Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 4th, 2010

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to this 33rd hearing of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are studying the effectiveness and viability of public service partnerships between nations.

Firstly, it is our pleasure this afternoon to welcome, from the Canadian Bureau for International Education, Ms. Larissa Bezo, Director of the Ukraine Civil Service Human Resources Management Reform Project.

Also as an individual, we have Mrs. Kristina Wittfooth, vice-president from the Canadian Bureau for International Education.

We'll start with Madame Bezo, s'il vous plaît. Vous avez dix minutes.

[Larissa Bezo, Director, Ukraine Civil Service Human Resources Management Reform Project, Canadian Bureau for International Education]

Ms. Wittfooth and I shall actually jointly make a statement, if that would please the committee.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Madame Wittfooth will have the floor after, no problem.

[Kristina Wittfooth, Vice-President (Retired), Canadian Bureau for International Education, As an Individual]

I think seniority somehow plays in here.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

I don't see any seniority here.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Go ahead, Mrs. Wittfooth.

[Kristina Wittfooth]

Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair and honourable members, for providing us with the opportunity to contribute to your committee's deliberations on the viability and effectiveness of public service partnerships with other countries.

My name is Kristina Wittfooth, and I served 12 years as vice-president of international development programs with the Canadian Bureau for International Education. Prior to my work with CBIE, I spent some 40 years supporting international development efforts in a number of countries, including the former Soviet Union.

I am accompanied today by my colleague Larissa Bezo, who is presently serving as director of the Ukraine civil service human resources management reform project and who has been active in supporting public administration reform in Ukraine since the mid-1990s.

As it is always appropriate for governments to periodically assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the programs and services they deliver, we are pleased to be here today to share our experience.

The Canadian Bureau for International Education embraces that principle absolutely, and it is one that we actively promote in those countries with which we enter into partnerships. But at a time when budgets everywhere are tight—as much in the developed west as in most emerging economies—such assessments have a particular urgency. Indeed, against the backdrop of competing demands for resources, from other government programs as well as from within the overall foreign aid envelope itself, it is essential that the intrinsic and relative value of such partnerships also be considered in addition to their effectiveness and efficiency.

Accordingly, over the course of our presentation we will provide information to the committee's deliberations on two key questions. First, do public service partnerships between nations matter, and if so, why? Second, why are some partnerships more successful than others, and what are some of these lessons learned we can draw from our own CBIE’s experience supporting and facilitating public service partnerships globally?

In the interests of brevity and clarity, we will address these questions primarily through the lens of our experience through CBIE’s ongoing relationships in post-Soviet states, in particular Ukraine, where our relationship has endured uninterrupted since 1992 through 16 changes in government.

Before briefly summarizing for you the essential features of our current public service reform project in Ukraine, allow us to say a few words about the Canadian Bureau for International Education. CBIE’s core mandate is to promote international understanding and development through the free movement of people and active exchange of ideas, information, advice, educational and training programs, and technologies across national borders. CBIE has worked in partnership with governments, educational institutions, and organizations in over 40 countries across central and eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. Since 1966, CBIE has managed over $2 billion worth of capacity-building and education programs throughout the world.

[Larissa Bezo]

While the Canadian Bureau for International Education has been active in Ukraine since 1992, the focus of today's presentation is really on the Ukraine civil service human resources management reform project, as we feel that it's especially germane to the focus of the committee’s deliberations and the committee's work in the area of public service partnerships.

Our partner and the main beneficiary of this very unique four-year CIDA-funded project is the Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine. The overarching goal of this project is to support Ukraine’s efforts to modernize its public service in line with European public service norms—

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Ms. Bezo, could you speak a little more slowly please?

[Larissa Bezo]

—an essential precondition to eventual European Union membership. This is being achieved through targeted reforms designed to make the central government human resources management system more accountable and transparent and ultimately more effective.

Therefore, our project focuses on leadership development and training, human resources management governance, and infrastructure to support the professionalization of the Ukrainian public service. Our project office in Kyiv serves as a focal point for the development of public service partnerships between the Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine and Canadian public service institutions, such as the Public Service Commission of Canada and the Canada School of Public Service, to name but a few.

Now what we'd like to do is try to answer those questions Ms. Wittfooth put forward around public service partnerships and our perspectives. Do public service partnerships between nations matter, and if so, why? The short answer, of course, is yes, they do matter.

