From Government to Governance: The Incorporation of Managerial Regulation at the Ministry of Education in Israel

Abstract

This study presents the complex process of transforming a bureaucratic public administration into a post-bureaucratic one through the incorporation of a mode of regulation anchored in New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG). Drawing on Actors-Network Theory (ANT), we followed the formation of the governance network first, at the Central Government and then, in the Ministry of Education in Israel by tracing the different human and non-human actors that participated in the formation of the managerial assemblage and the tri-sector cooperation assemblage. Important actors common to the two assemblages are represented by consulting firms chosen by tenders that instill the managerial culture and governance mode into the ministry and operate new non-hierarchical and dialogical techniques. Thus, the adoption of a managerial regulation in the Ministry of Education entails the consultization of the ministry responding to the NPM’s mandate to reduce the size of public administrations. In addition, the growing influence of NGOs resulting from the governmental encouragement of third sector participation according to NPG’s policies, engendered an idiosyncratic Israeli regulation mode - a post-bureaucratic NGO-ization regulation model – in which NGOs play an increasingly significant role in education provision but also in education policy making.

1 Introduction

The public sector in many countries is changing dramatically from a bureaucratic to a post bureaucratic mode of regulation, a change that also impacts the educational sector (Maroy 2012). Based on New Public Management (NPM) perspectives, governments around the world have been incorporating a marketized view of public services in order to improve them and make them more efficient. Measures of performance that assess the activities of public institutions permit a remote control steering mode instead of the traditional public administration model (Ball 1998). Another important change is the incorporation of a New Public Governance model (NPG) (Osborne 2006) and the shift from “pure” government control to a governance paradigm centered on a stronger partnership between public, private, and civic actors along with a greater use of networks rather than markets or hierarchies and relying on negotiation instead of “command and control” (Ferlie and Andresani 2006).

According to NPM and the post-bureaucratic narrative, public administrations must develop new measures and regulations to be more effective: project-based work, contracts, the creation of independent (or quasi-independent) agencies; benchmarking, decentralization of responsibility to lower level managers, including local councils; use of new management tools and managerial knowledge; and management by quantitative performance indicators. These new regulations imply a changing role (and forms) of knowledge in the policy process and the development of new knowledge-based regulatory instruments. Managerial rhetoric and new tools, inspired by the theory of NPM, not only contribute to a shared cognitive and semantic universe, but also to a new normative order and new institutional referents (Maroy 2012).

In post-bureaucratic regimes, governments have to develop new skills: new governing skills (Salamon 2002), new “enabling skills” based on negotiation and persuasion along with “activation skills” for activating the networks of actors increasingly required to address public problems (Pons and van Zanten 2007). New knowledge and new skills imply also new knowledge agents and new actors in the administrations (Mahon 2008). Consultants are among the new actors prevailing in public services; they are recognized as external knowledge actors who trade knowledge, expertise, and experience (Gunter et al. 2015).

The question that arises is how these changes actually occur. How bureaucratic-professional administrations are transformed into post bureaucratic entities? What are the NPM and NPG tools and who are the actors that enable the incorporation of a post-bureaucratic narrative and an ethos of governance into public service? How is resistance to changes of administrative units avoided or overcome? It is through the study of the transformation of the Ministry of Education in Israel that we intend to provide an answer to these questions.

The bureaucratic and central governmental model that characterized the Israeli education system since the foundation of the state in 1948 is shifting rapidly to a post-bureaucratic governance. The transformations in the Ministry of Education are part of large reforms in the public sector that focus on two models of public administration management: the NPM model, based on the elaboration of performance and measurement systems, and the NPG model that strives to the inclusion of different stakeholders in public management (public, private, and civic actors).

Reforms inspired by NPM reflect a quasi-market model or an evaluative state regulatory model, whereas each represents a different “post-bureaucratic turn” (Maroy 2012). Which “post-bureaucratic turn” represents the transformations that are taking place in the Ministry of Education in Israel? Because of the significance of the NPG tools along with NPM instruments, Israel’s case may represent a third model, a new post-bureaucratic “NGO-ization.”

Following actors-network theory (ANT) methodology enables us to trace the developments that occurred in the Ministry of Education in the late 2000 and the efforts to transform its mode of regulation. By following the formation of the governance network which comprises the managerial assemblage and the tri-sector cooperation assemblage, including different human actors (General Director and Head of the Cross-sector Cooperation unit in the Ministry of Education, civil society organizations’ CEOs, researchers, consultants) and non-human actors (strategic planning, tenders, roundtables, the Planning Guide, consultations, online external programs database, etc.), we intend to understand how post-bureaucratic rhetoric and policies are introduced in the education administration.

The study of the governance network is based on interviews of officials at the Ministry of Education and the Prime Minister’s Office as well as the analysis of official sites and documentation.

Most of the literature focuses on the results of the incorporation of NPM and NPG into education systems and the different models that emerged from their introduction in the education sector. Instead, this study focuses on the complex process of transformation of a bureaucratic public service into a post-bureaucratic one, on the efforts to put in place new instruments, mechanisms, rhetoric, and ethic intending to reshape the functioning of the ministry. The Israeli case is of special interest because of the strong bureaucratic tradition of the education administration.

2 Theoretical Background

2.1 From Government to Governance: The Incorporation of NPM and NPG in Education

Scholars agree that the incorporation of New Public Management (NPM) has transformed the public sector in many countries around the world. The reforms that started on the mid-1980s were driven by a greater use of markets and market-like mechanisms, stronger line management (along with weaker trade unions and professional groups), and more elaborated performance management and measurement systems (Ferlie and Andresani 2006). These changes have taken place in the forms and mechanisms of governance, bringing management concepts from the private business into the public realm (e.g., performance measurement, customer and bottom-line orientation, restructuring of incentives) as well as the conditions that would facilitate this process, such as regulation, outsourcing, tendering out, and privatization. The central thrust of public management reforms was the replacement of “rules-based, process-driven” routines by increased emphasis on “result orientation” (Hood and Peters 2004).

Some scholars see these transformations based on NPM as a shift from a bureaucratic professional to a post-bureaucratic regime of regulation (Maroy 2012). This includes reorganizing units by projects through outsourcing and the development of contracts, increasing internal and external competition between administrations through bids, benchmarking, and the development of contracts; improving autonomy and accountability, establishing more rigor in public spending through staff cutting, spending ceilings and definition of goals, favoring successful private management tools, quantifying performance, increasing accountability and stressing the evaluation of results (Pons and van Zanten 2007). A post-bureaucratic shift is associated with a change in the kind of knowledge brought into the policy process and more specifically, with the development of knowledge-based regulatory tools. Knowledge-based regulatory tools are also linked to new forms of knowledge circulation among the different actors involved in the policy process (i.e., researchers, experts, think tanks, policy bodies, professionals, and clients). This form of knowledge circulation is very different from classic bureaucracies that stress legal and other forms of “state knowledge” including the “tacit” knowledge that comes from long experience in the system (Pons and van Zanten 2007).

According to other scholars, the incorporation of NPM in the public administration represents mainly a shift from government to governance. Governance means that the state is a partner associated with other actors (business and civil society) in order to bring about an action, for which they all share responsibility, authority, risks, and an investment of resources. In other words, governance enlarges the decision-making circle from the state to other actors, sectors or organizations. The cooperation between sectors contributes to the impression of legitimacy of the decisions made and an efficacy and efficiency in the application of these decisions (Lessard and Brassard 2005). Governance involves a shift from the top-down hierarchical political organization to an emphasis on promoting and/or steering the self-organization of inter-organizational relations and a greater use of networks. In this expanding range of networks and partnerships between public, private, and civic actors, official apparatuses would remain at best primus inter pares. Public money and law are still important in underpinning their operation, but other resources (such as private money, knowledge or expertise) would also be critical to their success. In this sense the state’s involvement would tend to be rather less hierarchical, less centralized, and less dirigiste in character (Jessop 1995).

Scholars also view governance as a new model of public administration management—the New Public Governance (NPG)—resulting from the critiques raised against the NPM model and the need to move beyond the sterile dichotomy of “administration” versus “management.” The NPG paradigm combines the strengths of Public Administration and the NPM, by recognizing the legitimacy and interrelatedness of both the policy-making and the implementation/service delivery processes. NPG posits both a plural state, where multiple interdependent actors contribute to the delivery of public services and a pluralistic state, where multiple processes inform the policy making system. As a consequence of these two forms of plurality, its focus is very much upon inter-organizational relationships and the governance of processes, and it stresses service effectiveness and outcomes (Osborne 2006).

