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Objectives

The third meeting of GfD Working Group 1 in Paris served two key objectives: The first day provided a forum for regional capacity building on Human Resources Planning and Management among policy makers from Arab countries and members of the OECD Public Employment and Management Working Party (PEMWP). The second day served to shape the Working Group’s work programme for 2007 and beyond and to assess future prospects, based on a review of its past activities.

Participants

The meeting was chaired by H.E. Mr. Monkid Mestassi, Secretary General, Ministry of Economic and General Affairs, Morocco and co-chaired by H.E. Mr. Fernando Ballestero, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Spain to the OECD, and H.E. Mr. Hüsnü Tekin, General Director of Personnel & Principles General Directorate, Prime Ministry, Turkey. Senior Officials and representatives from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, West Bank / Gaza, Syria and Tunisia attended the meeting. The capacity building seminar on Human Resources Planning and Management on 6 December particularly benefited from the broad participation of members of the OECD’s Public Employment and Management Working Party, including Belgium, France, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Outcomes

Arab delegates to GfD Working Group 1 on Civil Service and Integrity welcomed the regional capacity building seminar on Human Resources Planning and Management held on 6 December 2006. The seminar responded to the identification of overall workforce planning as a priority HR challenge and regional focus theme at the regional capacity-building seminar on pay strategies for better public sector performance held in Amman, Jordan on 20-21 September 2006. During the seminar, policy makers from Arab countries and members of the OECD Public Employment and Management Working Party engaged in an open and constructive exchange on policies and reform experiences in the following fields:

• traditional versus managerial establishment control systems
• the design and implementation of human resources planning systems
• different approaches towards workforce reduction

The discussions on the work programme for 2007 on the second day resulted in a strong agreement by Arab countries to further deepen and intensify the regional policy dialogue to support the implementation of their countries’ action plans in the field of civil service and integrity. They concluded with the identification of three key elements for deepening the regional policy dialogue in 2007:

1. Sharing good practices: focused peer-to-peer learning activities, regional capacity-building seminars, reports on good practices and country-specific peer-reviews will support the implementation of country action plans through detailed peer-advice, policy recommendations and insight into other countries’ reform experiences
2. Identifying common principles: common principles will provide policy makers with practical and reliable checklists for policy formulation and implementation, drawing on the experiences of other Arab and OECD countries
3. Developing a common language: A set of comparable data on government activities and institutional arrangements will provide the essential underpinning for evidence-based policy dialogue, for identifying good practices and common principles and will support countries in monitoring progress in implementing country action plans

Documentation

• Agenda
• Participants List

Session 1: Establishment Control

• Sweden: Agency governance in the Swedish state administration
  

Session 2: Human Resources Planning models

• Jordan: Initial design of a new HR planning model for Jordan
• France: How HR planning can overcome contemporary challenges to the public sector: experiences of introducing GPEEC in France
• Belgium: Competency-based HR planning: challenges after the Belgian Copernicus reform
  

Session 3: Reducing the size of the public sector

• Morocco: The Moroccan voluntary departure programme for civil servants
• Spain: Reducing public sector employment by limiting recruitment: the Spanish experience
• Slovenia: Reducing Public Sector Employment in Slovenia
  

Session 4: Review of recent HRM activities

• Report on the peer-to-peer visit of senior HR officials from Arab countries to Brussels, Belgium from 20 to 24 November 2006

Session 5: Work planning for 2007 and further prospects

• Morocco: The performance evaluation and promotion system in the Moroccan civil service
• OECD Secretariat: Better Measurement of Government: A common language for reviewing government activities