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Impact assessment: Foreign allowances granted to civil servants in 2002-2008
This Impact Assessment considers the follow-up to the recommendations we had made in the audit Foreign allowances granted to civil servants in 2002-2008 published 2009. We had carried out the original audit at the request of the House of Representatives. Following concerns about payments made to a civil servant seconded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (BuZa), the House had requested the audit with a view to obtaining a comprehensive picture of the nature, scale and regularity of allowances granted to civil servants seconded to international organisations. Our audit had found that only a small group of civil servants was involved but many things went amiss. Many allowances were granted without consultation with the international organisation concerned. Furthermore, ministries often did not comply with the regulations on the recovery of pension contributions at the end of a secondment. We made a number of recommendations to improve the situation.
Further to our audit in 2009, the government issued a circular in August 2010 entitled ‘Special leave to take a position at an international organisation governed by international law'. The circular took account of our recommendations to improve regulations. We had advised that:
- the rules to recover pension contributions should be amended;
- the rules should make a distinction between special leave without salary and special leave with salary;
- the rules on compensation for salary reductions should be widened; and
- new rules should be introduced to give the allowances a firm
legal basis.
We had also made a number of recommendations to prevent
differences between civil servants at the same level. We had
noted that civil servants seconded by the Ministry of BuZa received
higher allowances than civil servants seconded by other ministries.
We had recommended that decisions on secondments should be
centralised at each ministry and centralised expertise at
government level should be used to set salaries and allowances.
These two recommendations have not been followed up. The Ministry
of BuZa has set up two working groups, though, to consider these
issues.
Two of our recommendations had related to improving procedures
for recording secondments. We had recommended that the
P-Direkt salary system should use codes to indicate where and how
(salaried or unsalaried) a civil servant had been seconded in order
to facilitate the swift compilation of management information on
secondments. We had also recommended that information on
secondments should be included in the standard personnel and
management information. The Minister of the Interior and Kingdom
Relations (BZK) had written in response that the options available
to implement these proposals would be studied. Secondment records
have since been amended at a number of ministries.
Two of our recommendations had related to the policy to
encourage secondments. We had advised the government to
clarify precisely what it meant by the 'strong encouragement of
secondments' and to attach concrete conditions to them. A
series of government-wide measures has since been taken to
encourage secondments. Twenty additional FTEs, for example, have
been provided for secondments in Brussels and a study facility has
been introduced to prepare for the entrance exam for EU civil
servants. The government has not responded to our recommendation
that the policy goals should be better defined.
Finally, one of our recommendations had related to the considerable
volume of pension contributions not recovered. We had
recommended that where outstanding pension contributions had not
been recovered in part or in full, the government should consider
recovering them anyway. The Minister of BZK did not agree. Just
over half of the contributions (€487,145), however, have since been
recovered. Slightly more than a quarter proved to be no longer
recoverable owing to the five-year time limit. The remainder was
waived for other reasons.
It is still uncertain precisely what the government wishes to achieve through its policy of encouraging secondments. We therefore repeat our recommendation that the government specify the policy objectives.
The Minister of BZK wrote that the policy to encourage secondments would be elaborated upon in the coming period. It would be considered in the new context in which government policy was subject to extreme pressure on budgets and additional tasks.