Another important aspect stressed in the governance literature regards citizens’ participation and involvement, both at the organizational/bureaucratic level and at the communal/political level, which may increase trust in the government and in administrative agencies. Moreover, direct participation of citizens or through civil society organizations at the administrative level can improve public sector performance and urge policy-makers to advance innovative strategies (Vigoda-Gadot and Mizrahi 2007). Seen as a means to restore governments’ legitimacy and diminish the erosion of trust in democracy, citizen participation is strongly encouraged by the OECD. For this purpose, the organization published the “Citizens as Partners. OECD Handbook on Information, Consultation and Public Participation in Policy-Making.” The handbook offers a practical “roadmap” for building robust frameworks for informing, consulting, and engaging citizens during policy-making through among others, tripartite commissions and joint working groups that work out concrete proposals for policy-making (OECD 2001).

The shift from government to governance and the adoption of post-bureaucratic regulations in ministries of education presuppose a large array of transformations including new governance structures, new modes of coordination and control, new knowledge, new skills, and a new ethic.

Structurally, in the “professional-bureaucratic” regulation model, education was organized in a more or less centralized and differentiated way underpinned by standardized and identical norms for all components of the system (Maroy 2012). In contrast, the post-bureaucratic administration is characterized by network forms of organization in which hierarchy or monocratic leadership is less important. As part of the networks, we may find advisory boards open to external members, contracts that create links with academic researchers and think tanks, and projects that cut across divisional and departmental lines (Pons and van Zanten 2007). The modes of coordination and control of the typical bureaucratic model ensure that practices conform to rules and procedures. In the post-bureaucratic regime, coordination and control are achieved instead through new complex tools such as external evaluations, audits, goals, contracts, benchmarks, and competitive measures (Maroy 2012). Classic national bureaucracies stress legal and other forms of “state knowledge,” including the “tacit knowledge” that comes from long experience in the “system” that is centralized within the ministry in charge. Post-bureaucracy is characterized by a multidirectional flow of ideas and the use of technical devices that facilitate circulation, access, use, and control of information for many members as well as by the relative openness to other actors, via the use of interactive websites, focus groups, and the like (Mahon 2008). Instead of traditional managing skills (i.e., control, coercion, and command), new governance involves the development of skills such as negotiation, accommodation, concertation, cooperation, and alliance formation. Actors in the new regulation mode should develop specific characteristics: being autonomous, responsible, competitive, and accountable (Pons and van Zanten 2007). The ethics and the common good of the bureaucratic-professional regulation system were justified in the name of rationality and the need of the nation-state scale for the greatest universality possible of rules, thus providing equal treatment and equal access to education (Kersbergen and Waarden 2004). The post-bureaucratic regulation prescribes a new normative system of reference based on performance, accountability, entrepreneurship, users’ choice, etc. (Maroy 2012).

The adoption of a post-bureaucratic regulation regime implies deep transformations of the structure of public administration, the incorporation of new knowledge, new tools, new skills, and new ethics. Changes in the administrations may create resistance among administration units and public servants against the new performance and governance culture and ethics. How are all these changes implemented in the public sector and how is resistance to change handled?

One of the problems raised by the transformations of the bureaucracy concerns the culture changes required, especially regarding the motivation of the administration and functionaries. For instance, the government’s efforts to expand its relationships with the Third Sector in England have been problematic. There have been considerable gaps between policy aspirations and implementation because the necessary culture changes have not occurred within central and local government, and pinch-points over full-cost contracts, accountability, and capacity remain (Kelly 2007). The “motivation problem” arises when targeted groups, or even administrations, refuse to recognize the legitimacy of a reform (Mayntz 1993 in Pons and van Zanten 2007). In order to avoid the motivation problem, it is crucial to secure support for organizational change among public service employees (Ferlie and Andresani 2006). However, when new actors with new skills take part in the implementation of a new regulation tool, functionaries in the ministry can regard this implementation as a social space for struggle to preserve their own monopoly of action (Buisson-Fenet 2007).

