Recent headlines raised issues about government delivery or procurement of goods and services. These include the LifeSport contract, the construction of the Beetham Water Recycling Plant by NGC, or the award of contracts to Chinese construction companies China Harbour and China Gezhouba Group International Engineering Co Ltd (CGGC) for the construction of houses. These are not new occurrences, and corruption allegations in the award of contracts abound when an election approaches since this is a tried and tested means of influencing an election outcome.
Citizens are outraged by the allegations; details are scarce, and there is doubt about who is responsible. These situations occur with sufficient frequency that all government (the civil service and elected officials) should ensure that the systems and procedures work properly, thereby reducing the opportunity for these “mistakes”. How are Cabinet decisions taken?
Campaign manifestos are often adopted as official government policy. This creates difficulties as manifesto promises are deliberately vague. The cynical logic for imprecise manifesto positions is to avoid blame when in office. The difficulty is that civil service professionals must try to convert this imprecision into a coherent policy approach in addition to addressing urgent and important decisions that arise from new and unanticipated developments.
Cabinet addresses the country’s issues and challenges through the policy framework, which guides decisions that the civil service must then implement. In general, Cabinet meetings are held every Thursday for a few hours. Depending on the gravity of the circumstances, the Cabinet may meet more frequently. What comes to the Cabinet should only be important matters.
Decisions are based on information contained in a formal document called a Cabinet note. Notes are presented at Cabinet meetings for discussion, ratification or rejection. A Cabinet note is the authoritative basis for civil service implementation and follow-up. Hence the importance of post-Cabinet briefings that give an insight into the Cabinet’s thinking.
Therefore, how Cabinet notes are framed and presented is important. Notes can only come to Cabinet through a ministry. Notes are prepared by technical civil service staff themselves or with assistance from state agencies and enterprise personnel when there are complex technical matters outside the expertise of civil service officers.
Ministers will be involved in these discussions depending on the importance of the subject matter and the degree of resources required. Every note must be authorised by the permanent secretary and the minister before it reaches the Cabinet for deliberation and discussion. A minister is responsible for all the notes coming from his/her ministry and must be fully briefed to allow them to explain the options to cabinet colleagues.
A note could be for general information, address administrative or policy-driven matters, or have financial implications. The note will include recommendations on which Cabinet will be asked to decide. Each decision is numbered and referenced for posterity. Minutes of the previous meeting are confirmed before the current batch of notes is deliberated. Hence the importance of the Cabinet secretary as outlined in parts 1 and 2 of this series.
Some notes are complex and may be decided subject to discussion or evaluation with other ministries. For example, major contract matters must be vetted by the Solicitor General. If not done before the submission of the note, it could be approved subject to positive review and assessment by the Solicitor General’s office. Notes that address matters not covered by or anticipated in the current annual budget require discussion and agreement with the Ministry of Finance and are approved subject to those deliberations.
A Cabinet decision is only as good as the information on which it is based. Therefore, recommendations must be clearly articulated based on the available evidence and information and free of technical jargon. The presumption is that this information is rigorously tested by the technical experts to ensure the appropriate recommendations are included in the note. The difficulty with all management decisions, Cabinet decisions included, is that all the information is never available beforehand and all decisions are made on the available data.
Where there is disagreement over a note, the note is either withdrawn or referred to a subcommittee of the Cabinet called the Finance and General Purposes Committee (F&GP) for a more detailed examination. F&GP meetings are chaired by an experienced member of the Cabinet who knows the ropes and commands the respect of his peers. The relevant ministers and permanent secretaries attend. Experts are invited to provide further clarification if required. If the knotty issues are ironed out in F&GP, the note will be resubmitted to the next Cabinet meeting.
The major projects to modernise and upgrade the Petrotrin refinery were all approved by Cabinet, as were the decisions to proceed with the infamous LifeSport programme, ALNG Train 1, and the China Harbour and CGCC housing contracts. Many other examples raise questions about how the recommendations were developed, as well as the decision-making and implementation processes.
Is there a standard process for preparing Cabinet Notes? Are projects routinely subjected to rigorous project evaluation, analysis, and review before the Cabinet submissions? Is there an implementation and monitoring framework that reports to Cabinet, and are there standard reports showing the variances?
Mariano Browne is the Chief Executive Officer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business.
