REBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ - JUNE 2013 BY LARRY COOLEY & RICHARD HUNTINGTON
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REBUILDING GOVERNMENT
IN POST-INVASION IRAQ
JUNE 2013
BY LARRY COOLEY & RICHARD HUNTINGTON
1
2 REBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ
Pictured above: Iraqi man at a training
Larry Cooley is the founder and President of MSI.
Richard Huntington is a senior staff member at MSI and served as the resident Chief of Party for the
Tatweer and Tarabot projects.
MSI is an 800-person international development firm founded in 1981 and headquartered in Washington, DC,
specializing in providing specialized in short- and long-term technical assistance. Since 2008, MSI has been a part of
Coffey International Limited.
A decade following invasion, Iraqis still live with high
unemployment, unclean water, too little electricity, and far too
much violence. But in the aftermath of a widely criticized
occupation, an untold success story is the way public
administration has been rebuilt and reformed.
R
ECENT STUDIES and portfolio reviews of the World Bank’s public administration reform
programs report disappointing results. These findings are stimulating new thinking on what to
expect from such interventions, and in what time frame. Legitimate questions have been raised
about what the donor community and participating countries might do differently to enhance progress,
avoid the current constraints, and better recognize the face of success when it appears.
This article explores these issues in relation to one prominent and seemingly counterintuitive case
study: a pair of “successful” U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) public administration
capacity development projects in post-invasion Iraq. These projects, which began in 2006 and were
implemented by Management Systems International (MSI), are known in Arabic as Tatweer, meaning
“development” (June 2006 through June 2011), and Tarabot, meaning “linkages” (the follow-on, July 2011
to July 2015). The first of these projects focused on training, systems modernization, and civil service
reform. The second continued these emphases and added specific attention to administrative
decentralization and national policy management.
Based on the results of these projects, the article concludes that noteworthy accomplishments were
possible even in an unsettled political and security setting. The article goes on to argue that in post-
conflict environments, contrary to the conventional wisdom, making early investments in national-level
public administration and reform should be a high priority.
IRAQ’S PROUD TRADITION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
CONFRONTS A POSTWAR CRISIS
It is important to understand Iraq’s situation regarding public administration. Iraq, following its creation
in the wake of the First World War, maintained a remarkably stable colonial and post-colonial presence.
Its administration was built on the established legal structures of the Ottoman Empire, to which the
British added practical administrative systems, especially in energy, roads, water, agriculture, health care,
and education. Many of the ministries with which the Tatweer and Tarabot projects have worked take
great pride in this history.2 REBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ
“Iraqi people were at the top,” explained Mohammed Marzouk Abdallah, a Tatweer senior education
adviser. “During the 1960s and ’70s, the literacy rate in Iraq was among the highest in the Arab world."
What happened to Iraq’s public administration was a cataclysmic perfect storm of managerial disaster.
Specifically, in addition to the oft-cited litany of “ravaged by war, invasion, sanctions, and despotic
mismanagement,” Iraq’s civil service suffered a series of personnel shifts as first, many of the most
accomplished officials were driven into exile by the Iran–Iraq War and Saddam Hussein’s regime;
second, many of the remaining competent managers were removed by the de-Baathification actions that
followed the U.S.–led coalition invasion of 2003; and third, many new and inexperienced employees
arrived on the scene following the establishment of the first elected government in 2005, with the
ministry portfolios handed out to different factions each facing expectations of patronage from its
supporters. As USAID/Iraq was designing the Tatweer project in 2006, ministers pleaded for staff
training, as so many of their people at every level were inexperienced.
“The first thing they said was, ‘Train us—train lots of us," recalled a senior MSI staff member.
“They set a target to train 58,000 ministry officials. That was 10 percent of the professional staff in
the 10 ministries where we were working.”
“By the time USAID came in,” added Dathar al-Kasab, director of the Iraqi government’s Midland
Refineries, “we were in great need to look at different ways of training, different subjects, different
philosophies, different technologies. And that’s what we got.”
