Cab­i­net is not in­fal­li­ble. Gov­ern­ments every­where make bad de­ci­sions re­gard­less of which po­lit­i­cal par­ty forms the Gov­ern­ment. Last week, we sur­mised that any Cab­i­net de­ci­sion was on­ly as good as the re­search sup­port­ing the note’s in­for­ma­tion and rec­om­men­da­tions.

Some de­ci­sions take a long time to ges­tate, and the out­comes, favourable or un­favourable, on­ly be­come vis­i­ble much lat­er when those re­spon­si­ble for the de­ci­sion are out of of­fice. Re­vers­ing or mit­i­gat­ing a neg­a­tive re­sult is dif­fi­cult.

The Cab­i­net is an apex de­ci­sion-mak­ing body. It should pri­mar­i­ly be con­cerned with pol­i­cy or strate­gic de­ci­sions and big-pic­ture is­sues rather than op­er­a­tional mat­ters. That is the gen­er­al rule, but there will be ex­cep­tions, which ought to be few.

Or­gan­i­sa­tions do not make strate­gic de­ci­sions of­ten and must do so care­ful­ly when re­quired. Pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion is im­por­tant be­cause it gives con­text and mean­ing to the strate­gic de­ci­sion. Con­verse­ly, op­er­a­tional de­ci­sions are made by line man­agers fo­cused on dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties and rou­tine tasks.

Op­er­a­tional de­ci­sions are there­fore the busi­ness of the civ­il ser­vice of­fi­cers, not the Cab­i­net. As in any or­gan­i­sa­tion, civ­il ser­vice op­er­a­tions should be em­bed­ded in doc­u­ment­ed sys­tems and pro­ce­dures.

Sys­tems and pro­ce­dures are the DNA of any or­gan­i­sa­tion as they guide the dai­ly rou­tine. New de­vel­op­ments may chal­lenge these rou­tines oc­ca­sion­al­ly, and there should be guide­lines or ex­cep­tion rou­tines to fa­cil­i­tate the nec­es­sary changes.

By fo­cus­ing on strate­gic is­sues, Cab­i­net would have the time to dis­tin­guish be­tween ur­gent and im­por­tant, re­view per­for­mance mea­sures, and de­ter­mine cor­rec­tive ac­tion if re­quired. Im­ple­men­ta­tion is for the civ­il and pub­lic ser­vants. This is the for­mu­la. Where im­ple­men­ta­tion is weak, then the weak ar­eas must be strength­ened. Po­lit­i­cal­ly, the buck stops with the Cab­i­net.

The T&T Cab­i­net re­views be­tween 75 to a 100 notes a meet­ing. Since Cab­i­net meets week­ly, that means that 4,000-plus notes an­nu­al­ly, whether these notes are in pa­per or elec­tron­ic for­mat.

Ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed in “Is­sues and Prob­lems in Caribbean Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion”, pub­lished by Sel­wyn Ryan and Deryck Brown (no re­la­tion) in 1992 sup­port­ed this analy­sis.

The book con­tains two rel­e­vant chap­ters. The first is ‘The Role and Func­tion of Cab­i­net’. The sec­ond is ‘Over-Cen­tral­i­sa­tion: The Ques­tion of Sub­mis­sions to Cab­i­net.’ The sec­ond piece was de­rived from the Pub­lic Ser­vice Re­view Task Force chaired by the late Regi­nald Du­mas dur­ing the cham­bers’ years, of which Gor­don Drap­er was a mem­ber.

Both chap­ters are crit­i­cal of the num­ber of T&T Cab­i­net Notes. In “Over-Cen­tral­i­sa­tion” the ev­i­dence in­di­cat­ed that T&T cab­i­net notes were eight times more than the notes go­ing to Ja­maica’s Cab­i­net and 100 times more than the notes go­ing to the Down­ing Street Cab­i­net (the UK), a coun­try of 67 mil­lion peo­ple.

In the late 1990s, the Cab­i­net au­tho­rised min­is­ters to ap­prove sev­er­al ad­min­is­tra­tive mat­ters that pre­vi­ous­ly en­gaged its at­ten­tion, re­sult­ing in a much small­er num­ber of notes be­ing sub­mit­ted for Cab­i­net’s con­sid­er­a­tion. Per­ma­nent sec­re­taries al­so have del­e­gat­ed pow­ers. The im­prove­ment was not per­ma­nent. Dur­ing my time in of­fice (2007-2010), the num­bers were back in the 4000-plus range.

Why so many notes, and what is their com­po­si­tion? From my ex­pe­ri­ence, most are rou­tine mat­ters that should be dealt with else­where. Many are hu­man re­source mat­ters (rough­ly 30 per cent) that should nev­er reach Cab­i­net. These in­clude leave ap­provals, leave-buy­out arrange­ments for what­ev­er rea­son, gra­tu­ity pay­ments, or con­tracts where the per­son is near­ing re­tire­ment and there is no re­place­ment.

Why has this sit­u­a­tion per­sist­ed? Can’t these mat­ters be de­cid­ed in the or­di­nary course of busi­ness at the op­er­a­tional civ­il ser­vice lev­el? Per­haps many can be, but it is safer (for the civ­il ser­vant) to let the Cab­i­net de­cide? Or do min­is­ters want to in­flu­ence op­er­a­tional mat­ters?

The fil­ter should be the cab­i­net sec­re­tary/sec­re­tari­at, the ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fice re­spon­si­ble for col­lect­ing, col­lat­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing notes sub­mit­ted from var­i­ous min­istries and the min­utes of the pre­vi­ous meet­ing. Cur­rent­ly, the sec­re­tari­at does not have the au­thor­i­ty to per­form this func­tion.

Nei­ther does the Head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, the tit­u­lar po­si­tion giv­en to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (PS) to the Prime Min­is­ter, with­out the for­mal au­thor­i­ty to di­rect oth­er PSs. What is the for­mal ma­chin­ery to co­or­di­nate and har­monise the ap­proach of min­istries?

The co­or­di­nat­ing role is the Prime Min­is­ter’s, as he is re­spon­si­ble for the per­for­mance of his Cab­i­net min­is­ters.

Who fol­lows up on the im­ple­men­ta­tion of cab­i­net de­ci­sions? How and when are these cab­i­net de­ci­sions re­viewed and their suc­cess or fail­ure eval­u­at­ed? How and when are eval­u­a­tions per­formed, us­ing what da­ta?

How is the per­for­mance of a min­is­ter to be judged, and what are the key met­rics that would en­able this eval­u­a­tion process? How of­ten should these eval­u­a­tions take place? Is there an ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­ture to gath­er the da­ta to make such de­ter­mi­na­tions? Does this eval­u­a­tion process take place in in­di­vid­ual min­istries?

The an­nu­al bud­get pro­vides such a frame­work. The link is the cab­i­net note, as the bud­get should in­clude on­ly fi­nan­cial re­quire­ments aris­ing from con­firmed Cab­i­net de­ci­sions. All de­ci­sions can­not be ac­com­mo­dat­ed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, as “wants” are al­ways greater than avail­able re­sources.

It could be ar­gued that the an­nu­al bud­get­ing process al­lo­cates re­sources ac­cord­ing to pri­or­i­ties. How are pri­or­i­ties de­cid­ed and by whom?

Mar­i­ano Browne is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness