By now, students who desire to serve the student body through the Central Student Government (CSG) are beginning to roll up their sleeves and are starting to gather their forces and consolidate their agenda. In the spirit of an open government, I believe it is only fitting to share practical tips on the very basic ofstudent government operations management based on my own experience as President. I hope that these tips can guide future CSG and College Council leaders in their management of the government as an organization first before anchoring it as a political entity.
Reengineering student governance: CSG – Department Reforms
In our political science class, we understand government departments as the primal implementing unit that executes the different programs of the government.
In the context of the CSG, The departments are the front line service units of the government. Therefore these are the labour and capital intensive units of the CSG.
As far as I can recall, the previous CSG has 7 existing Departments each organized with a specific area of concern. Initially, the large number of department seems to raise 2 concerns. These concerns are regarding control and focus. Having too many departments tend to fragment the government in its operations. It might facilitate greater number of activities but might compromise focus and it will spike cost. Aside from this, its manpower system also is seen as a concern. Volunteers are coursed through a central human resource office which puts a central unit great influence in personnel management. Directly overseeing 70 to 100 volunteers might just be too much. Added further, Direct control and supervision may not be a good idea for it might cripple creativity and a sense of ownership.
With these circumstances, we implemented an experimental system that reduces the number of departments, upgrade some in to administrative offices which solely focuses in process management and development, and devolve the influence of the human resource. Ultimately, we hope these features may empower the Department to plan, implement and evaluate its own programs following its mandate as approved by a central committee composed of the core leaders of the student government. Presently, the departments are empowered to create its own internal structure, recruit and manage its own volunteers with little interference with a central human resource, and design its logo to build its own identity. But what really operationalizes autonomy? The present CSG experimented on this by allowing the departments to do the following:
1. Eliminated central Human Resource intervention in the recruitment or the Departments directly recruits members. By allowing the departments to recruit their own members, you allow the department leaders to be more responsible and accountable to their members and a distinct department culture will form making the group more cohesive.
2. Allowed them to design their own organizational structure and department logo. This allows the department to assess their own operational needs. Atop from making their internal structure, they are also given the mandate to design their department logo which facilitates a deeper sense of ownership and cohesion. This resulted to the departments generating their own t-shirts, organizing their own BOLTS, and conducting their own team building activities among others.
The 4 Departments at present are organized around the 4 point agenda of the student government namely academic development, student services development, engaged citizenship, and community and leadership engagements. The Departments that addresses these concerns are the Department of Academic Affairs, Department of Student Services and Welfare, Department of Mission and Social Action, and Department of Interior and Networking respectively.
This set up definitely has costs but we have seen for the past months that it can generate greater benefits such as efficiency in project management, overall cohesion of the entire CSG structure. The CSG has developed stronger muscles in its service unit arms
In the long run, we hope to see a department that is semi-autonomous and can lead on its own with little supervision from the office of the President. It is in this manner that we give space for creativity, develop tools for empowerment and generate dynamism in the services of the CSG.
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