Governments modernize public services through outsourcing to the private sector and recruiting actors external to the bureaucracies, mainly consultants. Indeed, consultancy businesses, mainly big international companies, work on major reforms (Ball 2012). The role of consultancy is threefold: it takes part in the governance model representing business or NGO stakeholders, it disseminates the new regulation culture by incorporating new actors with performance-based ethics and culture, and it bypasses resistance since new actors external to the administrations are regarded as neutral and not involved in old status struggles in the units. Nevertheless, the increasing role and contribution of consultants encourage the growth of the consulting industry (Lubienski 2016) and suggest the emergence of a ‘consultocracy’ (Gunter et al. 2015).

Most of the literature on NPM and governance reforms in education explore the changes conducted in policy processes and the two models of the post-bureaucratic turns that emerged: the quasi-market model or the evaluative state regulatory model. Instead, the research this chapter is based upon intends to understand how the changes are introduced in the ministry and how NPM and NPG are actually incorporated into the bureaucratic body responsible for shaping education policy. As we will see, the study of the transformation of the Ministry of Education in Israel following the formation of the governance network, including the managerial regulation network and tri-sector cooperation network, points to a third regulation mode—a post-bureaucratic “NGO-ization” model.

3 Methodology

3.1 Actor Network Approach (ANT) and Governance Network: Managerial Assemblage and Tri-Sector Assemblage

The methodology drawn on ANT is narrowly connected to its theoretical approach. Developed by Latour (1987) and many others, ANT has only recently attracted the attention of education scholars (Fenwick and Edwards 2010). For ANT, the social is nothing other than patterned networks of heterogeneous materials (human and nonhumans), and its central goal is to understand the mechanics of power and organization and more precisely, how size, power, or organization are generated (Law 1992). Networks and assemblages are formed by heterogeneous human and nonhumans things, or entities connected and mobilized to act together through a great deal of on-going work. Following critiques of the boundaries that the concept of “network” presupposes, later developments of ANT (or after-ANT) have privileged the term “assemblage” as a central concept of analysis (Fenwick 2011). In this study, I use both concepts but differentiate between them. The governance network refers to the more extensive post-bureaucratic regulations in general, and “assemblages” refer to the smaller networks—the managerial assemblage and tri-sector cooperation assemblage that altogether constitute the large post-bureaucratic governance network part of a global governance network.

By tracing the formation of the managerial assemblage and the tri-sector cooperation assemblage first at the central government and then at the Ministry of Education, we intend to understand how the governance education network expanded in Israel and what are its characteristics. We follow the central human and nonhuman actors and the connections established between them based on interviews with senior civil servants at the Prime Minister Office and mainly at the Ministry of Education, analysis of official documentation, and online sites as well as observations of roundtable discussions.

4 The Emergence of the Governance Network in the Israeli Public Administration: Governmental Governance Network

The governance network in Israel is constituted by two distinct but partially superposed assemblages: the managerial assemblage aiming at instilling a regime of regulation based on accountability, benchmarking, and quantifying performance and the tri-sector cooperation assemblage aiming at establishing a partnership between the state, business, and civil society. As we will see, international organizations are central actors that encourage both managerial regulation and tri-sector governance. In Israel, as in many countries, the evolution of institutional regulation in education has been fostered by major legislation (Maroy 2012). And indeed, although the changes toward a managerial regulation and tri-sector cooperation had started several years before spearheaded by various actors, two government resolutions that passed in 2008 were decisive in the deep transformation process of the Israeli civil service: (1) Government resolution no. 3190 of 24.02.2008 regarding “The relationships between the government, the civil society, and the business sector that contribute to attain public objectives” and (2) Government resolution no. 4085 of 14.09.2008 concerning “Aspects regarding planning, measurement and control and recommendations for discussion in the government.”

Various interviewees pointed to the Second Lebanon War (2006) as the major turning point of the transformation toward managerial regulation and tri-sector cooperation because the war puts in evidence the lack of coordination of the third sector and the absence of governmental planning. Nevertheless, the formation of the government managerial assemblage and the tri-sector cooperation assemblage started before 2006, and many actors contributed to their reinforcement and expansion, among them the Aridor Committee (appointed in 2004). As the head of the Committee, Yoram Aridor specified, the reason for the appointment of the committee was that in “the absence of reliable data decision makers become accustomed to operating intuitively and their ability to conform to professional managerial norms is impaired. While nonprofit organization around the world are aided by reliable data in their decision making processes, Israeli organizations fail to meet this standard” (Limor 2004).