Obviously the ministries still had rules, procedures, and systems in place, but few of the current staff
knew them or had experience using them effectively.
Additionally, each ministry had a strong loyalty to its own political faction. Iraq’s ministries were more a
collection of quasi-independent fiefdoms than the implementing arms of a “unity” government.
One other element that severely undermined the government’s ability in the important area of capital
budget execution was the virtual moratorium on government investment projects during the
international embargo following Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent 1991 Gulf War.
During the 1980s, even while fighting an extended war with neighbor Iran, the Iraqi government’s annual
capital investment budget had been between $8 billion and $21 billion per year. These amounts
plummeted in 1990 by 95 percent, and stayed flat until fitfully recovering following 2003 (see Figure 1).
For 14 years, ministries had virtually no funds for public projects—none at all. Even in the better years
at either end of the embargo period, annual budgets underwent radical adjustments up and down, largely
in relation to petroleum prices.REBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ 3
Figure 1. Iraq Public Investment Expenditures for Years 1978–2010 ($ billion)
Source: Central Bank of Iraq4 REBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ
By 2006, despite a legacy of a skilled public bureaucracy, most of what had once been known—and many
of the systems that had once been established—were now forgotten, and needed to be relearned and
reestablished quickly. At the same time, during the years of isolation, Iraq had missed the information
revolution, with all its implications for modern management.
“We were cut off completely,” Dathar al-Kasab emphasized. “We were in a tunnel—a dark tunnel—and
we were doing it by ourselves.”
REWRITING THE RULEBOOK ON PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
REFORM
The World Bank’s review of its public administration reform portfolio reports that these projects tend
to be overdesigned, overambitious, and undertailored to the capacity and political economy of the subject
countries at early stages in their development or recovery, especially for fragile and institutionally weak
environments. Additionally, the time frames of the lending and consulting support are reported to be
inappropriately short for a problem that by definition requires longer gestation.1
The result is often a heavy-handed approach that stymies local ownership and organic change.
The Iraq Tatweer project was fortunate in that the postwar circumstances forced it into an
uncharacteristically cautious stance that made an “overdesigned” project impossible. At a time when it
was personally dangerous for many Iraqi officials and civil servants to be seen working with Americans,
the senior advisers of the Tatweer project (all Arabic speakers) needed to interact with their
counterparts in an extremely low-key manner, paying vigilant attention to the political environment, the
current felt needs, and the fears of their counterparts.
Short funding time frames put a leash on promising high-level outcomes that were clearly unrealistic for
short-term metrics. However, the project did set ambitious lower-level and nonthreatening training
output targets that helped make it quickly acceptable as relevant to the felt needs of frail government
ministries. The Tatweer project, by necessity, promised less than would most such projects, and
gradually delivered more—not only more than promised, but often more than its designers had
expected.
While conducting this training, the Tatweer project, through its utilization of more than 60 Arabic-
speaking senior advisers working simultaneously in the many institutions that formed the web of
relations influencing reforms, developed a breadth and depth of trusted networks to help read the
changing tea leaves.
“It’s been said that if you want a man to walk with you, or to accompany you, you first have to walk
over to where he is,” explained a senior MSI staff member. “In a sense, we did that when we came
here. We wanted the Iraqi government officials to accompany us into the 21st century. In a
1
Gary J. Reid. 2009. “Why Do Bank-Supported Civil Service Reform Efforts Have Such a Poor Track Record?”
