Cave! The Head is on the Prowl!
From the desk of Michael Huntsman on Sat, 2008-01-05 10:24
President Sarkozy, whose romantic rather than political activities have lately been to the fore (he still has a keen eye for the ladies) has instituted a new form of terror: each cabinet and junior minister is to be issued with a report card detailing his or her achievement of key performance indicators – that’s targets to you and me.
The Telegraph brings us this piece of intelligence:
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has enrolled a private audit firm to help assess his ministers’ individual performance and to hand them out “end of term reports cards.
Under the scheme - unique in Europe - marks are to be issued by Prime Minister François Fillon over the coming weeks to each of the 15 ministers in the eight month-old government. Every term, cabinet ministers will receive grades based on 30 indicators specific to their portfolio, while junior ministers will be marked for their results in 15 areas.
This is, of course, the target culture driven to its minimalist extreme. It will not work, of course, as we have discovered in Britain with a Labour Government that lives (and will surely die) by its Five Year Plans and its targets for every facet of government delivery.
The cult of the target has swept British administration since New Labour came to power. The people for whom the targets have been set have largely discovered that they are a lot smarter than the dummies Blair and Brown have appointed as ministers and their civil servants and can find an infinite number of ways of fulfilling their quotas without actually doing a thing. The whole process is by turns subverted and turned into a meaningless farrago of statistics and lies.
So it will be with a string of hapless French ministers who will now find themselves being summoned to headmaster Sarkozy’s study with their report cards. Those who do not measure up can then be made to write 1000 lines: “I must not louse up le patron’s chances of re-election”.
@MARVIN BRENIK
Submitted by Norman Conquest 304 on Sat, 2008-01-05 20:11.
"It is the same as saying that the EU is ready and willing to audit itself".
NC304: Yes, that's the main difficuly.
"However, true democracy means true division of powers, with checks and balances among them, where accountability and transparency are ensured via independent controlling units".
NC304: Given the sometimes very complex issues at stake, the independent control units can only be external.
Professionals are needed.
"However, in a company where the CEO, CFO, CIO and the other units of decision making power are fraudulent, that leads to cases like the collapse of ENRON, and the consequent loss of pensions, loss of savings and mass suicide of investors".
NC304: You are absolutely right. If there had been an efficient evaluation/performance audit system in place at Enron, the scandal would have been avoided. At least, such a system would have made Enron's top directors' murky deals much more difficult.
I've greatly appreciated the quality of your insightful comment. Thank you. Moreover, it corroborates mine, at least under this posting. That's also why I would like to give a chance to Sarko's attempt to put in place an evaluation system at government/ministerial level. It's an audacious idea worth trying. Even if the final decision does not depend on me, I want to give it a chance.
Integrity and honesty is an absolute requirement in democracy
Submitted by Marvin Brenik on Mon, 2008-01-07 11:17.
Norman: I also thank you for your thoughts and your detailed reply.
There are more reasons why I should say that this leadership deserves no trust whatsoever. Some of them I have pointed out in my former post.
Here first I would like to refer to this line from the article:
"The whole process is by turns subverted and turned into a meaningless farrago of statistics and lies."
In terms of politics, what ministers might be audited or evaluated for as "performance" cannot be submitted on "reports cards" and it cannot be measured by statistical figures on an individual level, because the basis of measurement of political performance can be associated only with a certain policy of a certain group of ministers and the result is to be determined in a highly complex environment with many unmeasurable factors, with special regard to the social-moral consequences of these policies. Political performance can only be tested altogether, by the actual middle- and long term results to be observed in the affected countries, such as via the degree of freedom and democracy (determined not by the biased Freedom House but by an independent controlling unit) the actual satisfaction, welfare and agreement of the EU elite's boss, who is the people of Europe, for whom and by whom they are supposed to "perform" , and the actual, unaltered macroeconomic indicators of the affected countries.
