Good governance requires good public service, senior UN official says

In a world where internal and external pressures are forcing governments to redefine the role of the State, they are also grappling with ways to create a public service that provides responsive governance, greater openness and new partnerships with civil society, a new United Nations report says.

Good governance needs, above all, a good public sector, José Antonio Ocampo, the Under-Secretary-General who heads the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said at a news conference in New York as he introduced "The World Public Sector Report 2005: Unlocking the Human Potential for Public Sector Performance."

Summing up the main message of the report, he said: "There is no shortcut to building a quality civil service."

Appointment by merit was the single most important factor in determining the quality, prestige and integrity of a public service, followed by an effective performance management system to develop staff, the quality of the country's public and political leadership and the professionalism and strategic planning of its human resource management, Mr. Ocampo said.

The challenges to maintaining a high-quality civil service included sustaining the pension system, especially in countries where the benefits have been generous, offering adequate pay to balance monetary and non-monetary benefits and coping with the "brain drain" as highly skilled personnel migrate, the report says.

As the proportion of people over 50 in the global population increases to 30 per cent by 2050 and fertility rates decline, rich countries are trying to solve their personnel problems by outsourcing, or shifting some of their activities to countries where comparable labour is available at a lower price, according to the report. This intensifies the existing pressures on the civil service in developing countries to attract well educated, skilled recruits.