4.1 The Governmental Managerial Assemblage

An important actor of the managerial government network was the Kobersky Committee that undertook a comprehensive review of the civil service and other bodies supported by state funds. The Kobersky Report, submitted in 1989, was adopted by the Government, but most of its recommendations were not implemented at that time. The main recommendations were the following: to reduce the dimension of the government administration by outsourcing most of its activity and transforming it into “a compact and qualitative body”; to concentrate its decision-making only at its higher level and on shaping central government policies based on professional data and support; to improve dramatically the quality of civil servants and that of the service to the citizens by accelerating the computerization of all the ministries and their services, among other recommendations.¹

The need to implement a managerial mode of regulation and the idea that governments must develop new skills to be more effective were put forward by global actors and mainly the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (OECD 1995, 2000, 2001). According to OECD documents, since the mid-1990s, more than 75% of OECD countries have carried out an initiative in the area of measuring the outcomes of governments’ work and nearly 40% started these type of initiatives 10 years before. An OECD comparative study reports that governments make decisions based on a combination of outputs and outcome indicators but concludes that there is no “correct” way to measure outputs, and therefore, governments choose the model more suitable to their political and cultural context. The OECD specifies that the creation of a governmental general framework of planning and reporting is an important element of the process toward measuring outcomes and that indicators should be the basis of ministerial budgets’ construction (in Limor 2010).²

And indeed, as part of the process of incorporation of Israel to the OECD that occurred in 2010, the central administration in Israel examined a number of measurements recommended by the organization to assess the outcomes of governmental work. In 2008, governmental resolution (no. 4085 of 14.09.2008) on “Aspects regarding planning, measurement and control and recommendations for discussion in the government” was approved. The resolution states that “The Government of Israel considers important to improve planning, funding and control processes in its work, and in the work of the ministries, in order to turn them accessible and transparent to the public, as much as possible, by presenting them through outputs and outcomes defined in the spirit of the OECD recommendations.”

The governmental resolution also determined that the Policy Planning Section (which later became the Department of Governance and Social Affairs) “should direct the ministries to define targets, organizational indicators, output and outcome indicators in their proposals for resolutions submitted to the government, and through indicators define budgetary resources and their use […]. The Prime Minister’s Office will lead the process of instilling a planning, measurement and control approach based on outcomes and outputs into the ministries through the Department of Policy Planning […].”

The Governance and Social Affairs Department (Policy Planning) is divided into two units: the Governance Division and the Social Affairs Division. The Governance Division conducts several processes aiming at transforming the way the government works, among them:

• Instilling a governmental planning approach through the Governmental Planning Guide, developing planning skills in the ministries and centralizing and monitoring governmental plans

• Enhancing the Civil Service Reform in order to improve its human capital

• Centralizing governmental activity vis-à-vis the OECD regarding governance and public management and participating in the committee of the same name in the organization.³

As mentioned earlier, the Second Lebanon War (summer of 2006) was the trigger that fostered the managerial assemblage. When the Prime Minister’s Office intended to transfer 2,000,000,000 new shekels for the rehabilitation of the North area, damaged during the war, its Director General, Raanan Dinur, realized that no planning existed in the central government. Dinur, along with Ehud (Udi) Prawer, Deputy Director of the Policy Planning Department (at present the head of the Governance and Social Affairs Department), who was transferred to the Prime Minister’s Office in 2006, decided to formulate the Government Planning Guide. The team engaged in the formulation of the first edition of the guide, published in 2007, included representatives of several ministries—Prime Minister Office, Finance, Health, Economy and Industry, Welfare, Foreign Affairs, and Environmental protection. Its main task consisted of translating the British Planning Guide and adding to it the Israeli perspective (interview with a senior civil servant at the Prime Minister’s Office).

