Somaliland Civil Service Commission has unveiled its five-year strategic plan on December 5th, 2019 in a glitzy event attended by many government officials and headlined by the Vice President of Somaliland HE Abdirahman Abdallahi Ismail Saylici.
The Civil Service Commission is at the tail end of a multiyear project 10 million dollar project funded by the World Bank known as Somaliland Civil Service Reform Project.
We have reported in the past on how heavily the Somaliland Civil Service Commission is reliant on foreign consultants to help deliver the most basic functions such as creating policy documents. The best example of this reliance is the Strategic Plan that unveiled on December 5th which was composed by outside consultants.
The creation of the 54-page Strategic Plan has cost the CSC 45,000 US dollars, 25,000 of which was paid to a Ugandan national. This cost was covered out of the 10 million dollars project from the World Bank.
Although the contract stipulated 50 days’ worth of work to speak to the stakeholders and understand the inner-workings of the CSC to compile the document, sources say that the consultants held minimum consultation and spend far fewer days to complete the document.
Other CSC employees complained about the fact that the document that will chart a course for all future activities of the Civil Service Commission was authored by a foreigner who had zero knowledge of the commission.
Another CSC employee who saw the document questioned why it was necessary to hire external consultants when many there are competent employees who have an intimate knowledge of the CSC and could have done the same work.
Expensive /ˌkət ən ˈpāst/ Job
Multiple Instances of Plagiarism
One issue with the document is that there is nothing remarkable about it, in fact it a word salad that was cut and pasted from around the web using a standard Strategic Plan template.
For instance, “There is a widespread perception that public servants in many Governments Somaliland inclusive, have not delivered what was expected from them. On the other hand, returns from improving effectiveness of the government are immense. An efficient public service is necessary (though not enough) for benefits to reach the socially and economically weaker sections of the society who have fewer alternatives to services provided by government.” has a 98% similarity to a UNDP paper called Public Service Reforms – Trends, Challenges and Opportunities.
The Lessons Learnt and Best Practices section of the Strategic Plan shares 92% similarity to “Lessons from the Church Commissioners for Kenya” document.
What are the chances the Somaliland Civil Service and the Church Commissioners of Kenya had a near-identical Lessons Learned and Best Practices?
At 833 US dollars per page, this is an expensive document with a minimal value to the development of an effective civil service workforce. Particularly when the Civil Service Commission has ignored the talents of its own employees in favor of expensive foreign and external consultants.
Our attempt to get an official answer from the Civil Service Commission on why it continues to relay on foreign consultants has been unsuccessful.