World Bank.REBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ 5 way, we first walked where they were, joined together, gained everybody’s confidence—mutually, because we learned a lot on both sides—and then walked together.” “Knowing the culture helped us build the relationships,” added Nael Shabaro, who directed Tatweer’s initiatives in institutional development and administrative decentralization. Despite all the Iraqi uncertainties of the post-conflict, first elected government, and continuing insecurity (bombings, kidnappings, shootings, assassinations), the Tatweer project clung to the strategic core of its mandate. Tatweer officials concentrated on fundamental administrative capacity building in the face of pressures to address pressing sectoral and technical needs, and in developing the capacities for planning, policy development, and budgeting (see Figure 2) rather than pushing for specific policies, plans, or budget commitments. Given the unpredictable contingencies of public administration reform programs, especially in unstable environments, the tactical dimension moves front and center as opportunities suddenly arise or vanish. Only after five years was the Tarabot project finally invited to link general administrative improvements “down” to specific sectoral deliverables and “up” to broad policy changes. And the project agreed to move in these directions only because it sensed that the timing was finally right for success. In the five years prior to the wide-ranging opportunities presented by the Government of Iraq to Tarabot, the Tatweer project faced many tough tactical decisions. Four of the most important Tatweer legacies—the National Development Plan 2010–14, the new civil service legislation, the establishment of policy centers in the executive offices, and an expanded commitment to the energy sector—were opportunities seized, rather than originally planned targets. Opportunities that were tactically dropped or downgraded included support for the national training center, extensive cooperation with universities, and support for many major IT systems investments. Programs were dropped for a variety of reasons, including being too ambitious for the institution at that moment, lack of ministerial commitment, and competing pressures from other agencies or projects in that lane of activity. These tactical decisions required a strong, close-to-the-action sense of the evolving possibilities. USAID was in the fortunate position to be able to add and redirect resources to support Tatweer opportunities that arose, as well as to redirect resources away from Tatweer programs and institutions where traction was slipping. This combination of a stable, broad strategy with the flexibility to respond to unforeseen developments was critical to supporting the national players’ quest for legitimacy. If they were to own the process, this ownership had to be supported on their timetable. TATWEER’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS The Tatweer project was largely designed in early 2006 by USAID in Baghdad, with considerable input from the Ministry of Planning. It was designed as a capacity development project. Tatweer concentrated on three broad areas of capacity development: delivering training, strengthening training departments and centers, and introducing and modernizing key administrative systems.
6 REBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ
Over time and with the deepening of trust, it gradually became more of a public administration reform
project, as trained people and improving operational systems carried with them the logical requirements
for larger changes.
Figure 2. Core Areas of Tatweer Engagement
TRAINING
Demand for training continued to grow as Iraqi leaders became more confident regarding Tatweer’s
intentions and the quality of its offerings. In the end, more than 5,400 courses were delivered to more
than 106,000 participants. These courses covered an array of core public administration functions,
including human resources management, budgeting, procurement, IT management, leadership,
communication, decision-making, strategic planning, and project management. As time went on, Tatweer
added a large number of more specialized and advanced courses, as the needs were clarified.
One hundred twenty Iraqis were also selected as Tatweer Scholars from 23 ministries and 15 provinces
and sent abroad to complete masters’ degrees in Public Administration and Public Policy in Egypt,
Lebanon, and Jordan.
"We have suffered from being isolated from the other world,” said May Talib Hassan, a graduate of
Tatweer’s international scholarship program. “So having this study outside of the country is, in itself, a
very good move.”