Three main actors participated in the implementation of the managerial regulation based on Government Planning Guide: Strategic Planning (tochnit estrateguit), Work Plan (tochnit avoda), and the “Tender to the integration of a planning, measurement and evaluation culture.” Strategic planning refers to a 3-year plan, whereas Work Plan corresponds to yearly planning. In 2009, both kinds of planning started to be incorporated in the different ministries under the responsibility of the Government Division in the Prime Minister’s Office through the integration of a planning, measurement, and evaluation culture into the ministries. How was it done? A senior civil servant of this division explains:

It was based on an intervention mode. First, through language, the language which is embodied in the Governmental Planning Guide. How did we proceed? We proposed two incentives to the ministries—one was to create a Policy Planning Department in the ministry and the other to use consulting companies. I suggested the recruitment of a consulting firm for the short time… the consulting firm speaks the language.

It is through the “Tender to the integration of a planning, measurement and evaluation culture” that a number of consulting firms were selected at the Prime Minister’s Office. Based on this “generic” tender that took 2 years of preparation, the ministries formulated a new tender adapted to the specificities of their ministries in order to choose one of the pre-selected firms to prepare the Work Plan in their offices.

When asked if the ministries could not deal with the changes by themselves, the senior civil servant explained: “No way!!! It is about a new way of thinking, a fresh view!! And sometimes you need a specialist for a specialized field such as managerial regulation.” He added:

Instilling this language would enable the ministries to communicate with each other on budgeting calculations, thinking based on outcomes and outputs and not on estimations … it was important to accustom the ministries to this language.

When asked whether the use of consulting was a way to diminish expenses, he clearly stated: “no…it does not reduce expenses... I don’t think that there was an economic consideration” (interview with Senior Civil Servant at the Prime Minister’s Office). He mentioned nine consulting firms selected, five of them were international ones—Deloitte, Forrest, Pareto, Martens Matrix, and Hoffman.

4.2 Governmental Tri-Sector Cooperation Assemblage

Since 2000, governance and the participation of business and civil society organizations in the provision of social services have been strongly fostered by international organizations. The Millennium Development Goals (2000) adopted by the United Nations encouraged the states to cooperate with the civil society and the business community in order to assure a sustainable, just, and equal society (in Limor 2010). The OECD also enhances “Citizens as Partners—Information, Consultation and Public Participation in Policy-Making” (OECD 2001).⁴ The European Union has promoted the comprehensive and progressive participation of civil society in countries’ development processes and in broader political, social and economic dialogues. “[...] regular dialogue and consultations with Civil Society (CS) is one of the principles stated in the Lisbon Treaty, (December 2009) with a view to ensuring consistency and transparency of EU policies.”⁵

On February 2008, the Prime Minister’s Office passed a government resolution on “The relationships between the government, the Civil Society, and the Business sector that contribute to attain public objectives.”⁶ The resolution states that “The ministries will maintain a continuous dialogue with civil society organizations and members of the business community that contribute to public objectives.” The resolution also creates a special unit that would deal with the cross-sector dialogue: “[…] as part of the process of planning and performing governmental policies the Department of Public Policy will create an ‘Advisory Unit on Cooperation’ that will deal with collaborations and continuous dialogue between the public sector, the business sector and the third sector.”⁷ It is important to note that in 2009, 54% of the total income of nonprofit institutions dealing mainly with health, education, and research was from government transfers, and based on another type of calculation, it could reach even 75–80% (Asban 2010: 29). Compared to the rest of the world, the percentage of “government transfers” in Israel is higher than the average of developed countries in the world (36% Government transfers) (Salamon 2010).

The governmental resolution on cross-sector dialogue drew on a policy paper entitled “Government of Israel, the Civil Society, and the Business Community: Partnership, Empowerment, and Transparency” (2008) that constituted part of the resolution. The policy paper clearly states the vision of the tri-sector partnership: “The government of Israel views civil society organizations and business enterprises operating to promote public purposes as partners in the effort to build a better Israeli society. […]. The government, having the authority and bearing the responsibility for setting policies, for providing core services, and for supervising them, views interested civil society organizations as partners in the provision of social services. […] The government calls on businessmen and private firms to continue to act in a way that reflects social responsibility and that recognizes the importance of the community and of society, and for its part will work to encourage activities of this kind.” The resolution specifies how the third sector should look like: “The government is looking for a responsible and independent third sector, which acts lawfully, and follows the norms of proper administration, transparency, and professionalism”. The resolution also defines the role of the government in the partnership: “As part of its role, the government will continue to carry out its supervisory and regulatory responsibilities.” ⁸

