EC: Report on Public Administration Reform in Morocco

This Report by Pierre Hennebert (EuropeAid Unit E4) presents the main lessons learnt during an EU, WB, ADB and Government of Morocco programme of public sector reform to improve efficiency.  Eight years into the programme, experience shows that such reform is time consuming and requires cross-ministerial support and robust regulation to be successful.

The main lessons from the Moroccan experience are that a comprehensive reform needs to be embedded in all ministries to have an impact, that design of new laws, regulations and guidelines takes time and that reform should be accompanied by a robust monitoring system to make sure that it stays on track.

This wide-ranging reform has taken a long time to implement, from the initial White Paper in 2000 to full implementation of many parts of the programme in 2008. This timescale is similar to that required in other countries that adopted a similar scale of reform in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Australia and the United Kingdom. Many of the reforms have required new legislation and the drafting of new regulations, all of which have to go through the legislative process, which is necessarily time-consuming.

Implementation of the decentralisation programme was particularly slow, as it required new ways of working in all ministries, as do the budget and HR reforms. In conclusion, real reform has to be implemented through the public service, not just in the central, sponsoring ministries and effective reforms take a long time.