Broken record

Just because it ain’t broke, doesn’t mean that you can’t tweak it. For those who have not been following the institutional reforms being rolled out by the Department of Budget and Management, the recently averted impasse with the Supreme Court must have appeared as “political suicide.” Policy junkies, however, are keenly aware that these moves are simply part and parcel of a comprehensive package of reforms to clean up the bureaucracy. As to be expected, the unorthodox position may have come as a shock to many, but that is only because it has largely been divested of its policy context.

By tradition and as a matter of course, “savings” from “unfilled positions” are realigned and adjusted to augment salaries and allowances. In some ways, this is justified and justifiable, the fact being that our public servants are paid a pittance considering the assumption of risk (physical, legal, financial or otherwise), and relative to the scope of their responsibility (as benchmarked to their counterparts in the private sector).

For this column, let us focus on the aspect of the “scope of responsibility” as a relevant consideration in fixing a bureaucrat’s salary.

In the private sector, an employee’s pay bears a significant relation to his or her contribution to the organization’s overall revenue. It is also related to the person’s scope of work, duties, and responsibilities. Ideally, the more productive an employee is, the more financially rewarded should he or she be. In the private sector, productivity can be measured by clearly defined outputs, in terms of either goods and/or services.

In the public sector, however, the standards of success are not as simple or tangible. At its very core, the aim is to create “public value.” However, as scholars in this field generally agree on  this is an arduous task because, quite simply, it is difficult to define what is “public value” (and corollarily, what the public values).

And here lies part of the problem of our current paradigm. When we think, for example, of “justice,” we do not think of it as a public good that (1) we can demand and that (2) our institutions can supply. As such, our cynical misgivings of the public sector aside, we balk at the thought of rewarding the proper and efficient functioning of our institutions. Simply put, our quest for a meritocratic system of rewards and incentives for those who would dare venture into the public sector eludes us because the thought of “getting what we deserve” (and the consequent price that entails) escapes us. Simpler yet, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

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Another aspect of the problem is the information asymmetry and the concomitant intellectual apathy that dumbs down the discourse. Sadly, public sector reforms are “unsexy” topics. The significant shift to the zero-based budgeting system will not  as it, in fact, did not  hog the headlines or the news. Never mind that its introduction brings with it additional controls in our budget system. Similarly, the efforts to complete a comprehensive manpower database has hardly been picked up in mainstream media. Never mind that this will help bring about greater transparency and accountability in the functioning of our bureaucracy. Finally, the impending move towards the electronic procurement of supplies, through prepaid cards, has not registered a blip on the news radar. Never mind that it would facilitate the provision and acquisition of supplies, and minimize (if not, completely do away) with the contrived and rigged biddings.  

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There, of course, remains the issue of the “unfilled” positions which, to my mind, is not diametrically opposed to the budget reforms. Instead of being calculating about the savings that can be gained from “unfilled” positions, perhaps, a real effort can be made to recruit competent and honest people to fill those positions  efforts that should complement a critical assessment of the real and realistic staffing needs of the agency. With new blood, bringing in fresh perspectives, manning the reins of government, one could hope that these agencies would perform better. And, as in the private sector, perhaps, better performance could justify a higher pay.

That this is but one possible course of action can easily be conceded. What should not be disputed is what underpins these discussions about these reforms: that they should be directed at the institutions. In principle, it appears that there is nothing particularly offensive about these “savings” being used to augment the meager pay that has been set for the bureaucracy. In which case, perhaps, we can do better by simply institutionalizing these “rewards” by incorporating and reflecting them in more competitive salaries. Maybe then, we would feel a little better about demanding to get what we pay for, without fear of being just considered overly demanding.

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Freedom from Forgiveness: I attended the screening of Roland Joffé’s latest work, There Be Dragons, a film inspired by actual events from the life of Saint Josemaría Escrivá. On one level, the movie is the story of a Spanish journalist whose research on the life of the Saint leads him to discover and examine his own relationship with his estranged father. On another, it is about Josemaría’s “lost” childhood friend, Manolo. Still, on another (and perhaps, the most satisfying) level, it is about Josemaría’s own struggles to remain authentic and spiritually disposed  “everyone and everything for God’s glory”  amidst the turbulence of the Spanish Civil War. As depicted in the movie, Josemaría was every bit a human being who had his own fair share of trials and tribulations, and bouts with doubt.

Without meaning to give away the film’s denouement, the disparate storylines cohere around the theme of forgiveness  and how withholding it from anyone is what holds us back from true freedom and liberation.

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Greetings: Happy birth anniversary to loyal blue eagle Ramon D. De Castro. (Note that I used “anniversary” instead of “day.” Technically, the latter only happens once in a lifetime  on the day a person is born.)

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“Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.” - Oscar Wilde

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