What will optimization of the Cabinet of Ministers lead to?

They are planning to cut officials again. Prime Minister Denis Shmigal made such an initiative on Monday, March 4. Moreover, changes are planned at different levels. What can this give in practice, what is the logic behind the consolidation of ministries and when can reform occur?

From idea to implementation – more than one step

“We are working to change the format of the government. In particular, reducing the number of ministries. We want to reduce the number of ministries by a third, reduce the number of civil servants,” said Denis Shmigal.

According to Apostrophe, we are talking rather about another consolidation of ministries. Just as this happened at the beginning of the tenure of President Vladimir Zelensky. Only some small ministries, which now are without full-fledged leaders, can be liquidated. And even then, the final decision has not been made yet.

Another part of the reform is the creation of the so-called “center of government.” This new structure should take over the entire economic part of the ministries' work.

“We looked at some ministries and central executive authorities (central executive bodies - “Apostrophe”), the service function exceeded more than 30%, which is more than the generally accepted practice in the countries of the European Union,” Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers Oleg Nemchinov recently noted in an interview with Interfax. Ukraine, - Therefore, if we have a normal digital element, we can take a lot of functionality from the same ministries to the government center. And there will be no need to have such a large maintenance apparatus.”

According to him, the government has been working for several years with the human resource management information system HRMIS (not to be confused with HIMARS), which deals with personnel and financial support for the civil service. But whether it is suitable for the “centre of government” is still unclear.

However, this certainly won’t happen quickly. According to our publication, now there is only a fairly crude idea, the concept will come later, and they plan to begin more specific consultations on the creation of the center only in the summer.

In addition, the political component in deciding the fate of individual ministries will be fundamental.

“I would say that the personnel restructuring will be associated with new personnel appointments. They say that a certain renewal of power will be done. Someone is tired, someone does not see the continuation of any strategy in their ministry, so the leadership team will be renewed. The question is which political groups will be involved, will they be political appointees or technocrats. Discussions continue,” Igor Popov, an expert at the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, tells Apostrophe.

What will it give

However, against the backdrop of the planned reforms, we should not forget that changes in the structure of the central executive authorities create delays in their work.

“This is about six months of discoordination, developing ways to list tasks, closing other organizational issues. We already went through this in 2019,” the head of a department in one of the ministries, which at one time was consolidated and then divided again, tells Apostrophe.

At the same time, she said, creating a Government Center makes sense.

“Then, conditionally, all the service personnel supporting current processes will be freed up. This is bad in the context of jobs, but for reducing the number of ministries and positions it is good. This is something we’ve been working toward for years, and now we’ve figured out how to implement it,” says the interlocutor.

“The idea of ​​a “Government Center” is quite old. That is, a common back office for several ministries, at least for those located on Grushevsky, geographically united, this will give a certain improvement,” agrees Igor Popov.

At the same time, difficulties are possible for those ministries that are located further from the government quarter - we are primarily talking about the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources. They simply make it inconvenient to constantly travel to the government quarter.

Who to fire

At the same time, experts emphasize that laying off those people who are actually involved in developing public policy must be done very carefully.

“Mechanical reduction is nothing. If this is about changing the quality of work of ministries, then so be it. So far we are talking about mechanical reduction. But I think that there should be some quality changes in the organization of the work of ministries,” Sergei Soroka, an expert on public administration reform, tells Apostrophe.

And one more important nuance - the state apparatus is constantly adding work through the integration of Ukraine into the European Union. Part of the work is in the Verkhovna Rada. It's basically about passing laws. But other directions are mostly taken by the Cabinet of Ministers.

“In reality, I don’t see any possibility of reducing the total number of employees in ministries. After all, the number of tasks is not decreasing,” says Viktor Timoshchuk, deputy chairman of the board at the Center for Political and Legal Reforms. “In connection with the full-scale war and the course towards the EU, the work is only increasing. Many. Someone must formulate all this policy and organize its implementation, and if they say that in order to win the war in this marathon with the enemy, we only need a powerful economy and logistics to provide the Armed Forces of Ukraine, then it is completely wrong to neglect the quality of management. And here the exclusive role of the ministries is.”

Viktor Tymoshchuk sees a solution in the transfer of an even larger part of administrative services to local authorities, along with reasonable digitalization.

“They (ministries - “Apostrophe”) must create the rules of the game in one area or another, organize and monitor the implementation of these rules. This is what in professional language is called policy formation,” adds Sergei Soroka.

Personnel without bonuses?

Departments can be consolidated or divided. But specific people must work there. In this case, the salary aspect is important. It is no secret that ordinary government employees have salaries significantly lower than market ones. In some places this was covered by unfilled vacancies - the funds allocated for them were redistributed to existing employees. And in this aspect, changes have already begun. On January 1, a new system of remuneration for civil servants began operating. Now 70% of the salary will be the official salary, and 30% will be the bonus.

So if unfilled vacancies are cut, there will be no bonuses. And here it is worth noting that by April 1, the government plans to reduce about 20 thousand vacant positions.

Perhaps someone is “covering up” salary issues with the help of corruption, but low salaries along with a heavy workload remain among the main reasons for dismissals. For example, recently the head of the Lviv Regional State Administration, Maxim Kozitsky, wrote that from January 1, the salaries of his subordinates should fall by 36-50%.

However, this still applies to specialists in leadership positions. At the same time, according to the Ministry of Finance, non-managerial employees benefited.

However, to summarize, reducing the number of officials and government offices can and does meet public needs. Moreover, many departments really need to be put in order. But at the same time, it is somehow necessary to maintain controllability of the state machine. And this will be the biggest challenge so far, experts say.