because… we don’t have one?

But still we wonder: what do we need it for? How does it relate to well-being? This is what makes a

result (ir)relevant!DG REGIO states that relevance of a strategy require justification, of the link between the

objectives and identified needs!

An irrelevant result, cannot be a result!

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BASIC

SOCIAL

Includes:• key subjective needs

of autonomy, mastery, relatedness, meaning (contribution to a larger purpose)

• objective conditions like satisfaction with food, housing, income, health, work, physical safety, friends and family, education, neighborhood, ability to help others and spiritual, religious and/or philosophical beliefs

NOTE: Maslow is useful as a categorisation system, less as a strict hierarchy as various needs can co-exist or higher level needs can take precedence over lower level ones

NEEDS?

From needs to results-1

• Applying this to some DG REGIO guidance examples: reduced traffic fatalities = safety need! reduced travel time = • means for parents to fulfill social need e.g. spending more time with the kids?• a way to work more to earn more money? • if we do not know the need we are addressing, we cannot know about well-

being! Exchanging travel time for work time does not increase well-being for those who wanted to spend time with the kids!

CO2 reduction= • safety need (e.g. global warming leads to life-threatening floods)?• economic security need (e.g. business continuity versus floods)? • both...?

From needs to results-2

• other objectives…

environmental objectives?

• health, economic, leisure, ... value for people

organisational objectives?

• reflecting owners, managers, employees’ needs

administrative capacity building?

• “efficiency” is a constraint on input, but should NEVER be promoted to

be a result

• adressing citizen needs or public servants’ needs or both?

RESULTS IMPLY A SHIFT OF OWNERSHIP!

Shift of ownership from supplier to receiver: supplier cannot ascertain change without asking the demand side!

NEEDS are linked to this SHIFT OF OWNERSHIP

Belonging need

Physiological need

Economic security, etc.

Results and… ESIF programmes

• Results in an overaching Programme / Strategy: At this level, it is sufficient to see (specific) objectives as a way to

provide relatively abstract boundaries for domains of attention within which many needs can still be adressed

• e.g. employment can be strived for to address some form of economic security, belonging, recognition, personal growth…

• At intervention level, it is more important to be clear about needs an intervention to achieve basic economic security will look very

different from one that has mastery in mind as the need to be satisified, even though the vehicle may in both cases be employment

the choice of delivery mechanism determines HOW this clarity concerning needs is achieved in a (political) process of stakeholder engagement

Results and… ESIF programmes

• Results in an overaching Programme / Strategy: At this level, it is sufficient to see (specific) objectives as a way to

provide relatively abstract boundaries for domains of attention within which many needs can still be adressed

• e.g. employment can be strived for to address some form of economic security, belonging, recognition, personal growth…

• At intervention level, it is more important to be clear about needs an intervention to achieve basic economic security will look very

different from one that has mastery in mind as the need to be satisified, even though the vehicle may in both cases be employment

the choice of delivery mechanism determines HOW this clarity concerning needs is achieved in a (political) process of stakeholder engagement

Delivery mechanisms are thefocus of the second

part of the seminar!

Performance and accountability

Vladimír Kváča, Benedict Wauters

The two big questions….

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How can we perform better?

How can we ensure

accountability?

Accountability

• Accountability is one of the the key terms of Results Based Management, as every results oriented organization should be accountable for its actions.

• Of course, all public administrations, as they works with other people‘s money, should be accountable.

• A deeper understanding of accountability is necessary, as it is a multifaceted term

Different concepts of accountability

• “honest and fair”: traditional view dating back to Weberian bureaucracy focus is on preventing distortion, bias, abuse of office

and inequityproper discharge of duties in terms of procedures

AND substance is of prime importance:• “how the job gets done” rather than just “getting the job

done with the least possible input”

emanations: • process controls (rather than output)• words like transparency, prevention and detection of fraud,

compliance with rules, etc. fit here

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Accountability for what?

Different concepts of accountability

• “lean and purposeful”: This view rises with New Public Management match narrowly defined tasks and circumstances with resources

(time and money) as tightly as possible, cutting any slack it is very important to have “checkable” objectives that are not

overlapping hence the focus on outputs, ideally to be provided by

independent departments emanations:

• words like effectiveness, efficiency, impact, value for money, achieving targets

• approaches like payment by results, just in time delivery and zero based budgeting

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Accountability for what?

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Different concepts of accountability

• “robust, resilient, adaptive”: „post – NPM“ redirection of attention to complex

nature of society focus is on being able to withstand shocks, to keep

operating even under the most dire circumstances and to adapt rapidly in a crisis

emanations:• back-up systems, maintaining adequate diversity to avoid

widespread common failure (including in the social sense e.g. avoiding groupthink) and building in safety margins (e.g. in planning work or using materials)

• words like diversity, empowerment, sustainability etc.