As your committee has already heard from other witnesses and as you will learn from your continued review of other jurisdictions' approaches, building public service capacity is crucial to a country's development and prosperity. Indeed, that is why in recent years we've witnessed a growing trend among multinational institutions to link loans to public service reform. In the case of many former east bloc countries, European Union membership has largely been contingent upon meeting European Union or Euro-Atlantic public service norms or baselines.

More to the point, public service partnerships have contributed enormously to the development of many emerging countries now being touted as success stories. Effective public service partnerships contribute to national self-sufficiency, not continued dependence.

Canada has a long tradition of supporting such activities and delivering results in a variety of countries, from the contribution of the RCMP to police training in Haiti, to Health Canada's contributions to better public health planning in Cambodia, to Finance Canada's contributions to modernizing the central banking system in China, to Elections Canada's support for electoral reform across the globe, to public service and public administration reform support in countries such as Ukraine and Georgia.

We would like to underscore that these projects typically provide opportunities for two-way learning, learning that benefits both the beneficiaries of the intended support and the Canadian partner.

[Kristina Wittfooth]

We now deal with the second question of why some public service partnerships are more successful than others and what we can learn from CBIE's experience with public service partnerships.

Based on our experience, let us briefly outline the four top factors that contribute to successful partnerships.

First is clarity of purpose and principles. The first success factor is to proceed with a partnership based on clarity of purpose and sound guiding principles. This requires the partners to work collaboratively to develop a project charter that gives expression to their overarching values that will guide the overall partnership. It includes setting clear project milestones and defining evaluation criteria upfront in the project design phase. Collaboration doesn't just happen; it requires planning if it is to work and be sustainable.

Indeed, we believe that part of our success in Ukraine is because we have not simply tried to superimpose our model of public administration on our partner. Rather, we have worked with them, first of all, to design an incremental series of projects tailored to local needs and capacities and focusing on knowledge and skills transfer to ensure long-term sustainability. Second, we have worked with them to identify and support reformers and change agents. And lastly, we have worked with them to strengthen their individual and institutional capacities.

The second key factor is the presence of concrete incentives for success. Having clear and tangible objectives in mind also matters. Public sector partnerships are likelier to be successful when progress in a certain area of public service activity, say for improving gender equality or better enforcing intellectual property laws, is a precondition for qualifying for a structural adjustment loan or membership in an international body like the European Union.

The third key factor is a long-term commitment by both parties. From our perspective, a clear and tangible expression of commitment by both parties to the project and its results is essential. For donors, this can take the form of a public endorsement by senior political and bureaucratic leaders, a financial or in-kind contribution, or even something as simple as citing the project in official planning documents or reports to multilateral agencies.

In the case of our Ukrainian civil service reform project, we have the benefit of all of these expressions of support, but it is a two-way street. We would not have achieved the same degree of success without our Ukrainian partners knowing that we were there for the long term; that project staff and access to experts would remain stable, so that relationships and friendships, once begun, could be properly consummated; and that the project wasn't developed on a whim or in response to a fad, but because of an enduring commitment to progress in a specific country and a specific sector.

In the past, some well-intended programming was supply-driven and not based on or well enough informed about the needs and priorities of the beneficiary countries.

Our experiences show that demand-driven, responsive undertakings are a better foundation for forging and facilitating durable public service partnerships. The process of transformation is not, by nature, a static one: partners must be willing to be continually engaged in the process.

Now to relate the operational factors....

[Larissa Bezo]

Finally, the fourth critical factor for success, from our experience, really relates to the operational factors with respect to actual implementation of the public service partnerships or initiatives.

There are numerous smaller considerations that reflect the experience and professionalism of the domestic partner organization or interlocutors, which play a significant role in determining whether a partnership will in fact be successful. We'll take this opportunity to list just a few of these key operational factors to give you a rough sense of why experience on the ground is very significant as it relates to the success of these types of initiatives.

In the first place, the quality and rigour of orientation provided to volunteers or visiting experts can make or break a project, in that the quality of their input very much depends on the scope, breadth, and depth of their understanding of that particular context where interventions are being provided.