Various actors fostered the tri-sector cooperation before the Government resolution of 2008 passed. The tri-sector resolution was mainly based on the work of three public committees. First, “The Review Committee of Government Policy towards the Third Sector in Israel” (Galnoor 2003) headed by Izthak Galnoor, a professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who served as Head of the Civil Service Commission (1994–1996).⁹ The committee was an independent initiative of Prof. Benjamin Gidron, the founder and head of the Center for Research of the Third Sector at Ben Gurion University.¹⁰ The Center was the only institution in Israel holding a database on third-sector organizations. The objective of the Committee was “to strengthen these organizations and allow them to operate in a framework wherein the rules of the game are clear, transparent, and predefined” and to urge the government to devise a policy toward the third sector. The committee’s main recommendation was to regulate the relations between the government authorities and the third sector on the basis of a clearly outlined, transparent, and consistent policy, a policy that does not infringe in any way on the independence of the third-sector organizations (Limor 2004). Among the main recommendations, it included: “Government recognition of the special contribution of third sector organizations to Israeli society and the Israeli economy” and “Recognition of the importance of public funding for third sector organizations and the urgent need to regulate such funding.”¹¹ It is important to note the similarity of the language used in these recommendations and that of the government cross-sector resolution.

The second committee headed by Yoram Aridor, former Minister of Finance (1981–1983), aimed at examining State Assistance to Public Institutions”¹² [public institutions = meaning nonprofit organizations, the author clarification] was appointed in 2004 by the government in the wake of a State Comptroller report denouncing the lack of professional tools and data for decision-making. “The third sector in Israel” report (Limor 2004) authored by Nissan Limor served as background material for the committee’s work. Dr. Limor, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was a member of the first Galnoor Committee and also of the third committee. He also pointed to the need to create the Guidestar site for NGOs in Israel and submitted recommendations for its establishment.

The third committee for the “Review of third sector functions in Israel and their functioning during the Second Lebanon War,” whose recommendations were published in 2007,¹³ was headed by Prof. Gidron, who advocated the establishment of a special committee, which became the Galnoor Committee. This Committee was appointed at the request of Raanan Dinur, Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office (2006–2009), and included heads of the third-sector organizations and volunteer organizations. The committee submitted a number of recommendations “for the development of state policy in the volunteer and third-sector spheres.”

As we mentioned above, interviewees pointed to the Second Lebanon War (2006) that took place during Ehud Olmert’s office as Prime Minister, as the major turning point of the process that culminated in the Government resolution of 2008 on tri-sector cooperation. As one of the interviewees told us:

The state did not provide for the needs of the population in the North of the country and many NGOs assisted them, it was a large voluntary activity. Matan Vilnai (member of the Committee of Foreign Affairs and Security in the Knesset) arrived to the North and asked: “who coordinated all the activity?” He was told that there was not such a thing. Vilnai saw that there was lack of coordination between the organizations and no cooperation existed between them… people saw the chaos. The situation was chaotic, the state did not function and the third sector was not organized at all!!! (Interview with a consultant of Sheatufim)

Upon the approval of the governmental resolution, it was decided that the cross-sector dialogue should be conducted through discussion groups in roundtables. An academic team that included Prof. Galnoor, Prof. Gidron, and Dr. Limor formulated the “First framework documents for the constitution of the tri-sector dialogue.” Based on this document, the first roundtable, which became the Constitutive Roundtable, started to function in 2008 at the Prime Minister’s Office, and it serves to this day as the national platform for “constituting and managing the dialogue between the three sectors.” The tri-sector encounters had to address the government’s policy of support for volunteer organizations, the oversight of the third sector, the transparency of civil society, and the promotion of giving, in Israel (Blum 2009). The First Framework Document specified that an operator in charge of the technical topics would be assigned to each roundtable. The document also clarified that the operator should not take a position in the discussion, the function is mainly technical with the purpose of facilitating the discussion and assisting the group to enable its success. Other specifications about the roundtable functioning refer to the recommendations of the OECD which were added as an annex to the framework document.¹⁴

