Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

164 Public Management and Administration
Most of the problems have concerned implementation. It is not easy to institute
a new personnel system or to persuade staff that it is better than the previous
one. Changes have been so frequent that many staff do not know where they
stand. This causes problems of morale, exacerbated by the feeling that a public
service career is less attractive. If once it was a permanent career, valued by
the community, it certainly is no longer. The implementation of performance
indicators is similarly difficult. They should be simple, parsimonious but still
meaningful. In theory, all these changes make much sense, but have been difficult
to bring into effect.
There are two points to be made in looking further ahead. First, even if there
have been problems in setting up new systems, the direction of reform in internal
management is quite clear. So if particular changes are difficult they will be
superseded by further changes in the same direction, rather than going back.
Secondly, comparisons or studies should not look at how well the reforms work
in the abstract, but rather how well they compare with what went before. In this
regard, all the changes mentioned here are far better than those that existed
under the traditional model of administration. In that model, personnel and performance
management did exist but were of such dubious quality that any
change at all should prove to be a significant improvement.