This review represents a new policy approach to public sector reform studies, linking the traditional thematic public employment and strategic human resource management (HRM) framework to public sector innovation and service delivery challenges in the Dominican Republic. The review is based on relevant lessons learned from the experience of OECD member and key partner countries, underpinned by an economic and institutional analysis of the current Dominican landscape in a broader regional perspective.

The Dominican Republic is divided into 31 heterogeneous provinces (incorporating 155 municipalities) and the Distrito Nacional, where the capital is situated (Santo Domingo de Guzmán). The provinces are political and administrative units that facilitate delegation of the central government authority at intermediate level. Every province has a civil governor who is appointed by and represents the central executive power. Each province is composed of two or more municipalities which in turn function as political and administrative units.

The importance of HRM for achieving better quality, more responsive and efficient public services is well recognized by the Dominican government. The public administration’s HRM reform strategy is crucially integrated into broader public service reforms which are in turn rooted in the country’s national development plan. This gives the reforms a strong political impetus which remains critical to their successful implementation.

The Dominican public administration faces significant institutional and budgetary challenges, with a clear gap between resources, demands and citizen expectations on the public sector, and the current capabilities to adequately respond to them. Nevertheless, there is plenty of scope for a more efficient use of available public means. As a small country with limited resources, the Dominican Republic needs to make the most of them, ensuring that their use will provide the most efficient and effective return.

This chapter assesses the economic and institutional landscape of the Dominican Republic in relation to the LAC region (Latin America and the Caribbean), in particular within the framework of the functions assumed by the state. The region faces several common public administration challenges such as the quality of the civil service, the regulatory framework, governance transparency, and greater centralisation than in OECD countries. The overarching analysis in this chapter is meant to facilitate the process of fully capturing and better understanding the nature and magnitude of the public sector reform tasks currently faced by LAC bureaucracies and the Dominican Republic in particular, as well as all their implications, in combination with citizens’ expectations and perceptions, and often limited available public resources. Attention is paid to the relevance of public sector innovation and its impacts, lessons learned, and policies for a more sustainable and innovative public administration in the LAC region.

This chapter analyses the main characteristics, challenges and windows of opportunity of strategic workforce planning in the Dominican public administration, in the light of the experience and lessons learned in OECD countries. Strategic workforce planning has become a key priority and a core management practice for many public administrations. It can provide an invaluable capacity tool to efficiently manage human capital and deliver better internal and external results, especially in times of limited resources. Careful workforce planning and strategic HRM reforms help ensure quality public services while responding to the need to reduce or maintain budgets. Achieving the most efficient and effective size and allocation of the public service workforce to align staffing with government priorities is an ongoing challenge for governments, marked by a confluence of factors which include fiscal pressures and the ageing of the workforce but also public service demands and new possibilities offered by ICT technologies.

This chapter reviews the Dominican workforce capacity and capability. In many OECD countries, competency management has become a key strategic HRM instrument and a vehicle for organisational and cultural change. Having employees with the right capabilities is essential for organisations to get work done to the required quality level and to improve their results, remaining viable through innovation and the capacity to adapt in a changing world. The recruitment process is a highly visible symbol of public service values. Firmly established merit-based recruitment and selection practices based on fairness, objectivity and transparency enable governments to inject new skills into the public administration and contribute to workforce agility, ensuring that the civil service is staffed by competent and efficient employees. Centrally managed training and development programmes aimed at current and potential future leaders are also receiving a great deal of attention in OECD countries and are increasingly linked to other HRM processes.

Taking into consideration the experience of OECD countries, this chapter analyses the set of public sector performance drivers in the Dominican setting. The chapter focuses on performance management strategies and arrangements to modernise the Dominican public administration, looking at how they can ensure ethical behaviour and drive efficiency, performance orientation and achievement of results in a balanced way.

This chapter discusses the key elements impacting the success of current and future reforms in the Dominican public administration and civil service.

This final chapter looks – both from a systemic and an instrumental perspective – at pragmatic innovative ways to overcome key institutional, organisational, performance and regulatory bottlenecks in the Dominican public administration as described in the previous chapters, illustrating complementary approaches and OECD practices for better internal and external results, and in the end better service delivery. The identified barriers can seriously hinder the implementation of public sector reforms and service delivery solutions, limiting benefits that can be realised from performance improvements in priority areas such as public employment and strategic HRM.