EMBs may have more effective control over electoral activities if they are empowered to directly hire and fire, and set the conditions of service for, their secretariats. Yet many EMB secretariats are drawn from public service staff and are subject, to a greater or lesser degree, to common public service rules that may limit both the EMB’s human resource flexibility and its ability to develop continuity in the professional electoral service.
Each EMB needs to develop an organizational structure that facilitates cost-effective achievement of its strategic objectives by designating the necessary numbers of skilled staff at appropriate locations and levels of seniority who are subject to effective lines of accountability.
An EMB’s strategic plan is the basis for all of its activities, defining for a fixed period the EMB’s vision, purpose, values, target outcomes, result outputs and performance indicators. Stakeholder involvement in the development, monitoring and review of an EMB’s strategic plans focuses the planning on service delivery, and can boost confidence in the EMB.
An EMB also needs operational work plans, based on the strategic plan, which detail individual work processes and their integration, deadlines and responsibilities. These are usefully developed into a detailed electoral calendar, a simplified version of which is an important source of information and transparency-enhancing tool for public distribution.
