Opinion | Ministers must be in charge of their ministry again

The most striking example of a failing government is the Benefits Affair. The political responsibility lay and lies with the ministers and state secretaries. We do not detract from that. The complaint of Eric Wiebes (VVD), looking back on his period as State Secretary of Finance, that he could not discover what he could have done to prevent this, reveals that the person responsible had no control over the implementation. Then something is fundamentally wrong. Election programs will call for government quality improvement, but if the new cabinet wants to achieve this, an analysis is first required of what went wrong and how quality should be improved.

Since the 1990s, three developments have led to politicians losing control over implementation. Politicians were responsible for those developments and politicians must now take responsibility for improvement.

Technocratisch

These are developments that have led to a one-sided technocratic civil service with too little attention to the social consequences of policy and implementation. But also too little attention for the citizens and for the duty to govern in accordance with the standards of a democratic constitutional state.

This concerns in particular the establishment in the 1990s (at the request of the House of Representatives) of the General Administrative Service (ABD), which introduced a rotation system for the top civil servants and senior civil servants. In addition, there was a remote performance from the minister. This was partly achieved by establishing independent administrative bodies and agencies. Finally, there was more emphasis on efficiency and (process) management.

The purpose of the rotation of the top officials was that the civil service should pay more attention to coherence in government policy: departmental compartmentalization had to be countered. The rapid rotation introduced by the ABD led to top civil servants who were always attached to a ministry for a short period of time.

Overestimation of management must end

Distance between the responsible minister and the implementation creates tension with the responsibility that the minister continues to bear towards the parliament, but which he or she has not been able to take due to the distance created. The concept of ‘independent administrative body’ is certainly not compatible with responsibility by anyone other than this independent body.

Yet the minister remains responsible. This is the cause of Wiebes’ sigh, who could not discover what he could have done to prevent unprecedented injustice.

Distance between policy and implementation also fails to recognize that legislation, regulations and implementation must be coordinated to prevent impracticality and undesirable side effects.

The emphasis on efficiency and management replaces the focus on legality and balance, with an eye for society and citizens. Budgetary discipline and responsibility to the taxpayer require careful and efficient use of available resources. This requires careful management and effective deployment of people and resources. Management qualities at the top of the civil service are indispensable, but excess is at the expense of the quality and, in the worst case, the legality of government action.

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The consequence of these developments was that the civil servant who had been tried and tested in one ministry for a long time no longer existed. Ministers therefore lost a valuable advisor. A manager was appointed at the top of the administrative staff who had to lead the organization efficiently. Professional competence in the policy area in which the ministry operates – education, public health, legal protection or water management – ​​was no longer considered important to the top officials. By the time they have become familiar with the policy area, they have to leave.

This has created a new type of top civil servant: a manager with no affinity with the finer points of the area in which the ministry operates. This has been recognized before. The famous political analyst Tom-Jan Meeus wrote in NRC Handelsblad (29/10/2015): “Top civil servants developed into administrative managers at a distance from politicians. Untouchable in one’s own space. Moderately interested in substantive communication with the House.”

Principles

For many years, Minister of State Herman Tjeenk Willink has been advocating for governance that serves the principles of the democratic constitutional state. To achieve that goal, we believe that the structure of the civil service must be restored. Professional expertise and policy affinity at the top must again become primary selection criteria. The executive services must be brought under the effective control of the departmental top, with the ministers actually responsible for implementation above them.

If this does not happen, executive government services will continue to derail dramatically. Not because of incompetence or own shortcomings, but because the right track must be determined by the policy and the implementation must be linked to it and not at a distance from it. The reverse also applies: good policy can only be formed if one is familiar with how it should be implemented. Policy and implementation must be coordinated.

In order to restore professional competence at the top levels of the ministry, we recommend reducing the frequency of rotation. It would also be good to create a stronger bond between the top official with the ministry instead of with the ABD. More attention is also needed for the social and political environment. There must be more contact between policy and implementation, and a minister must be in touch with the implementation for which he or she is responsible. The policy top of a ministry must be able to adjust implementation, partly to prevent derailment. This means that the overestimation of management will come to an end. Management qualities should remain a tool and not a decisive factor.

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