During the experts panel at the NIK headquarters in Warsaw, the auditors as well as invited specialists and practitioners debated together if the Act on employees of local governments which has been effective in Poland since 2008 improved the functioning of local administration. NIK is now analysing its audit results and has invited external experts to cooperate. During a special panel, specialists and practitioners shared their views on the Polish law. Since NIK may make proposals to amend the law (de lege ferenda proposals), the guests made their suggestions of amendments to the law that would facilitate work of local government officials.
Wojciech Kutyła and Andrzej Porawski on experts panel
Local governments
The experts had different opinions on whether the effective Act on employees of local governments contributes to better functioning of local administration. Some of them pointed to strengths of effective regulations, others underlined their weaknesses. However, the experts concurred that it was impossible to adopt identical solutions across the entire local administration. It is very much diversified, mainly in terms of size. Besides, specialists agreed that a local government has to have guaranteed freedom to act. In practice it would mean, though – at least to some extent – more independence for heads of local governments in decision-making process. And here comes the problem – too much freedom may lead to excessive discretion which is the main cause of corruption in administration.
Most participants of the meeting positively evaluated greater freedom in establishing salaries for local administration employees. The experts emphasised that additional constraints would weaken independence of local governments and bureaucratise their work. “Self-governments should govern themselves and the central government is not there to muzzle them” – Secretary of Wrocław, Włodzimierz Patalas stated strongly.
Stanisław Tamm, Secretary of Poznań, stressed the necessity of employment stabilisation in local governments. According to Tamm, it may be achieved mainly by investing in employees which at the end of the day will result in a better service quality. Prof. Łukasz Pisarczyk from the Warsaw University agreed and at the same time underscored advantages of internal promotion. Many participants of the panel agreed that that form of promotion represented a reasonable compromise between external recruitment and the frequently used practice of hiring employees without the competition procedure.
The issue of preparatory service was raised during the panel. This is the employer’s duty to prepare a new employee to take up work. Szymon Wróbel from the Ministry of Administration and Digitalisation mentioned about the e-learning platform launched by the Ministry. This tool helps employers discharge their statutory obligation without additional training costs. Since 2010, as many as 1500 local government units have used that platform.
Many specialists criticised the requirement to provide income statements to the public. According to Tamm, this practice often discourages competent people from taking up work in the public sector. Tamm pointed to absurdities related to verification of declarations of means. Example: one declaration was publically considered incorrect because it didn’t include an amount of PLN 7. “We do not need fake solutions which are a nuisance for decent people but give no hope to curb corruption” - persuaded the Secretary of Poznań.
At the end of the meeting, Vice-President of NIK Wojciech Kutyła stated that in his opinion public institutions in Poland were changing for better. “Citizens more and more often feel welcome there and may count on real help.” According to Kutyła, that change can be heard in the language: “Less and less often they call you an applicant or petitioner. More and more frequently they speak of clients of a public institution.”
