Designing effective civil service reform lessons from past experience

Abstract

Civil service reform is one of the most intractable yet important challenges for governments and their supporters today. However, civil service reform thus far has largely failed. On the basis of a review of existing literature, this article presents principles for donors, governments and advocates to help them design more effective reform programmes. Although the current understanding of how best to promote civil service reform has advanced, it remains broadly incomplete because of a combination of the complexity of the subject, disagreement on the objectives, and a failure of practitioners to reflect on their experiences and then disseminate the results. Recommendations are presented separately for reform designers and reform funders. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.