MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EAST HILL STREET
NASSAU, THE BAHAMAS

18th November 2004

This evening, we are indeed honoured to welcome our Prime Minister to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to the discussion with Civil Society on Public Sector Reform.

I wish to tell you where we are in this process.  The Government has decided that public sector reform is an imperative, which it would like to see, further enhanced during this term of office.  The Inter American Development Bank and potential vendors to affect the reforms have produced a number of ideas as to how the reform effort should proceed.

You are aware of my saying before that public sector reform is not like an apple on a shelf at the supermarket where you buy it, consume it and then it is done.  This is a constant process, and the reform effort never stops.  The idea behind this current effort is to institutionalize reform so that the effort continues as a priority for the forward movement of the sector regardless of who occupies the political office.

The common thread in all of the proposals put to the government is first the need to identify what the public and the persons who work in the sector believe ought to be reformed.  Secondly, there must be a buy in or demonstrated commitment from the management and workers in the sector and the political directorate.  Last month on 8th October, we were able to obtain a commitment from the public sector unions and staff associations to the reform effort.  There is to be a meeting organized with the mismanagement of the sector in short order.

Tonight though is an opportunity for NGOs and private sector organizations to have some input into where we ought to go.  The reform of the sector is as important to the private sector as it is to the public sector.  This is particularly if you accept one definition of public sector reform by Professor Charles Cambridge, which is to lay the infrastructure both physical and social so that the public sector can produce more jobs in the private sector.

There are two aspects that have to be tackled.  One is the internal dimension that is the human resources practices, internal communication, decision-making and execution.  The other and more difficult issue is the external one to the service, that of how the service responds to political direction and control as mandated under the constitution.

The Prime Minister will have many years of experience of this where people on the street do not understand why it is that because someone is a Minister of the Government, he or she cannot order certain things to be done, after all that is why we were elected.

Of course those of us who understand the nature of the systems is that you have a bureaucracy that is rules’ based, and that is supposed to be politically neutral that is supposed to be the place for continuity and institutional memory.  The benefits of that permanency have the disadvantage of a lack of flexibility, a rigidity that often does not serve the public well.  The great issue of our time is how to make the systems more flexible and adaptable so that it can meet the needs of this society.

I welcome you all to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to this civil dialogue.  I look forward to your comments.  With us this evening are the representatives of the Inter American Development Bank who have undertaken to provide a consultant to analyze these issues and that consultant is to provide the blue print on the way forward.  The Prime Minister’s presence here this evening sends a signal to the community of the seriousness with which he takes this initiative.  I am pleased to be a part of it.

And now it is my pleasure and honour to call upon the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister.  Please stand with me and welcome him…