Development Project at Jounieh Municipality

SUNY/CLD has been working with the municipal president, council members, and senior municipal employees to assist with enhancing the administrative and financial capabilities of the municipality and to increase public participation. Prior to this reporting period, SUNY/CLD conducted a workshop to brief Jounieh Municipal Council members on the different areas of assistance it could provide the municipality. As a result of this workshop, the Jounieh Municipal Council agreed to have SUNY/CLD conduct a needs assessment of the current performance of municipal responsibilities -- a comprehensive study of the actual administrative and financial situation in order to be able to propose solutions.

Following the workshop, SUNY/CLD’s team worked closely with Jounieh's Municipal Council and other municipal employees by holding several meetings to discuss the current state of affairs. They collected detailed information pertaining to the existing organizational structure and procedures in the different operational units of the municipal government, and interviewed unit officials and other employees to identify problems in the existing system. Specifically, they investigated: a) the operational units in the current structure, and the tasks assigned to each; b) the different types of transactions executed by each operational unit; c) the statistics pertaining to each form of transaction; d) the phasing and timing of each form of transaction; and e) the documents and fees required for each form of transaction, as defined by the laws and legislative decrees that govern municipal work.

On November 17, 1999, SUNY/CLD submitted to the Jounieh Municipal Council a proposal for a revised structure for the organization of its municipal offices. The proposal specifically addressed those problems previously identified by SUNY/CLD in its initial study of the municipality’s organizational needs. These problems included:

The absence of some important units in the municipal structure;

A lack of job descriptions including responsibilities, qualifications, and specifications of terms and conditions of employment;

A lack of hierarchical supervision in the system;

A shortage of employees in the permanent cadre due to the large number of daily laborers filling permanent administrative and technical posts;

A lack of coordination among the different units;

A lack of information in some personnel files;

Ineffective fee collection;

The absence of accurate accounts and proper procedures to identify and estimate revenues and expenditures;

A lack of information technology (IT) for administrative and financial transactions;

Excessive time required to execute certain transactions;

A lack of professional administrative and financial systems suitable for municipal work;

A lack of experienced workers in certain required fields.

As a result of its needs assessment, SUNY/CLD recommended that Jounieh Municipality revise its organizational structure, taking the aforementioned problems into consideration, clarify municipal unit descriptions and responsibilities, develop job descriptions for all jobs, define the required qualifications for all jobs, and design new work processes in conformity with the revised structure. SUNY/CLD delivered to Jounieh Municipality both a workplan and timetable and proposed assistance to Jounieh Municipality, which addressed the following areas of concern:

Enhancement of municipal human resource capabilities through workshops and other training opportunities;

Enhancement of municipal administrative capabilities, including the creation of detailed job descriptions, with definitions of the terms and conditions for employment;

Enhancement of municipal financial capabilities through the clarification of an efficient flow path of municipal transactions, including the necessary stages and the duration of each transaction, in order to simplify work processes and procedures;

Enhancement of technical capabilities through the use of information systems to ensure complete support to the municipal administration in all matters relating to the handling of its administrative, technical, financial and other tasks, consequently expediting the execution of these tasks in a correct and transparent way;

Introduction of information technology, including the creation of an electronic web site to publish the decisions, main activities and practices of Jounieh Municipality in addition to any other information that the Municipal Council decides for publication;

Improvement of public relations, with the establishment of an Information Office to strengthen relations with the public by handling public requests and reducing the possibility of corruption, particularly by personnel in the municipality’s financial units.

While awaiting a response on the restructuring proposal, SUNY/CLD has completed a thorough set of job descriptions for the municipality, clarifying responsibilities and qualifications. It has organized the personnel files of all municipal employees, coordinating contents and synchronizing them with corresponding files in the municipality’s financial department. It has also trained municipal employees in organizing the personnel department. SUNY/CLD has also designed and installed a Local Area Network for the introduction of information technology in Jounieh Municipality.

In February 2000, SUNY/CLD organized a two-day workshop for Municipal Council members and municipal employees on the subject of the Municipal Revenue System (MRS). SUNY/CLD has trained and is currently supervising a team of ten municipal employees who began preparing the information to be entered into the MRS. They are adapting Jounieh’s Revenue system to accommodate the transactional forms that SUNY/CLD has developed for the management of municipal financial transactions. Furthermore, SUNY/CLD is collecting taxpayer information for the MRS, and is installing and testing network cables and computer equipment.

On Saturday, March 25, 2000 SUNY/CLD conducted a seminar to formally present and discuss the work plan and the proposed organizational structure with the Jounieh mayor and Municipal Council members. At this seminar, SUNY/CLD’s Lebanon Project Director reiterated the need to strengthen the efficiency, accountability and transparency of municipal work and to improve on the delivery of municipal services to citizens. He explained that the development of the proposed structure is based on :

The existing administrative organization of Jounieh Municipality and the processes by which it executes its duties;

The laws that govern municipal work in Lebanon and specifically the responsibilities assigned to the municipalities by legislative decree 118/77;

The present financial capabilities of the municipality.

SUNY/CLD provided the attendees with a brief summary of the main responsibilities that should be performed by the municipality. These responsibilities were divided into the specialized units that constitute the proposed structure. These units were further expanded and other modifications to the proposed structure were made in the course of the discussion that ensued. SUNY/CLD has amended the proposed structure according to the changes requested and submitted the final copy to the Mayor for final official approval.

The work plan, which encompasses a description of all the activities recommended to enhance the financial, administrative, technical and human resource capabilities of the municipality, includes the following:

Installation of the Personnel Management System (PMS) and provide training in employee performance evaluation criteria thereby enhancing the municipality’s human resources capabilities;

Creation a reception office along with the publication of a citizen guide to assist the public in its dealings with municipal offices and staff and training of administrative personnel in simplified administrative procedures and management, supported by installation of both a Document Tracking System (DTS) and Citizen Complains System (CCS);

Improve the municipality’s financial capabilities through the implementation of the Municipal Revenue System (MRS), the Municipal Budget System (MBS) and a new payroll system, as well as the development and implementation of a Municipal Revenue Survey;

Develop both a strategic plan and a work plan for enhancing the municipality’s technical units, including the procuring of additional equipment and training of employees in basic computer skills as well as any necessary computer programming;

Connect the municipality to the internet and developing its own electronic web site;

Organize workshops for the Jounieh Municipal Council on public participation and hold seminars on tourism, the environment, public health, and other pertinent topics.

The seminar attendees unanimously adopted the work plan and expressed their willingness to participate in successfully implementing all of its activities