The Government, with the assistance from the international community, is implementing a broad public administration reform as part of the state building process in order to lay the basic for a modern civil service in Afghanistan. Norway, having “good governance” as one of the prioritised pillars, is increasing its efforts to contribute to these activities.
The public administration context in Afghanistan is characterized by a low but growing human resource capacity, lack of coordination between decision making government agencies, a disconnect between the centre and sub-national level, a continuing high degree of informality across the civil service, pay scales that are inadequate to attract qualified staff and overlapping functions across government ministries. Also the newly elected bodies struggle to find their roles in the statebuilding process. Parallel to this the traditional governance structure (shuras, jirgas, maliks, mullahs and other traditional leaders) is an important factor. In a fragile state context the challenge is to integrate and strengthening the different governance bodies both at central and local level.
Governance is a key factor in making in improving the security situation and reducing poverty. In order to do so the Government institutions need to be strengthen. The public administrative reform needs to be seen in a long term. The challenges ahead is to create a more comprehensive reform involving all ministries and other governmental institutions, implement the pay&grading reform and sequentially moving the reforms from the centre to provinces and districts. The Afghan Civil Service Commission (established in 2002) is the responsible unit for the public administrative reform and is cooperating closely with the international donor community. Several projects are ongoing within the framework of public administrative reform and others are planned.
Norwegian support:
Norway, as a donor for ARTF, provides financial support to the public sector of Afghanistan by funding the Governments core budget. In addition the Norwegian Government supports several programmes within the Public Administrative Reform (PAR) framework.
Support to the Civil Service Leadership Program (CSLD) which is a three year program (2004-2007) aimed at training 550 leaders of different levels within Ministries and selected central and provincial governmental institutions.
Support to the operation of the Civil Service Institute (CSI) in Kabul, which is a two year core-funding program (2007-2008) aimed at building up the human capacity, leadership, curriculum for training seminars, training materials and library of the institute.
Support to the Afghanistan Sub National Governance Project (ASGP) aiming at moving the Public Administrative Reform process out to the sub-national level. This is a five year program, initially piloting five provinces and gradually expanding. In addition efforts will be made in strengthening the central level authorities with responsibilities towards provincial Governor Offices, Provincial Council and Municipality Administration. Norway supports the starting of the project (2007) including a special pilot project in the Faryab province. The intention is to renew our obligation with a long term contract from 2008.
Support to the Population and Housing Census (APHC) which is a three year program (2006-2008) aiming at collecting and analyse population and housing data across the country, to better equip policy makers in improving the delivery of government services. The pilot Census will be August 2007 and the full Census August 2008.
Other relevante documents:
Norwegian Embassy