Caribbean State Capacity Building – The State of the Civil Service in Guyana
DEAR EDITOR,
The document under the heading is dated November 2018. In essence, it is the administration’s ‘assessment of the Human Resource Management functions’ which is underway in 2017. It begins with a review of the organisation’s structure and function functions Human Resources as featured in Guyana’s Public Service in 2017, whose main components are identified as follows:
Public Services Commission
Mandatory by the Constitution to ‘monitor management’:
• Recruitment
• promotion
• discipline
Department of Public Services
(Formerly the Ministry of Public Services)
• Responsible for overseeing the Public Service, although within the Ministry of the Presidency
At this point the view needs to be expressed that there has been a significant contradiction in terms, where the Presidency Administration has reduced its authoritative status of oversight and pronunciation on HR issues arising from Ministries (comparator), by start the decision maker overrun in the Human Resource Management function as a Department. How then is the ‘Department’ addressing similar internal issues arising? In fact there is on record at least one critical disciplinary issue that must be outsourced in order to reach an informed decision that would ensure its impartiality within its own Department.
Interestingly, the IDB document observes as follows:
“The Department’s duties included:
• provide the necessary training for personnel
• consulting services to other ministries and divisions (?)
• determine the number of posts required in ministries
• establishing pay and grade levels. ”
Again, it is clear that the Department is operating above the level of ‘servant Administrations’. The following Exhibit seeks to portray the confusion of accountability relationships.
Notes
1) DPS is not an Administration
2) There are no other official Public Service Divisions
Exhibit
Roles of Divisions
Training
• Scholarship Awards
• Design, develop and implement training programs
• Preparing candidates for Public Service through the Public Services Staff College
The creation of a ‘Staff College’ completely ignored the fact that there was a long-standing public service training facility that catered for staff at all levels.
The mere establishment of a luxury facility for the establishment of agents for entry-level public service positions could not add significant value to the performance of any Ministry, assuming of course that there is actually vacancy.
Central Personnel
Monitor and address personnel unit performance shortfalls in line Ministries
Review of Job Descriptions and related Job Specifications
IT Division
Objective – to raise performance to international standards
Human Resource Management Function
The captioned document, quite rightly, noted that the ‘legal framework in Guyana remains largely central to personnel administration rather than human resource management? The situation is still at this time of writing.
It further observes therefore that ‘strategic human resource management planning is not currently practiced in the Guyana Public Service, and there is no effective cross-ministry supportive HR Information System’.
Needless to say, there is no Succession Planning inking, which, of course, precludes the need for any Performance Evaluation program, as the latter has been superseded by the established system of general annual increases which (consequently) reduce any a concept of motivation among performers (too many of them are overvalued).
The document goes on to comment on the poverty of collaboration between Administrations, and indeed among Permanent Secretaries, although there is no relevant formal communication communication.
For example, it reflects on the inconsistency in the job descriptions, if not the absence, of which too many are said to be ‘old-fashioned’. Note the following quote: “According to a sample of Permanent Secretaries, 50-75 per cent of employees have job descriptions. However, less than 25 percent of them are valid. The inclusion of performance standards and job specific competencies is inconsistent ”. One is therefore left to wonder to what extent the current performance appraisal form is used.
The review refers to the 14 Degree pay structure that existed since 1992 and the associated scales. It refers to the 2016 Public Service Commission of Inquiry Report which revealed:
i) “37 per cent of all grades are paid above the maximum”;
ii) “11 per cent paid below minimum”
Hopefully, the above was corrected by the debunching exercise allegedly carried out as a result of the COI report.
However, the historical concept of ‘increment’ has long been forgotten by the actors, and so unknown to decision makers.
All of the above states that there is no structured route to identifiable promotion across public service agencies, even in the face of criteria that are rarely referred to in any case.
The review refers to reports of officers operating ‘excessive periods of time (up to 10 years) without substantive promotion to the job and no clear rationale being conveyed’.
Most critically, however, the analysis does not investigate the binding 14 Degree Job Structure. Again the question has to be asked how it is possible to ignore the significant changes in technologies and related jobs, skills and competencies, and simply cramp new jobs into the same dated categories that were evaluated and graduated in 1992.
It really is a wonder that even the Union (s) involved have ignored this fateful fault line.
In the meantime there is the unregulated disposal to contract workers for new jobs, recklessly rewarding them for jobs that have not been objectively evaluated, along with associated competencies to cope with the challenges of the strategies transitional that the current administration has undertaken to implement.
It is therefore essential for the latter to appoint a group or groups of qualified professionals (including from the Caricom Region) to undertake the major restructuring so urgently needed. Such a comprehensive undertaking would take no less than a year, when the rebuilding of the Human Resource Management function in Guyana’s Public Service has to take center stage.
The above contains a condensed version of the first 13 pages of analysis of our Public Service that demands the attention of any administration, and certainly the current one, that should not rest their laurels on changing Permanent Secretaries and Regional Executives into alone. .
There needs to be a very proactive focus on developing management decision-making capabilities, the technical capabilities required to motivate highly productive public servants, and human resource management functions in particular – so much needed in an increasingly multicultural business environment, and in times of pandemic .
The above is only the first installment taken from the IDB’s analysis. The next will reveal the actual scores given to certain Guyana Public Service activities based on the IDB index.
EB John
Human Resource Management
and Development Consultant