Ad hoc decisions don’t make it in an increasingly complex world
What is worse? Turning government planning and implementation over to consultants who drop in for a few weeks at a time, putting it in the hands of people without the tools or inclination to do it, or engaging competent locally based people to provide advice and then ignoring it? This crystallizes the development-planning situation facing the Marshall Islands for nearly the past 20 years.
Since the mid-1990s — a period that roughly tracks the membership of the Marshall Islands in the Asian Development Bank — the Marshall Islands has increasingly relied on outside consultants to do core planning work for the government. Is it a coincidence that this period has coincided with a glaring lack of performance in government, which shows in many areas, including slow progress on meeting Millennium Development Goals?
In the 1980s and into the early 1990s, by contrast, the Marshall Islands hired skilled planners, not only in its national planning office, but within individual ministries. Times have changed dramatically since Dr. H.M. Gunasekera produced the first two five-year development plans for the Marshall Islands beginning in the mid-1980s. While Dr. Gunasekera was from Sri Lanka, he lived permanently in Majuro for many years and was embedded in the government structure as the chief planner. The five-year plans his office produced were a product of daily consultation with and involvement by the government apparatus, and reflected the situation on the ground.
The contrast with the 1990s and 2000s is dramatic. In today’s world, consultants drop in for a couple of weeks at a time, generate reports, get paid and little gets done as a result of their strategic planning. One example is the Ministry of Education — an entity with the most personnel with graduate degrees — that in the mid-2000s hired three outside experts to produce its five-year strategic plan. They did. But did anyone read the detailed, matrix-oriented document? In light of poor public school performance in the late 2000s, it is evident the plan had little impact on the school system. This year, the government has hired a U.S.-based consultant to help produce a government-wide strategic plan. In early October, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat announced the availability of a consultancy to help the Marshall Islands improve management and delivery of foreign aid and to produce a ‘development cooperation policy and implementation plan.’ Will these consultants competently deliver the required reports? No doubt. Will anything much result? If the past is a guide, there is little doubt about the answer: no.
This is not an issue unique to the Marshall Islands. The lack of planning capacity in government and the heavy reliance on consultants to produce core government documents and plans is also prevalent in the Federated States of Micronesia and other islands in the region.
In the mid-2000s, the Marshall Islands government created two commissions to review government spending and the tax regime. These two groups included significant local participation. The Comprehensive Adjustment Program issued a report in 2009 that listed numerous opportunities for the government to reduce spending and the size of its workforce in a systematic way that would contribute to the sustainability of government operations. Virtually nothing was implemented from these recommendations. Meanwhile, a tax reform plan was proposed around the same time and is moving forward with substantial Australian aid, in large part because it fits free-trade plans for the region with its substitution of a value added tax in place of import duties. Perhaps the message here is simple: a) governments won’t cut spending or address sustainability unless crises force their hand and b) if you can get donor funding, you can get traction on a plan — at least while donor interest lasts.
But the larger point is that old style, ad hoc decision-making based on little more than how leaders feel about situations — or which ‘fire’ is burning brightest — is a continuing obstacle to good governance based on planning, research and effective locally-based involvement and implementation. Then, too, many government officials in the U.S.-affiliated Pacific see performance reports and planning documents as a grant game — a requirement to be met as quickly as possible and, once submitted, filed in cabinet.
In 2005, the first-ever performance audit conducted in the Marshalls, with funding from ADB, was a review of public education. It was an unusual effort by a consultant working with a locally-based counterpart. Under the title, ‘Increasing ownership and effective demand for improved education,’ the study broke new ground by identifying in detail the many foundational impediments to improving public education in the country. Since public schools have been a black hole eating resources but generating little in academic output for 30 years, it was refreshing to see a report that offered a roadmap of areas in need of action. Despite the quality of this report, however, it followed the path of virtually every other consultant’s report: it was of little interest to either the Marshall Islands Ministry of Education or the U.S. Interior Department, which funds most of the ministry’s budget, and now sits as a historical document — the first performance audit conducted in the Marshall Islands — on the ADB website.
Part of the issue is insistence on hiring Marshall Islanders for key positions even if no one is trained or qualified for a particular position in government. It’s understandable in the post-colonial period in the region, but doesn’t lead to improved governance. No doubt, a list could be produced in every island of positions that would benefit from appointment of qualified outsiders — the smaller the island, the longer the list. In the Marshalls, these include the Attorney General and Majuro Hospital management. In most small islands, there are skill gaps: people have never been trained in certain areas (hospital management) or island culture undermines the ability of a local person to implement the duties of a post (Attorney General) that requires frequent use of the word ‘no.’
The notable education problems in the Marshall Islands coupled with visa-free status that allow people to live, study and work in the United States, have produced an extremely high dropout rate from college. There are not enough Marshall Islanders trained to fill all the urgently needed skilled positions.
It’s pretty clear that the Marshall Islands and other island governments that rely heavily on consultants need to rethink this strategy, begin hiring fulltime skilled people into key planning and oversight posts in government, and focus on getting islanders trained for these essential posts. This is essential if we want strategic planning that matches conditions on the ground and has local ownership for action that translates into results.
