Report proposes improvements in public administration

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A report on the service offered by the Greek public administration, released in January 1998, contains proposals aimed at achieving greater efficiency, greater responsibility amongst public servants, better management of the workforce and a better response to citizens' needs.

On 14 January 1998 a report on the quality of service offered by the Greek public administration, written on instructions from the Prime Minister, was made public. In the document, Professor Giannis Spraos has drawn up proposals aimed at achieving greater efficiency in public administration, greater responsibility amongst public servants, better management of the workforce and a better response to citizens' needs. The Government will quite possibly follow the report's guidelines for reforming the public administration.

The problems the report identifies are the following:

• public servants have acquired a mentality that favours formality, indifference and shying away from responsibility;

• instead of helping to create responsible administrators, permanent job status and political interests exert a negative effect;

• society believes that permanent job status encourages irresponsibility, so permanence must be redefined; and

• a negative role is played by promotion based on length of service instead of efficiency, the emphasis on formal rather than real qualifications and the dissociation of salary from efficiency.

To deal with these problems, the report makes the following proposals:

• "benchmarking" must be introduced to evaluate quality of service. Benchmarks will measure just how closely the results of administrative action come to achieving the goals previously set by the services themselves;

• jobs should be evaluated and duties outlined so as to avoid overlapping between services;

• a team of financial experts on administration should be set up, to permit the public services to operate with the least possible cost; and

• a team of top civil servants should be created to work on improving the quality of public administration.

The following should also be created:

• a quality and efficiency service responsible for relevant inspections;

• a responsibility and initiative service to set goals to be achieved within given deadlines; and

• a service on quality of standards directly responsible to the Prime Minister with an advisory and consultative role.

Although the Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY) takes a positive view of the overall framework of the report's proposals, it nevertheless disagrees on many points. Specifically, the president of ADEDY points out that it is in the final stage of discussions with the Government on the new civil service code and the institution of free collective bargaining. In this context, it calls on the Government not to renege on the basis of the discussions and proposals already submitted. ADEDY categorically rejects any proposal to set up a team of financial experts or top officers in public administration, because such proposals lie outside the framework of ADEDY and its consultations with the Government.