“The intent here,” offered Dr. Joseph Ghougassian, who directed Tatweer’s Policy component and its
support for the executive offices in the Iraqi government, “is for them to transfer the best practices and
international standards, the concept, abilities, and the models that they have studied in public
administration into their own ministry.” In an effort to deepen their impact and contribution, in June ofREBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ 7 2013 Tatweer Scholars organized and launched the Iraqi Association of Public Policy and Administration (IAPPA) whose mission spans policy capacity building, reseach and advocacy. From the beginning, a strong effort was made to institutionalize training within the Iraqi ministries and to move all costs associated with the training onto the regular budget. This effort included developing the ministries’ capacities for training delivery by training trainers, providing tailored curricula, equipping ministry training centers, and introducing training management systems. Trainers. Through a training-of-trainers approach Tatweer prepared more than a thousand civil servants as trainers. By the second year of the project, these trainers were delivering 90 percent of all the core courses. In cooperation with the National Center for Consultancy and Management Development, the project developed and certified a cadre of 70 master trainers from all participating ministries and agencies to lead and support these programs. “What was supposed to happen through the training-of-trainers course is exactly what happened,” reported one Education Ministry official. “I got the information and skills that enabled me to deliver the material to the employees at my ministry.” This dissemination also included a geographic dimension. Higher Education Deputy Minister Dr. Ammar Aziz put it this way: “We plan to spread these trainings beyond Baghdad to universities in Iraq’s North, Center, and South— encouraging and supporting the proliferation of Tatweer’s training materials.” Training Materials. The Tatweer project developed training materials for all courses, had them reviewed and certified by the National Academy for Public Administration in the United States, translated them into Arabic, and turned the training manuals over to all participating ministries and agencies for their continued use. Training Delivery Capacity. The project assisted the Ministry of Planning in establishing two new regional training centers to expand the government’s training outreach outside of Baghdad. And the project has worked with the leading line ministries to build their internal capacity to fully manage all elements of ongoing training programs, including curriculum development, training logistics, training evaluation, and annual training plans. Training Budget. From the outset, Tatweer emphasized moving the recurring costs of training onto the regular budgets of Government agencies. Given the length of budget cycles, the time needed for ministries to see the value of the training, and the predisposition of government officials to see training as a donor-provided service, this transition took time. But by the end of Tatweer, the recurring costs of training had been successfully absorbed by the Government of Iraq. SYSTEMS MODERNIZATION Tatweer addressed many systematic improvements both through the training itself and as a result of investments in IT improvements, business process analyses, technical assistance, and mentoring activities.
8 REBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ
Standard Operating Procedures. In all areas of activity, Tatweer worked to have any change,
improvements, or new systems documented by standard operating procedures (SOPs), developed in a
participatory approach and officially approved by the appropriate ministry officer, usually the director
general. Tatweer catalogued more than 700 of these improved SOPs, including the introduction of job
description systems in human resources departments, SOPs on communication between ministry
headquarters and their provincial offices, SOPs for procurement actions (in line with World Bank
models), and SOPs for the investigation and reporting by ministries’ inspectors general. Many of the
SOPs that began as pilots in one directorate or ministry were subsequently copied and “scaled up.”
Automation. Many processes, simple and complex, were automated, put on line, and in other ways
rationalized and modernized. The following is a partial list of examples:
The Ministry of Agriculture now has an inventory management system for all of its assets and a
GIS system for tracking national animal resources.
The Ministry of Oil now has an automated supply chain management system in wide use among
the state-owned oil companies.
The Ministry of Health introduced a pilot GIS dimension for its case management covering
several hospitals and clinics in underserved marshland areas.
The Ministry of Migration & Displacement now has a Web-based system for tracking and
updating its records on the frequently shifting populations of internally displaced families.
The Central Statistics Organization has an Oracle-based system for managing the data from its
recent census of public employees so, for the first time, the government can report accurately
how many employees are on the public payroll, who they are, where they are, and so on.
The largest Tatweer effort in automation is its work on the Social Safety Net, which automates
the national system for managing the records and payments to beneficiaries at 21 payment
centers around the country. This is Iraq’s first fully automated national public service system.
The Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works has trained project engineers in almost every
province to use the project management software Primavera and Microsoft Project as the
official platforms for end-to-end management of all construction projects.
Planning. The Ministry of Planning began to reestablish a national capital investment planning process.
