Capacities of Disciplinary Committees (BF0008)

What is the public issue for which the commitment is made to address?: Low enforcement of disciplinary measures Inappropriate regulations Submission of a case before the court by the disciplinary board is limited; What is the commitment?: Issues : Improve the efficiency of public service Objective : Improve the functioning of disciplinary boards Result: Disciplinary committees are operational; How this commitment will contribute towardsaddressingthe public issue?: This commitment will allow : Rule properly on disciplinary misconducts Play a deterrent role on possible disciplinary misconducts the public worker would commit Really enforce disciplinary measures brought upon Review of regulations shall take into account the opening of the Submission of a case before the court by the disciplinary board; Why is this commitment relevant in terms of PGO values?: This commitment is relevant because : It justifies the denunciation of culprit officers and reduces laxity in public service for more transparency Line managers shall be motivated to get under way the disciplinary procedure (liability); Additional details: Link with PNDES Link with PSDMA Link with the national anti-corruption policy

8. Build the capacities of disciplinary committees

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

“Build the capacities of disciplinary committees”

Issues: Improve the efficiency of public service

Objective: Improve the functioning of disciplinary boards

Result: Disciplinary committees are operational

Milestones/Deliverables/Activities:

Review or update regulations on disciplinary committees

Train disciplinary committees’ members

Train or raise awareness of the first officials (central directors, technical directors...) on the procedure of submission of case to the court by the disciplinary committee

Start Date:  November 2017                                                                   End Date:  June 2019

Action Plan is available here

Context and Objectives

This commitment addresses the difficulties disciplinary committees face in applying sanctions. Articles 79 and 81 of Law 081 of 2015 governing the framework of civil service define disciplinary committees as advisory bodies for the implementation of disciplinary sanctions due to professional misconduct. [71] In 2011, the Government of Burkina Faso provided disciplinary committee members with training to ensure effective implementation of applicable disciplinary law. [72] Initially, the committees were responsible for sanctioning civil servants not complying with disciplinary provisions, and for solving governmental management and administrative issues through social dialogue. [73] The government provided further training in 2014 to discipline committees within ministerial departments to equip them with tools for applying the applicable disciplinary regime to civil servants. [74]

However, disciplinary committees have faced difficulties. The disciplinary code is inconsistently applied, with a notable gap between the provisions contained in the code and their implementation by the government. [75] The lack of expertise and knowledge of the committee members has led to impunity. [76] Disciplinary committee decisions are perceived as biased, abusive, or too lenient. In some cases, legal errors in either form or substance may nullify decisions. [77] Decisions may be irrelevant or untimely, and only the minister or the president of an institution can submit referrals to the disciplinary committees. [78] To that end, the commitment seeks to make disciplinary committees operational.

This commitment’s activities are aimed at updating legislation on disciplinary committees, and at training committee members and key officials on the procedure for submitting referrals to the disciplinary committees. The government claims that all these activities will improve the effectiveness of public administration.

This commitment is not relevant to any of the OGP values. It could be claimed that the commitment is relevant to public accountability in that the government will support disciplinary committee members with workshops, trainings, and legislation amendments to improve the quality, promptness, fairness, and relevance of sanctions against civil servant misconduct. However, these elements basically constitute an internal accountability mechanism. It does not appear to have any public component. Citizens can not inform or monitor this process.

As written, the objectives, expected results, and activities are neither clear nor specific enough to be objectively verified. For example, the commitment does not make an explicit reference of the number of legislative documents subject to actualization. The commitment does not give the number of civil servants to be trained, nor those from the ministries or agencies in question.

If fully implemented, the commitment will not contribute to solving the problem of ineffective disciplinary mechanisms. Therefore, the potential impact for this commitment is graded as minor. While the commitment highlights the inadequate enforcement of disciplinary sanctions, proposes training government officials, and suggests updates to legislation, it doesn’t specify the legislative changes nor describe the critical skills that civil servants need to improve on. Moreover, the government has trained civil servants in the past (2011, 2014) and updated legislation (Law 081 of 2015). This commitment replicates some actions the government has already conducted, which seem to have already proved inadequate.

Also, the commitment does not include any activity to evaluate or track the training workshops of either the disciplinary committee members or the main decisionmakers. This omission makes it hard to assess the effectiveness of this commitment. It remains unclear how the government defines and pretends to assess “operability” in discipline committees.

Next steps

• This commitment could be improved to measure the impact of training civil servants and to verify they understand how to apply the law.
• Elaborate on the difficulties disciplinary committee members face to improve commitment design.
• Readjust activities to make them trackable and verifiable (e.g., the number of civil servants trained, the number of disciplinary committees trained and assessed). Assessments could be conducted periodically.
• Define criteria for operability, for instance, in terms of number of cases with appropriate sanctions, number of days to issue a sanction, etc.