Download The Challenge for Public Sector Governance Bodies

The Skills to Govern: The
Challenge for Public Sector
Governance Bodies
Paper prepared for the XVI
Andrew Graham
International Research Society for
School of Police Studies
Public Management Conference
Queens University
Rome, University of Tor Vergata
Canada
11/04/2012 - 13/04/2012
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My Purpose
• Outline my own research into public sector
oversight
• Focus on police oversight
• Focus on the skills needed to be effective in
public sector oversight
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General Proposition
• Oversight bodies in the public sector demand a
set of unique skills if the the oversight is to be
anything other than window dressing
• Such skills, as in the case of private sector
governance, are not necessarily inherent in the
individuals appointed to oversight boards
• Governments need to focus on getting the right
skill set even when they face issues of
representivity and political considerations
• Boards and the organizations they oversee need
to focus on continual skill development
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Why specialized oversight?
• An agency of government is created to operate in
a near commercial but with residual public policy
goals. The agency is not fully privatized, but
rather operates mostly in the private sector but
with public interests or ownership.
• An agency of government, while still within the
ambit of political direction, operates a highly
specialized service that requires expert
governance. Many publicly owned financing
entities would fit into this category.
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Why specialized oversight?
Many reasons
• A public entity is created by law, but operates
with full independence. An example here would
be a public hospital, university or educational
authority.
• A public agency is responsible for a service or
function that is highly specialized but has to
operate with considerable independence from
daily political direction while still requiring
oversight in the broader public interest. Police
and security agencies come readily to mind.
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The public policy roles
played will vary
•
Often specialized oversight bodies are created to
strengthen public interest oversight.
• Often they are created to create a buffer between
direct political interference and the agency that
must maintain some independence in both
practice and form.
• Often such oversight is designed to strengthen
either transparency or representivity
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Where this positions
the overseers
In all cases, those who serve on such boards
are at a nexus between a meta-principal – the
government – and the agent. They are in
essence titular principals acting for a metaprincipal or owner but with the goals of the
agency in mind and often in trust as well.
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“The board of directors plays a central part in
governance. Its general role is to cultivate the
organization’s short and long-term success consistent
with the organization’s mandate and objectives, and to
do so in an accountable manner. When discharging its
responsibilities, the board oversees the affairs of the
organization, supervises management through the
chief executive officer (CEO), and sets standards for
organizational conduct.”
Best Practice Guidelines, Government of British Columbia,
Canada, 2005
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Weak Governance has
Inherent Risks
Increased risk of capture by the agency’s
management (cheer leading),
Weaker capacity to implement policies in a
coherent manner,
Cronyism and sometimes corruption,
Weakened efficiency and effectiveness of
public sector,
Diminished rather than enhanced transparency
and accountability,
Misuse of public funding,
Undermined citizens’ trust.
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Challenges in Canadian
Police Oversight
• Multi-jurisdictional nature of policing
• Long history of civilian oversight of police
especially at local level
• Mixed systems of appointment
• Often more representational basis that skills
basis
• Mixed loyalties
• Short terms of office
• Major challenge of poorly prepared civilians
taking on the oversight of policing
• Chief/ Board conflicts – residual power capacity
of the Chief
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Core legislated roles
of police boards
• Appointment of the Chief,
• Setting of strategic direction and policy for the
service, and
• Determination of the budget for the service.
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Efforts to build governance
capacity in police oversight
• Challenges:
– Mixed allegiances
– Disincentives to act collectively
– Poor focus on skill sets
– Optional nature of training and development.
• Experience varies across the country, often
based on the size of the board
• In general, board members are left on their own to
address their own skill deficiencies
• Major exceptions exist with attendant positive
results
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Building an understanding
of the skills needed to govern
• Governance skills for the public sector are an
amalgam of private sector governance with a
public policy overlay
• Governance skills are different from management
skills
• Within the police oversight community, a growing
awareness that basic skills are needed and that
some need to be developed
• This is not about orientation and briefing on
appointment. This is ongoing.
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Skills needed to be effective
– Political acumen or sensitivity.
– Understanding the broader public good(s)
being served through the governance role.
– Listening to and interpret the community being
served.
– Understanding of the authorizing environment,.
– Independence, especially for those board
members who are appointed on a
representational basis.
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Skills needed to be effective
– Holding management to account.
– Understanding the information needed and
what to do with it to monitor overall
performance
– Risk identification and management: risks to
the agency as well as risks within the agency
– Articulating policy in a way that the broader
community being served can understand it and
management can operationalize it in pragmatic,
budgetary and legal terms.
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Skills needed to be effective
– Understanding and applying boardroom ethics
including honesty, readiness to work with
others and a focus on collective decisionmaking.
– Conducting and participating of meetings,
board dynamics, and standards of behaviour.
– Demonstrating an understanding of the
distinction between governing and managing.
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Skills needed to be effective
– Understanding the broader community that the
boards operate in and avoiding being a special
interest advocate.
– Assimilating and using large amounts of
information.
– Working within the rules of governance and
engagement.
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What has to happen?
• Skill development is not a free good.
Governments need to invest. Some good
examples.
• Development of basic resource materials – the
Government of Western Australia example
• Governance capacity and effectiveness of
oversight bodies needs to be part of a
government’s audit universe
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What has to happen?
• Boards need to spend time on their governance
performance without dwelling on its excessively.
• Annual assessments at the group and individual
level are key.
• The role of the Chair become crucial in both
monitoring performance and finding resources.
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What has to happen?
• Common tools for good governance from the
private sector need to be adopted:
– Annual Board and Chair assessments,
– Development of a board competency matrix, as
has already been done in some police boards and
commissions in Canada,
– Develop a board specific risk profile that focuses
on capacity,
– Require individual Board members to articulate an
annual learning plan.
• Ensure members receive governance training
from centres of excellence in this area.
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Concluding messages
• One cannot assume that upon appointment to a
government oversight board the member will
bring all of the attendant skills to the task.
• The representative nature of some board
members may inhibit their need to join into the
collective process of governance of the agency.
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Concluding messages
• This is a dangerous form of isolation and one
that, certainly within the police governance world,
renders the board considerably less useful than it
ought to be.
• A focus on skills informs the need for a collective
level of ability and focus on the melding of talent
rather than the continuous jostling of interests.
• That is the heart of good corporate and public
sector governance.
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Andrew Graham
School of Policy Studies
Queen’s University
[email protected]
http://post.queensu.ca/~grahama
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