Many observers rejected these initial Ministry of Planning moves as a step back to the days of centralized
planning during Saddam’s rule. Tatweer, however, helped the ministry to transform the initiative over
the next two years, step by step, from a top–down investment planning activity into a broader national
development planning process, involving wide and transparent participation from ministries and
provinces, as well as major stakeholders among the donor community. In addition to modeling more a
system of participatory planning, the resulting National Development Plan 2010–14 (the NDP) alsoREBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ 9 provided a high-level umbrella for all of Tatweer’s downstream work to improve the various ministries’ capacities to execute their budgets. The NDP, approved by the Council of Ministers in April 2010, outlined a plan for development investments of $100 billion of Iraqi government funds and an additional $86 billion of private sector and donor investments, over five years. This moved the investment portion of the total budget close to 30 percent, meeting the conditions of the new International Monetary Fund standby agreements. Monitoring. The Ministry of Planning, with the joint assistance of the United Nations Development Program and Tatweer, developed the Iraq Development Management System (IDMS) to track all public, private, and donor-funded projects within the targets established by the monitoring program for the NDP. A monitoring module within the IDMS uses the Millennium Development Goals as its framework and has approved a detailed set of outcome- and output-level indicators and targets. The NDP also called for a midterm review of the plan’s progress. Based on the government’s midterm review of the National Development Plan 2010–14, they decided to supplant it with a new NDP 2013–17. Tarabot provided the assistance to develop the new NDP, which calls for investment of $357 billion between 2013 and 2017. The new plan incorporates more mature participatory planning mechanisms and more transparent discussion of policy options in addition to more robust statistical formulas for forecasting revenues and other economic factors. With Iraqi oil production increasing, government oil revenues are now conservatively estimated to be several times those expected just two years earlier. The new NDP tackles the challenge of effectively utilizing these enormous resources to the benefit of the people. The new NDP was approved by Iraq’s Council of Ministers in May 2013. The third pillar of Tatweer—complementing the training and systems pillars—was civil service reform. An expanded discussion of that pillar is provided later in this article. DEEPENING THE REFORM PROCESS While many themes from Tatweer continued into the subsequent Tarabot project (2011–14), the U.S. government’s assistance to Iraq under the Tarabot project also expands from building capacity in specific institutions to leveraging the connections (Tarabot = “linkages”) among closely related ministries, national policy bodies, and implementing agencies, as well as between levels of government, between the center and the provinces, and between the public and private sectors. Another important new Tarabot initiative is the “regulatory guillotine” that works at the executive levels of the Iraqi government and Parliament to systematically review Iraq’s voluminous regulations related to business incorporation and operation and to rapidly remove the large number that are no longer legal, that are no longer relevant to the new government structure and policies, and, most important, that impede private sector development. Until recently in Iraq, there were 25,000 business regulations on the books, many of them harmful to business startups; and registering a company took 14 separate procedures. Reforms concentrate on eliminating ineffective, outdated, and business-inhibiting regulations in core economic areas and on removing opportunities for corruption.
10 REBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ
Another major new initiative under Tarabot is a series of one-stop shops for the provision of
government services. “It’s the worst kind of bureaucracy,” lamented a beleaguered Ahmed Haj
Ali, an internally displaced person, at a returnees’ service center in Baghdad in January 2012. “A
committee sent me to a committee, who sent me here. I have queued since dawn, the gate
opened at 8, and they closed the window at 9:30. I started this process six months ago. A one-
stop shop service would answer all our prayers.”
In April 2013, the Iraqi government and USAID–Tarabot announced plans to create 11 pilot
One-Stop Shop centers at five ministries’ sites across Iraq. The new centers are to provide
efficient, linear services that allow citizens to begin and finish their business in the same trip
with minimal hassle and redundancy.
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM
The civil service reform activities of Tatweer/Tarabot serve as a case study in the types of opportunistic
decisions that can lead to successes beyond what could have been projected at the outset of the
project. The following pages summarize those decisions and the thinking that informed them.
When the Tatweer project was initiated, little was realistically expected to materialize in the area of civil
service reform. Because of the issue of ghost workers (names that merely appear on a payroll, so
someone can pocket these non-workers’ wages), the fragile nature of the governing coalition, and the
inability of Parliament (the Council of Representatives) to enact any major legislation, civil service
overhaul seemed too challenging.
