• Commonwealth:
• Documents:
• Speeches:
• Miscellaneous:
• The CAPAM Regional Conference on Governance for the 21st Century: Joining up Accountability

The CAPAM Regional Conference on Governance for the 21st Century: Joining up Accountability

Date: 23 Apr 2001

Address by Winston Cox, Deputy Secretary General, University of Birmingham, UK, 23 April 2001

CHAIRPERSON

THE PRESIDENT OF CAPAM

DISTINGUISHED DELEGATES

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN


It is a pleasure and honour for me to address this distinguished gathering of the CAPAM fraternity.

Mr. Vice-Chancellor, may I through you, express on my own behalf and on behalf of CAPAM, our gratitude to the Head and the staff of the School of Public Policy for their co-operation in putting on this Conference. This co-operation goes beyond today's event and the School has become the home of the generic New Public Executive programme. Plans for the third such programme - Birmingham III as it is known affectionately in CAPAM speak - are well underway and I wish the organisers every success both for Birmingham III and for the rest of this Conference.

I will use this opportunity to reflect on the theme and issues you are dealing with at this Conference. These are matters of great personal interest to me and are also of primary concern to the Commonwealth Secretariat. The theme of this Conference is not entirely new; it builds upon longstanding and ongoing initiatives and activities designed to strengthen mechanisms for greater transparency and accountability of government in all Commonwealth countries. 

The Commonwealth's good governance agenda received its mandate a decade ago at the 1991 Harare Declaration by Commonwealth Heads of Government. That Declaration rightly identified the Commonwealth with the promotion of its fundamental values, including democracy; human rights and the rule of law; just, honest and accountable government; and sustainable socio-economic development. CAPAM, established in 1994, is central to the agenda of Commonwealth technical assistance since the Harare Declaration. 

Since 1994 the Commonwealth Secretariat has collaborated with CAPAM through conferences, seminars and publications, in developing an authoritative Commonwealth view of what constitutes just, honest and accountable government. We have also worked together in promoting the sharing of practical strategies for the management of integrated public service reform in order to promote good governance and efficiency and quality of public service delivery in Commonwealth countries, drawing on best Commonwealth practice.

Our relationship was given further impetus following the adoption of the Commonwealth Initiative for Public Service Reform: Toward the New Public Administration by Commonwealth Heads of Government at Millbrook, New Zealand. That Initiative builds on the Commonwealth's distinct competitive advantage in public management that derives from such essential shared characteristics as:

- a common language;
- shared values;
- broadly similar social and economic policies; and
- similarities in national institutional structures and systems e.g. parliaments, laws, public administration, and private and civil society institutions. 

And all of this is embraced in cultural, religious and ethnic diversity, itself a considerable source of strength. Many Commonwealth countries have been leaders in the reform of public sector management to meet modern conditions, and in so doing have provided benchmarks for the other members.

One of the central planks of the new public management paradigm is the integration of public service reform and provision of public services. This has placed the Commonwealth Secretariat and CAPAM at the vanguard of efforts to assist member governments develop the strategic initiatives that will improve the delivery of public goods. The need to improve delivery of public goods, which I may add is an essential element in poverty reduction, has resulted in the blurring of boundaries between the public and private sector. As a result we have witnessed the evolution of private sector financing of public infrastructure, delivery of public goods by private sector and non-governmental organisations, and national socio-economic strategies developed jointly by business, government, and trade unions. 

We have been working to assist partners in public administration break down the 'vertical silos' in public management, a malaise referred to as 'Departmentalitis'. We are doing this by promoting the concept of joined-up government' which has entailed managing the horizontal links and relationships between government agencies, private for profit enterprises, and non-governmental organisations to ensure an integrated system of public service provision. In this process, it has become obvious that 'joined up government' and integrated public service provision requires new institutional mechanisms for joining up accountability. I commend CAPAM and the School of Public Policy for their very timely initiative, as reflected in the theme of this Conference, to promote the quest for better ways of joining up accountability of public service providers. 

For our part at the Commonwealth Secretariat, we have also sought to foster a strategic focus toward joined up accountability as an important component of good governance. The thrust of the agenda we have pursued in collaboration with CAPAM includes, among other things, the accountability of the public service leadership and the good governance agenda. In its broader perspective, this programme has required us to also collaborate with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association with respect to the accountability of the political leadership and with the Commonwealth Association for Corporate Governance with respect to the social responsibility and accountability of corporate leaders. 

This has been our strategy to foster joined-up accountability across sectoral boundaries. We believe that a strategy of 'total systems accountability' to the nation must stem from a sense of interconnectedness, common cause and common purpose of the political, public service and corporate leadership as well as the leadership of civil society institutions.

One final word on the role of CAPAM. I wish to reiterate a call I made at our meeting in Cape Town last year. The Commonwealth Secretariat has encouraged CAPAM to diversify from being a learned society for senior civil servants to become additionally:

- a forum for public sector reform, with a recognised role as part of the Commonwealth structures in highlighting leading edge issues; and

- a consulting resource for supplying expertise for CFTC technical assistance programmes, and in this respect I note with pleasure that CAPAM is assuming an increasingly pivotal new role as a preferred contractor to the Secretariat's technical assistance programmes in the areas of public service reform and leadership development and in the replication of Commonwealth innovations. 

It remains for me now to challenge CAPAM through this Conference and in other ongoing programmes to formulate practical strategies and action programmes that will facilitate the establishment of viable and enduring institutional mechanisms to foster joined up accountability and the tri-lateral governance mechanisms that will focus particularly on, and empower the poorest segments of our societies.

My best wishes to you for a successful conference and I leave you with the assurance that your deliberations will receive the highest consideration and support from Commonwealth Governments and from the Commonwealth Secretariat.