Chapter One - Administrative and Managerial Reform
 

ARTICLE 1- In order to rectify reform and improve the country’s administrative system, organization and structure; to reduce the non-sovereign undertakings of the government, and advance the  systems, methods, management of human resources, and regulations (by-laws and directives), an Administrative High Council is set up with the following competencies, mandates and authority:

A. MEMBERSHIP:

   1- The President or the Vice President (as the Chairman of the Council),

    2- Three ministers (preferably from different sectors) to be nominated by the Cabinet,

    3- Minister or the Head of the executive agency concerned,

    4- Head of the Plan and Budget Organization, if the position has an incumbent appointed by the President,

    5- Secretary-General of the State Administrative and Employment Affairs Organization, if the position has an incumbent appointed by the President,

    6- Four learned individuals and experts on public administration and management, to be nominated by the President,

    7- Two provincial governor-generals to be nominated by the President.

    8- Two members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly as observers to be selected by the Islamic Consultative Assembly.

Decisions approved by the Council will be binding upon ratification by the President.

Note: Secretary-General of the State Administrative and Employment Affairs Organization will serve as the Secretary of the Council and will be charged with supervising the performance of its decisions.

B. DUTIES AND AUTHORITIES

1. To reform organizational structure of the country’s executive agencies, except ministries, through merger, dissolution, and decentralization.

2. To restructure the internal set-up of the ministries, review duties and internal structure of organizations, state-owned enterprises and their subsidiary companies in order to create organizational cohesion, and to eliminate parallel, similar and duplicated functions.

3. To separate line duties from staff functions of the ministries and to limit the staff functions solely to sovereign undertakings and strategic affairs (policy making, planning and monitoring), and delegating line functions of ministries to the public agencies at the provincial and county levels.

4. To decide on merging provincial and county administrative units of any single ministry into one integrated unit.

5. To identify and delegate transferable functions and duties of the executive agencies to municipalities and non-public sector  with the objective of releasing government from the burden of unnecessary undertakings; to determine and establish workable relationship between the administrative system and local Islamic councils at rural, county and city levels.

6. To carry out reform and re-engineering activities in the systems, methods and operating procedures in practice throughout the country’s executive agencies with the objective of simplifying the work procedures, and promoting automation, while minimizing direct contact between public employees and the clients of public agencies, securing clients’ satisfaction, reducing the administrative costs and economizing the performance of public duties.

7. To approve necessary programs for  enhancement of productivity and efficiency of manpower and management of the executive agencies.

8. To approve criteria and standards required to optimize the structure, composition and distribution of manpower in the public sector.

9. To approve criteria and standard operating procedures to deal with the manpower of those agencies which upon the decisions of the Administrative High Council, are merged, dissolved, divested, or whose functions are entrusted to other agencies.

10. To adopt criteria for optimal utilization of administrative space, relocation, and provision of administrative buildings.

11. To determine and propose resources required for realization of the programs for transformation of the administrative system, as well as other approved programs of the Council, which require new resources.

12. To identify and promulgate the agencies assigned to undertake  programs related to the government activities concerning administrative system and executive affairs.

ARTICLE 2- In order to reduce the non-sovereign undertakings, to strengthen sovereignty and supervision affairs of government, to promote effective participation of people, private and cooperative sectors in public affairs, to clarify functions and mandates of the national and provincial units in planning and implementation and to lay the ground for proper realization of the targets and objectives of the Third Plan, government is required to carry out the structural reform in the government organizations taking into account the following criteria:

A- Taking note of the principles of interdependence, cohesiveness, integrity and homogeneity of the public duties and functions.

B- Integrating the processes relating to a distinct task within a single agency, and making the activities goal-oriented.

C- Eliminating unnecessary units, organizations, parallel duties and duplicated functions of public agencies.