What the ministers could and should be tested for on an individual level is honesty and integrity and, on the other side, the level of their corruption.
My other - main - point is this: the EU leaders' performance has been already tried, and they failed on both levels. As the long-term macroeconomic and social results of the EU countries show, the policy of the EU has miserably failed (or they indicate a purposeful destruction), and as the Lisbon process shows, these leaders also miserably failed individually, as far as integrity and ethics is concerned. Ethics, integrity and absolute honesty is an absolute demand in the politics of democracy, like in all imperfect and flexible systems, where the conflicts of interests cannot be absolutely eliminated by rules and the standards of independence cannot be implemented without gaps.
"A conflict of interest is a situation in which someone in a position of trust, such as a lawyer, insurance adjuster, a politician , executive or director of a corporation or a medical research scientist or physician, has competing professional or personal interests. Such competing interests can make it difficult to fulfill his or her duties impartially. A conflict of interest exists even if no unethical or improper act results from it. A conflict of interest can create an appearance of impropriety that can undermine confidence in the person, profession, or court system. A conflict can be mitigated by third party verification or third party evaluation noted below—but it still exists." (Wikipedia)
Where is the truly democratic division of powers?
Submitted by Marvin Brenik on Sat, 2008-01-05 18:29.
"President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has enrolled a private audit firm to help assess his ministers’ individual performance and to hand them out “end of term reports cards."
It is the same as saying that the EU is ready and willing to audit itself. However, true democracy means true division of powers, with checks and balances among them, where accountability and transparency are ensured via independent controlling units. For example, at the very minimum, any auditing unit should be entirely independent of anyone even close to the EU, let alone being appointed by Sarkozy. The biggest threat imposed by EU is that this division and checks and balances of powers has been eliminated in the recent concept of "democracy" because the current political leadership of the world are abusing the means of indirect (or representation-based) democracy. The current absolutised system of democracies could only be functional if the politicians' morality would display absolute integrity, however experience shows that the exact opposite is true in our days' politics: our politicians even try to make their blatant political lies legitimate. What this means: if absolute integrity and honesty of our politicians cannot be guaranteed, the entire "democratic" system should be revised and a new direct democracy-based system should be built instead. What this also means, because of the lost integrity, not even the very least chance or trust can be given to the current EU leadership.
Following the business case analogy: the requirement of checks and balances is also true for business entities, where the genuine interests of the investors would require an independent check of controls, even of the board of directors. However, in a company where the CEO, CFO, CIO and the other units of decision making power are fraudulent, that leads to cases like the collapse of ENRON, and the consequent loss of pensions, loss of savings and mass suicide of investors.
One of the many articles that may be cited in this regard:
Democracy: A Social Power Analysis:
from http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_democSocPwrAnal.html)
ACCOUNTABILITY OF POLITICIANS IN OFFICE
Submitted by Norman Conquest 304 on Sat, 2008-01-05 11:24.
This text offers an appalling caricature of what is called "evaluation" or "performance audit", which is one of the few reliable tools for assessing achievements against objectives in public governance in the case of the public sector, and sound management practices (I think it goes beyond "corporate governance") in the case of the private sector. This text is a caricature because evaluation processes are much more sophisticated than was suggested here.
To be reliable, the evaluators or auditors must have a resonable level of independence from the authority that has hired them. It is the first condition to some sort of first-rate objectivity.
The method is debatable of course. However, people often complain about the lack of accountability of politicians in office. Could this be one of the few objective pathways to tackle this problem?
Of course, any evaluation exercise can be undermined by political games, but not necessarily if the evaluators/auditors can keep their relative independence. For evaluation to be successful, unconditional political commitment is required. I know that you will call this wishful thinking. But don't you think that the political elites you are so keen to rightfully criticise should be monitored a bit closer and a bit better. Not just by docile MSM or pocket parliaments. Instead of seeing manipulative manoeuvres everywhere, just give it a chance!