Administrative Reform as an entrance to Economic Reforms

By Mr. Abdul Salam Dabbas

Management development is a key access into the total Development (social, economic, educational and cultural). The general concept of management is how to employ the available human, natural, material financial, scientific and technological resources to guarantee an optimal realization of the planned goals.

In the management field, development is a better term than reform. Management development is based on three paralleled core axis: strengthening the principal management pillars (human beings, organizational framework and regulations), improving the management functions (planning, organization, incentives, training and following-up) and ameliorating the traditional tasks of management (research and studies, legal issues, archive, communications etc.

The management development should be comprehensive, based on deep conviction, the team responsibility and local specificity (an Arabic management theory). It should also be integrated, sustainable and innovative.

The political will is already existent in Syria to go ahead with administrative reforms (the inaugural speech of president. Bashar Al-Assad is an obvious example).

Since the management is a decisive factor in economic reform aimed at improving living standards, the lecture criticize the “management by objectives” saying that it is confined to a part of the public sector ignoring its complexities and not offering enough facilities to companies applying it.

Administrative reform is a precondition for dealing with many economic issues (investment, job creation, financial and taxation systems, globalization challenges etc)

As for negative aspects of the current situation in the Syrian administrative system, the lecture lists the following: the salary gap between the public sector and other sectors, lack of training, bureaucracy, incoherency of planning centers, absence of coordination among various government bodies with dominant centralism as well as spontaneity, shallow plans with no real economic and social results.

The lecture divides the necessary procedures to carry out administrative reforms into two types:

Urgent steps such like establishing a general organization for administrative development; organizing the employees’ register as a preliminary step towards applying the principle of equal chances, arranging training courses for people holding key positions especially in the information technology field, eliminating all kinds of ceiling in salaries and bonuses, generalizing the facilitating advantages provided by the “management by objectives system” to all public sector companies, and stopping all councils and ministerial committees of temporary nature in favour of permanent ones.

Radical steps which must be integrated and interrelated with the urgent ones such like: eliminating the salaries ceiling together with reconsidering the tax-exempt percentage, finalizing and perfectioning the basic Law of Employees, reforming the structure of key establishments and providing them with competent staff, amending and reforming the regulations concerning authorities allocation and supervision.

The lecture comes to an end by reasserting the necessity of building a rational administration, in theory as well as in implementation, an administration based on the available capabilities and fulfilling our own specificity and national interests benefiting at the same time from the experiences of other without imitation.

Finally the lecture calls for a well-prepared seminar with the participation of all concerned parties to deal with problems facing the administration in a team mentality.