As the political and security situation improved in 2008, Tatweer began quietly working with the Prime
Minister’s Advisory Commission on the drafting of a new civil service commission law. The commission
law appeared to be the most promising point of entry, because of its history and place in the new Iraqi
Constitution. Iraq had had a functioning Civil Service Commission until it was abolished by Saddam in
1979, when many of its functions were given to the Ministry of Finance. Politically, reestablishing the
commission could be seen as restoring a legitimate Iraqi institution, rather than shaking up the system
with new laws and reforms.
It was rightly predicted that this “restoration” bill would quickly pass Parliament while many high-profile
reforms pushed by donors stalled. With the election approaching, the government went public, stressing
its commitment to civil service reform as part of its battle against corruption. Prime Minister al-Maliki
himself publicly led the way, and at one point the opposition party attacked him for not doing enough.
Tatweer adviser Touhami Rhaiem, a Tunisian Canadian lawyer with experience and professional contacts
in Iraq, worked with the Prime Minister’s Advisory Commission to devise a mechanism for developing
and passing this law. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appointed a committee of four trusted officials of
deputy minister level from key stakeholder institutions—the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of
Planning, the Shura Judicial Council, and the Prime Minister’s Office—and added to this committee the
Tatweer adviser as a fifth voting member. Because of the sensitivity of the issue, the committee was not
publicized. Progress reports went to the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Commission and toREBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ 11 the Prime Minister. The committee’s internal rules required that all members approve of each part of the text as it was completed. As the committee progressed with the draft of the civil service commission law, it included items that went well beyond what was required merely to set up the commission. The draft included articles committing Iraq to modern civil service principles, including stressing merit as the basis of hiring and promotion, and stated the principles of gender equality and the irrelevance of religious or party affiliation in personnel decisions. During this process, USAID arranged for the committee to visit Egypt and Jordan, accompanied by Tatweer personnel, to review those countries’ civil service laws and institutions, and to meet with their Civil Service Commission members. USAID/Iraq rarely supported study tours, but made an exception in this case. The committee members had been selected because of their affiliations and general reputations, but they were not well informed on the civil service issues, and learning firsthand from their Arab colleagues was more acceptable than receiving information from donor-financed advisers. The timing of these visits was also important, as by then they had been wrestling with the issues for several months, recognized problem areas, and were open to solutions. With an eye on the need for parliamentary approval of the law, the committee cautiously dealt with the politically sensitive issue of decentralization by incorporating into the law the flexibility needed to align with the decentralization of the civil service in whatever direction that might develop. The principle it enshrined was that there would be a single overall civil service law, but there could be multiple civil services. This would facilitate the anticipated movement of personnel between the federal rolls and provincial rolls. Anticipating parliamentary passage of the commission law in 2009, the Prime Minister transitioned the committee to become the High Committee for Civil Service Reform under the Council of Ministers Secretariat and tasked it with developing and vetting a full civil service law. The committee completed a draft civil service law, sent it to the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers, circulated it widely for review by all ministries, provinces, and other stakeholders, and, with Tatweer’s help, organized a highly publicized conference on civil service reform attended by several hundred participants during which the draft law was thoroughly vetted. The election of March 2010 was followed by eight months of painful and unsettling negotiations to form a new coalition government. This effectively put on hold any formal action on the civil service law. Finally, three years after the formation of the new government, the Civil Service Commission was formally established and again turned its attention to the law. Given the delays in establishment of the commission and moving forward on the new civil service law, USAID, Tatweer and the government decided to move forward implementing the modernization of the Human Resources (HR) management structures in the ministries and provinces, which could be started by a Prime Ministerial decree. The Council of Ministers established the special Higher Committee for Civil Service and HR Reform, once again appointing the Tatweer adviser as a member. Through a series of working conferences with the HR–related directors general of all ministries, an Executive Order from
12 REBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ
the Council of Ministers, and corresponding Ministerial Orders from all the ministers and provinces, all
government agencies established new HR divisions that linked training, personnel management, and
manpower planning functions all under a single division. In some ministries this required simply a name
change; in most it necessitated creating new functions and shifting of previously “autonomous” functions
into a single structure. The committee then selected eight ministries and three governors’ offices as
pilots and began delivering technical assistance to them on operationalizing the new arrangements.