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Accountability for what?

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Hood (1991)

Accountability - balancing• Balancing these three dimensions of accountability is key but a

major challenge.• Different dimensions have their own „accounters“ who tend to focus

narrowly only on one aspects while disregarding the others.• Competing demands of different accounters may lead to effects of

accountability overload and professional disorientation of the „accountees“.

• Managing balanced relations with all accounters is a delicate task for all public organizations.

• Having a holistic view of accountability and being able to explain it to all accounters with a partial focus can be a good approach.

• Attempting to balance all accountability aspects is incorporated in the “New Synthesis for Public Administration” approach in which we stituate our RBM+ system

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Accountability in Central and Eastern Europe: concept and realityArnost Veselý

International Review of Administrative Sciences 2013 79: 310

Accountability- balancing

• “the way people give an account of what they have done

and why, rather than describing in a more limited way if they

have hit a target or not” (Chris Mowles)

• “…be accountable for demonstrating that they ask the

difficult questions, that they explicitly identify problems and

limitations as well as what is going well, that they have in

place appropriate monitoring systems, and that they carry out

evaluations looking at challenging questions and issues” (Burt

Perrin)

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Group task:

Think about your organization

Who are your „accounters“? Who is helding you accountable for which dimension of accountability?• Lean and purposeful• Honest and fair• Robust and resilient

Please, quickly discuss and be ready to tell others in 5 minutes.

Adapted from Hood (1991)

New Synthesis approach

• Public management is a balancing act: in terms of

performance:• “traditional” results

(outputs, outcomes)• civic results

in terms of the use of power:

• government• collective

• …underpinned by the three notions of accountability

J. Bourgon, A new synthesis for public administration

Honest and fair

Lean and purposeful

Robust, resilient,..

Performance and accountability are two

faces of the same coin!

traditional basis for accountability in the sense of achieving and improving efficiency

public purpose, that extends beyond the walls of the organisation and the programmes and services they administer and requires to work with other public organisations

OECD Better Life Index level: requires ALL societal actors

active citizenry, resilient communities and a civic spirit conducive to collective action builds the social capital that contributes (next to other forms of capital) to overall performance of a society. Achieve by improving access, allow stronger voices and give greater choice.

Need to work on BOTH!

Agency level “outputs” as the focus for efficiency?

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The standard input-activity-output factory model as depicted by OECD, 2009*

*Measuring government activity

Where are the factories?

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The public service is predominantly about… services!

Government as primary agent in serving the public good and defining the collective interest, operates without much interaction, within the limits of their mandate and with instruments and resoures granted to them.

Government as steward is monitoring, anticipating and introducing corrective andpreventative measures when the collective interest demands it

Equitable risk/reward sharing in delivery

Support innovation of others, co-create and co-produce

Allow people to exercise power and mobilise into action

What happens if we do not find a balance?

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Private sector examples of overemphasising lean and purposeful (facilitated by public policy) with wider repercussions

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What is happening in ESIF?

• “Simplification of policy delivery, focus on results and increased use of conditionality are among the major hallmarks of the next set of programmes.”*

• But this is then reduced to:Common indicatorsSetting targets on outputs and resultsJoint Action Plan (paying for target achievement) Impact evaluation with a clear preference for

counterfactual impact evaluation (but no implications for management)

*REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL laying down common provisions for the Structural Funds

• It’s not about the regulations but about management

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• This conflicts with “initiatives” that are more ad hoc, local, unique and trying to create a self-sustaining dynamic between people, in organisations, communities, families,… e.g. local development, advocacy, empowerment,… and…public reform itself… where: the next step depends on information that becomes available in the

previous one making the process as a whole unpredictable

Good luck replicating the “model” …

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ESIF co.

The ESIF regulations show the common assumption that

a “programme”, refers to a (collection of) standardised (homogeneous, identical) “outputs” to be repeated

again and again for similar (equally homogeneous)

participants

Public policy results in ESIF?

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• … and in between is the vast majority of what the public sector does, provide services that are: unique (because everyone is different and services are co-

created by their users) AND similar (as a category of demand associated with a range of expertise)

predictable (high, steady rate of occurrence) AND infrequent (low rate, hard to know when)

Civic results in ESIF?Nobel prize winning economist A. Sen’s capability approach

Remember this?

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Which one got closest to being a Fordian

factory? Which oneperformed better?

How to perform / be truly accountable as a public (ESIF) service is the topic of the first part of the seminar!

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• to be open minded…• to challenge your

assumptions…• to ask yourself why you

are in the public service, in this seminar,… in the first place

• to contribute throughout the seminar to increase your as well as our understanding…