Sierra Leone - Reforming Human Resource Mangagement - Lessons for Replication

One of the overarching challenges generally encountered in the delivery of public goods is putting in place an effective and efficient public service system to serve as a key engine in the implementation of state policies and programs. The absence of an effective public service system is a recipe for state failure—a moment of inability of the executive to ensure optimal delivery of basic services to the people. State failure, hence bad governance, was identified as a fundamental cause to Sierra Leone’s ten-year civil war and the pervasiveness of poverty in the country . To this end, the government has been implementing a comprehensive public service reform program, with a special focus on human resource management.

Challenge
Poor human resource management was a characteristic feature of the civil service in Sierra Leone. The following is a summary of human resource management related challenges in the civil service:
• Poor records management; favoritism and nepotism in recruitment of key personnel;
• Low salaries and poor conditions of service;
• Limited training opportunities, corruption and abuse of public office;
• Mismatch between mandate and capacity
• Lack of effective enforcement of rules and regulations;
• Large numbers of unskilled workers; negative attitude to work;
• Flight of qualified personnel; poor communication system
• Shadow civil service /parallel systems/capacity substitution programs;
• Lack of clarity in institutional responsibilities and division of labour
• Lack of adequate finances
As a result of these challenges, the capacity for economic policy formulation and implementation was weakened.

Approach
Following the end of the civil, the Government of Sierra Leone placed special emphasis on the need to reform the civil service as part of its comprehensive national reform program for better delivery of public services to the people. First, it established the Governance Reform Secretariat (GRS) under the Presidential Affairs Ministry to coordinate the civil service reform program. To accord the process the attention it deserved, the GRS was transformed later into the Public Service Reform Unit (PSRU) and placed within the Office of the President.

As part of the key priorities in the Sierra Leone’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, the civil service reform program had “enhancing human resource management and planning” as a major component. Other related reform strategies include: the conduct of management and functional reviews of the government architecture; promulgation of new regulations, rules, and civil service code; improving records management in the civil service; rightsizing the civil service; embarking on a comprehensive pay and grading reform.

Regarding improvement in human resource management in the country, the first step undertaken was the conversion of the Establishment Secretary’s Office into the Human Resource Management Office with a view to modernizing government approach and ensuring efficient manpower planning and management in the civil service.


Results
The government through the PSRU and the HRMO has developed civil service policies on recruitment, training and development, performance management, manpower planning and budgeting. The schemes of service have been reviewed for each Ministry to ensure functional and administrative efficiency. A policy document on composite Civil Service Law has been prepared. This was to ensure, among other things, that each ministry had adequately trained professional Human Resource Officers, Records Management Officers, and Information Communication and Technology Officers.

A Training Policy for the Civil Service has been developed. Plans for the resuscitation of the Civil Service Training College are underway. As an interim measure, the government has been engaging other tertiary institutions for the provision of training for civil servants. One of the main participating institutions is the Institute for Public Administration and Management (IPAM).

To clean up Personnel and Payroll Records, a verification exercise was undertaken, interviewing every Civil Servant nationwide using evidence-based methodology. Part of the objective of this exercise was to remove excess labor and ghost workers from the civil service. Each staff on the payroll now has the essential management information captured and verified to allow for effective management of pay, promotion and retirement.

In order to rightsize the civil service, the government has been putting in place modalities to reduce unskilled works and those at retirement (60 years and above)—the former constituted about 88% of the work force while the latter were estimated at more than 2,500 as at end 2009. The strategies undertaken by the government included the following:
 Identifying officers who have attained the statutory retirement age but are still within the service; weeding out ghost workers
 Identifying officers who are on unauthorised absence but still on the payroll; identifying staff working for other institutions and still collecting salaries
 Identifying possible duplications on the payroll and the pensioners list; identifying-sick and invalid officers
• Eliminate posts from the establishment that have been vacant for a considerable period of time; freezing recruitment in the lower cadres except for critical skills; retrenchment and early retirement schemes
• Recruitment of professional and technical staff


Ernest Surrur, Sierra Leone
Director General of the Human Resources Management Office