The sound and fury of budget speech politics is perhaps best captured by reggae icon Bob Marley’s lyric, “Who the cap fits, let them wear it,” but we will not go into that here.

Key issues include taxation (Who bears the burden?); the financing of the National Housing Trust (more anon); and the emotional issue of the return of Cuban doctors along with what “principled realism” actually means (nevertheless thoughtfully captured in the section of the prime minister’s speech entitled ‘Jamaica’s place in the changing world order’). However, the most noteworthy section of the speech by Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness is that he has effectively announced a potential new era for Jamaica in both government and governance.

His budget speech represented the clearest call for a new way of doing government business that we have heard in recent memory. Of course, public sector reform has been a core government agenda item ever since Edward Seaga, former prime minister of Jamaica, was in power in the 1980s. Although he combined the role of prime minister and finance minister along with the legendary work ethic of his contemporary, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Seaga only seemed to have limited success beyond tax reform and privatisation despite his unusual concentration of power and will.

This is, however, true of every Government of the past five decades. Even the very powerful Dr Carlton Davis, a legendary figure in the public sector, aided by such outstanding public servants as Michael Prescod, and despite working with myriad overseas consultants in the late 1990s and 2000s, did not seem to make much of a dent. It is certainly worth asking them why.

Former Prime Minister Bruce Golding made a very clear and extremely cogent articulation of the problem in a late 2009 speech as Jamaica hurtled towards default despite his promising National Planning Summit initiative of late 2008. The late Don Wehby led the fiscal, debt, and tax reform segment of that initiative, which effectively ended with Wehby’s departure back to the private sector in July 2009 when attention shifted to the twin debt and crime crises of the time. Those interested in learning more on this period can review the online Inter-American Development Bank paper ‘Mapping of Public-Private Dialogue in Jamaica — Issue and Options for Jamaica’, dated November 2009.

Of course, other countries, both emerging and developed, have launched similar reform programmes with similar difficulties. The fundamental trade-off we need to avoid, however, is between speed and transparency: the idea that the more red tape is cut, the higher the perceived risk of corruption. For example, in a Caribbean Development Bank study of Jamaica’s unsolicited bids modality of public procurement it was noted that even the UK had decided to ban it, citing the difficulty of monitoring the opportunities for graft that it creates.

I would argue this difficulty is not insurmountable and single sourcing can work (Operation Warp Speed in the US during COVID-19 comes to mind) but reflects a design problem, which we will cover in more detail in future articles.

One option, directly relevant to the post-Hurricane Melissa National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA) legislation just tabled by the prime minister last week, is best articulated by economist Gerard Johnson, who has global experience in this area: “For high priority initiatives, we may want to consider another path, put in place many years ago, but sparingly utilised. The Jamaican Parliament has approved international agreements that permit the Government to contract UN entities, like UNOPS (United Nations Office for Project Services), to design projects, manage the funding, conduct procurement, sign supplier contracts, supervise implementation, provide financial oversight, measure impact, and produce reports. The important feature is that this would not be like World Bank safeguards that are placed on top of our own archaic procedures. Instead, it replaces our procedures. The implication is that it is possible to have professional managers implement high-priority projects more quickly, and to do so without sacrificing transparency. This would not replace the long overdue public sector reform, but it could be a useful modality to speed up special initiatives on which other vital projects will build.”

The key point is that this must not replace the long-overdue public sector reform. A transformative approach to the public sector must instead be rooted in a “results-based” management philosophy. This approach moves beyond traditional bureaucratic processes to prioritise tangible outcomes that directly improve the lives of citizens.

Aligning public sector goals with the national ASPIRE Jamaica framework — specifically focusing on the reform of bureaucracy to enhance the ease, speed, and cost of doing business (with new Minister Audrey Marks designated as one of the key drivers) — necessitates a shift in which every ministry and agency is held accountable for delivering high-quality, efficient services that support economic growth as the primary engine of the economy. In future articles we plan to look at the African nation of Rwanda, which has shown a remarkable emphasis on accountability, akin to that of Singapore.

​Central to this transformation must be the aggressive leveraging of innovation and the provision of robust support for civil servants. In addition, in modernising administrative systems, the Jamaican Government must embed the integration of technology to drive cross-agency efficiency. One of the best examples of using digitalisation to achieve dramatic public sector reform comes from Estonia — a small former communist European country still besieged by remarkably determined and sophisticated cyberattacks from its bigger neighbour that nevertheless has managed to become an almost fully digital society with, importantly, its citizens still owning their own data.

However, technology alone is insufficient as it must be coupled with human capital development. Importantly, providing public workers with the tools, fair compensation, and professional training will be needed to show that the civil service is valued as a prestigious and vital partner in nation-building. The State must foster a culture of excellence in which innovation is not just encouraged but is a standard operating procedure for every public official.

​However, without fundamental mindset change that transcends the public sector to reach the entire population — a new social contract in which citizens recognise their role in the formal economy and value public institutions, buying into the national mission of productivity and prosperity — all this will be just nice-sounding words. Selah!

Keith Collister