Abstract
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The paper discusses the development of Romanian Public Administration following the abolition of the Communist regime with the focus on Performance Management and Skill Retention. The challenge for the Romanian administrative system lies in the inertia caused by the previous regime and global influences emanating from entering the European Union in 2007. The paper presents proposed research which aims to provide a positive approach by emphasising the challenges and value-adding actions that will lead to the improvement of Public sector quality in Romania. This paper will also show that the recent international economic crisis has provided an opportunity for confronting the classical perception towards skills within the Public sector and the actual standards that should be obtained so as to ensure continuous improvement of professional talent within the administrative apparatus.
Public sector management is increasingly seen as more than just modernising state institutions, it is also about fostering dynamic partnerships with civil society and the private sector in order to improve the quality of service delivery, enhance social responsibilities and ensure the broad participation of citizens in decision-making. This calls for increased attention to the issue of decentralised government as a means to support poverty alleviation goals and conflict prevention policies. These trends put increased emphasis on the performance of the civil service and on the need for an effective and efficient public management that is transparent and accountable.
In the light of the recent financial crisis, not only in the private sector, which classically is more exposed to adversities, the public sector has had to consider structural changes. Osborne’s approach (2002) to defining Global influences on public administration can be summarised with the following statement: Globalization has the tendency to promote elites. In a shrinking state, professionalization of the public services becomes compulsory. Under these circumstances the fostering of talent and talented professionals becomes a neccessity, not a whim.
Although Romania is not explicitly tackling performance and performance management issues, it has taken a number of measures. These include the unified pay scheme for the public sector, which the Government has put into law, as well as the principle of contributions as the mainstay of the pension draft law. In addition, the streamlining of state agencies and authorities whose activity can be covered by existing ministries are also preconditions for a harmonization of competitiveness criteria in both the public and private sectors, as well as incentives to professionalization.
To provide maximum opportunities for career development of public servants, as well as organisational improvement, the Romanian Public sector has to address the following questions:
- How can we induce performance filters to retain talents?
- What skills do we need for the future?
- How can recruitment and training procedures be improved to ensure a quality boost within public organisations?
- What can the Public sector offer to professionals under conditions of economic crisis?
- What kind of professionals do we need within our Public sector?
- How can we use the Crisis to downsize redundant jobs within the public sector?
The findings of the research, which come as an answer to the above stated questions are based on the Researcher’s personal observation (as a public servant in the Romanian public administration system) and primary data analysis (national strategies, statistics and legal provision analysis).
This is a crucial time to prevent professionals from leaving their countries, or if they leave, to guarantee that they return with relevant and useful knowledge for their homeland.
In times of crisis the system needs to show resilience, competitiveness, adaptability and creativity :
- resilience – in terms of a well tailored system, with the best professionals from a given critical mass
- competitiveness – the system needs to retain the best people and absorb existing professionals, no matter where their basic employment is within the public sector
- adaptability – the natural state of things is Change, no matter what the circumstances, but especially given the global context;
- creativity – even if public administration appears to be a barren, restricted environment, it doesn’t mean it cannot adapt best practice from the Private sector in terms of externalizing workforce recruitment and talent cropping.
This research is innovative because it attempts to capture the advantages of a Global crisis in a well defined environment. The term “skills” comprises more notions than just professionalism and specialization, there is scope for a positive interpretation to mitigate against the effects of global economic crisis.
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