D- Observing the principle of decentralization in distribution of national and provincial functions; delimiting functions and missions of the national and the staff units solely to exercise of sovereignty, policy-making, macro-planning, directing, supervising and monitoring; and delegating the executive affairs and functions to the provincial units.

E- Avoiding expansion of the government organization with emphasis on down-sizing the government bureaucracy from the bottom of the organizational pyramid up through consolidation of all related activities of any ministry (except autonomous enterprises) in a single provincial organization.

   On the basis of the above criteria, appropriate measures shall be taken to consolidate all the relevant functions and duties of the following sectors into three ministries:

    1. The energy affairs,

    2. Agriculture, animal husbandry, and rural development affairs

    3. Industry and mining affairs.

To realize the intent of this Article, government is required to clearly identify and redefine proper titles of the ministries and autonomous agencies that shall be charged with the above duties, and to stipulate the extent and limits of the missions, authorities; to enumerate the sovereign and non-sovereign undertakings of each agency within the framework of its specific functions; and to determine the manner by which their duties could be performed.  Government if further charged with preparing a time table within one month henceforth and shall take all the necessary legal measures to implement this program.

ARTICLE 3-

   A- To improve and optimize the composition of manpower of the executive agencies, and to proportionally distribute the manpower to various regions of the country, and to improve the delivery of the public services, the State Administrative and Employment Affairs Organization is required to prepare a comprehensive manpower program for the public sector within the first six months of the current Plan and submit it to the Cabinet for approval.  In doing so, the following criteria shall be met:

   1. Total government employees shall be reduced by five percent (5%) by the end of the Third Plan period relative to  the beginning of the Plan.

   2. Qualitative indices of the government manpower, specifically the proportion of the specialized employees to the total manpower as well as their educational composition shall be improved.

   3. Total new employment in the public sector shall not exceed fifty percent (50 %) of the total number of employees who quit their jobs.

B. In order to reduce new employment and simultaneously meet the manpower requirements of those executive agencies whose activities must be further developed, the State Administrative and Employment Affairs Organization is required to determine the excess manpower of the down-sizing agencies and inform the agencies that are in need of new employees so that necessary measures could be taken for inter-agency transfers.

   Any transfer made in the same city shall not require consent of the employees who are being transferred.  But transfers from one city to another should be administered with the consent of the effected employee(s).

C- Ministries and government entities may redeem the services of the employees who volunteer to quit their job, through payment of incentives in addition to the lawful fringe payments and benefits.

D- Beginning with the Third Plan, government is required to reform regulations governing provision of salaries and fringe benefits which are the basis of retirement deduction, by taking into account the median monthly payment in the last two years prior to retirement for all retiring employees who meet the requirements of the retirement law.

E- Beginning with the Third Plan, government is required to pay severance to the retiring permanent and formal employees who are subject to the “Law of Harmonized System of Payment to the Government Employees and Academic Staff of Universities and Institutions of Higher Education”, a sum equivalent to one month per each year of employment, of the latest salary, allowances and the fringe benefits.

F- Government is required to adjust, during the term of the Third Plan, the number of personnel of the public sector within the framework provided in Appendix (1) of this Law.

G- During the term of the Third Plan and at the beginning of each year, government is required to increase salaries of all employees and wage-earners of all fields of activities - regardless of the nature of their employment contracts- proportionate to the inflation rate and at least equal to it.  Should the growth of inflation exceed the salary increase in such a way that the totally adjusted receipts of the wage-earner be less that monthly inflation rate multiplied by the salary of the last month of the previous year plus twelve times the salary of the last month of that year, the balance then shall be paid to the employees within the first quarter of the next year. This Item also applies to all retirement pensions and annuitants.

   The executive by-law of this Article including the incentive, and promotion measures and other employment benefits to be granted to the employees who will be transferred to other localities, as well as other criteria related to redemption incentive and other relevant  matters shall be prepared by the State Administrative and Employment Affairs Organization, and to be approved by the Cabinet.