These ministries agreed to serve as mentors to assist the other ministries.
Much of the donor-driven public administration reform work adopts the “rational” approach aimed at
introducing international best practices. This approach assumes that, despite some natural resistance,
the efficacy of the best practices will produce evidence of improved performance, and will pick up
support and acceptance. But to the extent that government officials are motivated, especially in fragile
or new governments, by a need to strengthen their own legitimacy, there is a need to decouple their
public statements of support for the reforms (which provides one source of legitimacy) and the
continuation of older practices that provide many real and very practical instances of legitimacy. This
lack of legitimacy for the reforms is directly related to the failure to facilitate true ownership among a
broad spectrum of the national participants in the program. From this perspective, it is clear that every
Tatweer/Tarabot success depended in part on how it improved the legitimacy, or the appearance of
legitimacy, of the minister, the deputy minister, the director general, or department head—not to
mention the Prime Minister, deputy prime ministers, and vice presidents, who partnered with
Tatweer/Tarabot to move specific activities forward.
As there was much resistance to foreign—especially American—reforms, ministries relied heavily on
international standards and on what other ministries were introducing as a guide for their own actions.
The Iraqi government, like most, is replete with social, family, and friendship networks that constantly
exchange information. Many times a ministry would agree to move forward on some Tatweer-inspired
program because the director general in Ministry X had heard from his cousin in Ministry Y that one or
another activity was producing tangible and visible results. The projects also helped to expand the
normative influence of professional societies of engineers, project managers, accountants, auditors, and
inspectors. This included such activities as helping to establish a chapter of the Project Management
Institute and a community-of-practice website. During the last two years of the project, publicity played
a big part as many conferences and workshops were widely televised and covered in Iraqi print media.
This further legitimized the project and the processes it championed, and led to increased demand for
participation in the project and burnishing of the Tatweer/Tarabot brand.
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REFORM IN POST-CONFLICT
TRANSITIONS
The literature on post-conflict assistance stresses many elements to help settle the situation. Of course,
improving security is critical. Having schools return to their normal functioning has a wide impact. Job
provision is a pressing need. Reestablishing (or newly establishing) basic services—including health,
access to water, and electricity—is also of great early importance. But rarely does national level public
administration reform enjoy high priority in the eyes of those shaping the contours of post-conflictREBUILDING GOVERNMENT IN POST-INVASION IRAQ 13 assistance programs. The prevailing general view is that this is a luxury that can wait, or that the government in power is unreliable. Projects such as Tatweer and Tarabot—stressing basic administrative capacity development and gradually moving toward “reform”—can help to introduce a measure of neutrality in the donor posture and can help to restore governmental legitimacy in a still contentious and disorderly environment. As such, public administration reform can be the fourth leg of a four-legged stool supporting stabilization, along with security, political reconciliation, and jobs. This felt need for legitimacy took many forms. Civil servants welcomed the Tatweer/Tarabot management training courses that allowed them to catch up on advances they had been cut off from for more than a decade. They attended those courses with surprising gusto in the face of the risks they took to attend. Ministers proudly took up their new portfolios only to discover that their ministries could not deliver their responsibilities. This was personally, professionally, and politically embarrassing for them—a reality that led even the most outspokenly anti-American ministers to seek support from Tatweer/Tarabot. Using a demand-driven approach and deferring the provision of substantive policy advice, Tatweer and Tarabot were able to avoid some of the pitfalls associated with many public administration reform projects and to lay down the foundation for future progress and reform.
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