Second is the recruitment and deployment of the right people at the right time, whether those people be retired volunteers, active civil servants, specialized paid consultants, academics, or even sitting or former parliamentarians.

Third is the average length of each mission or tour of duty, as we often like to call it, and the frequency of follow-through in terms of the provision of advisory support.

Fourth is the flexibility and willingness of the funder to allow a project to adapt to changing circumstances. As we noted earlier in our presentation, our particular civil service reform project is situated in a context where we're working with the 16th Ukrainian government since independence, since the early 1990s, so it's clearly a very flexible and unpredictable environment.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. We hope to have the opportunity to explore some of these themes further in the question and answer section.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Bernard Patry]

Thank you, Ms. Wittfooth and Ms. Bezo.

We will start questions with Mr. Pearson, for seven minutes.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much for coming in today.

I believe you said that this was a unique four-year project that's being done for the Ukraine, but you also said in the presentation that it's going to have to be long term when you get into these relationships. It seems to me it's very much like foreign aid or foreign development. You can get into partnerships and then politics change and then all of a sudden people pull out.

I presume when you're looking at something like the Ukraine you're looking at something longer than four years, correct? When you have CIDA funding for four years, which is great, and that is only right, I'm sure your view of what you're needing to do is longer than four years. Is that not true? How do you bridge that gap? Where do you go after the four years is up?

[Kristina Wittfooth]

Let me start, and my colleague will support me as needed.

When you go in, as we have stated, you go long term. And the partners as well, more and more—particularly in the economies that have now moved from the command economy into market economy—are more sophisticated in knowing about their needs and where they want to go. In the beginning it was very much more ad hoc and they were not quite sure how their societies and their systems and institutions would evolve, but nowadays they are very much more confirmed in their understanding of where they want to go and how they want to achieve that. Therefore, their expectation is also much more long term, so during the course of the collaboration you would mature together to an understanding where life is going to be beyond these four years or whatever the duration of the project is.

As we said, it is never static. It is an evolving situation where you have to be very open and very adaptable in the framework, of course, that the program is giving you, the mandate you have to respond to, how society and in this case, of course, the government is moving, and how its demands are coming forward. Some of them you are able to meet as predicted and as the project design had foreseen, but some of them are emerging when you work with them, and that then leads to either that you go back to the funder and discuss the possibility of an extension or a new project, or it can also lead the beneficiary to go to another funder. It can lead, in the Ukrainian case, to seeking funding from other sources.

[Larissa Bezo]

If I might just add, in the case of our particular civil service reform project, one of the unique aspects of how this project was in fact jointly designed, both by the Canadian partner and the beneficiary, is we actually worked together to develop a road map for reform of the human resources management system in the civil service. What was unique to this is we had a much broader perspective than simply the four years where CIDA had committed the funding.

So the road map in fact developed a baseline to assess where the Ukrainian civil service was vis-à-vis the European Union and the baselines it needed to meet for eventual membership, but the road map actually articulated a vision for reform for the next 10 to 15 years. But what was unique in this is then, once the road map was developed, we as a CIDA-funded project were able to articulate and say in this first four years we need to help you move forward and establish a foundation for reform, so that this in fact gives you a solid base upon which to move forward and to continue to implement the road map.

So in the four years of project implementation, that implementation aspect was in fact developed to give them a foundation that would allow them to continue in that process.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Just quickly then, if the four years is up, is built into that process the idea that the host country, the Ukraine, begins to take over that responsibility?

[Larissa Bezo]

Precisely.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

So hopefully it can.... In foreign aid that never works, right? It always is complicated. It's always changing on the ground. But what you're saying, then, is that you would come back to the donor to say here are some of the alterations, the challenges we face. Do I have that right?

[Larissa Bezo]

Correct. And because of the fact that the empowerment aspect was built into this, the expectation—and we are already seeing this on the ground—is that the beneficiary will take over and there's less and less need for advisory input.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

That's helpful. Thank you.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Welcome back. Good afternoon. Thank you for being here.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'll just start with one question of clarification, if you don't mind. CIDA funded the Canadian Bureau of International Education. The Canadian Bureau of International Education is an independent organization, an NGO? Is that how you—

[Larissa Bezo]

It's an NGO, yes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Okay, it's an NGO. And you were funded by CIDA for this first project? Are you funded for other countries always through CIDA?