This constitutive roundtable became a central actor of the tri-sector assemblage and represents the main infrastructure for cross-sector dialogue in other areas and the model of cross-sector dialogue in other ministries: the Ministry of Welfare and Social Services, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and the Ministry of Education. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed the members of the Constitutive Roundtable following the academic team’s recommendations. It included senior civil servants, important persons from the business sector involved in philanthropy, and representatives of civil society organizations. The Prime Minister, along with Raanan Dinur, Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office, headed the first Constitutive Roundtable that met three times during 2008 and produced the Second Framework Document.¹⁵

The Social Affairs Division in the Governance and Social Affairs Department (Policy Planning) at the Prime Minister’s Office is responsible “for the consolidation and implementation of a policy that reinforces tri-sector cooperation and the participation of the public in the government work.” The benefit of the cross-sector dialogue is, according to the Social Affairs Division’s site, that “it enables the creation of a large and agreed-upon infrastructure for decision making, to develop the commitment of all the partners in the implementation and integration of the products of the dialogue and the ability to look at issues from different points of view.”¹⁶

5 The Governance Network in the Ministry of Education

5.1 The Managerial Assemblage

5.1.1 The Establishment of the Planning and Strategy Department and the Incorporation of a Managerial Culture

As part of the implementation of the government resolution of 2008, it was decided to create a Planning and Strategy department in all “executive” ministries. The Government Planning Guide included, among others, specific instructions for their creation. And indeed, in 2009, Dr. Zik Tomer, Deputy Director General and Senior Vice President for Administration and Human Resources, created a small Planning Unit during Gideon Saar’s office as Minister of Education (2009–2013). Previous efforts to incorporate a managerial culture had been carried out, mainly by Ami Volansky, Deputy Director General for Planning of the Ministry (1986–1988). However, only in 2014, the Planning and Strategy Department was founded in the Ministry of Education. A culture of measurements already existed in the ministry, developed mainly by RAMA (acronym for National Authority for Measurement and Evaluation in Education)¹⁷ but according to Official 2 of the Planning and Strategy Department a culture of planning did not exist.

Political or social events can accelerate processes that are slow and complex by nature such as the integration of managerial regulation into the administration. The comment of a civil servant shows how the 2011 protest movement¹⁸ hastened the changes in the administration:

Until the Trachtenberg Committee¹⁹ and the government resolution no. 4028 of 2011 that replaced the resolution of 2008 (no. 4085) on planning, measurement and control, our office was really, was rather liminal, completely marginal. The Trachtenberg Committee encouraged and reinforced us [the Planning and Strategy Department] and since then, the Planning Unit became more and more robust in the offices here in the ministry (Official 2, Planning and Strategy Department, interview 2).

Michal Tabibian-Mizrahi, who worked at the Government and Social Affairs Department in the Prime Minister’s Office and participated in the creation of many planning departments in different ministries, was appointed head of the newly founded Planning and Strategy Department at the Ministry of Education in 2014, a department that comprises the Planning Division and the Strategy and Policy Division. An official at the department explains: “What is planning and strategy? Planning and learning, it was the basis of the planning section, data-based decisions are areas that we begin to move through, and systemic changes. Strategy—is increasing effectiveness, trust in long-term thinking” (Interview with official 2, Planning and Strategy Department). When asked about the level of cooperation of functionaries in the ministry with the Planning Division’s initiatives, the functionary responds: “as a whole, people in central units and the heads of the districts cooperated, they were happy to be assisted in their planning. At the beginning, there was some resistance because they didn’t really believe that we would really take their Work Plan seriously” (Official 1, Planning and Strategy Department). Another official at the section expresses his/her view on the evolution of the management culture in the ministry and in the education system in general: “Education planning is something new … we started three years ago, only in 2014 …but now the school principal, the regional director and the bodies of the central administration in the ministry, all of them, they know how to plan, how to think during the year and also the following two years” (Official 1, Planning and Strategy Department).

The establishment of the department in the ministry was the initiative of the Director General at that time, Michal Cohen, and it was supported by the minister Shai Piron (2013–2014). They appointed new heads for several central units, who shared a managerial culture and would cooperate willingly with the new department and the transformation of the ministry’s organization culture. They included the Director of Education Workers Administration, who is simultaneously one of the two deputy directors general of the ministry, the head of the Pedagogic Office, the head of the Pedagogic Administration, the head of Society and Youth Administration, the Acting Chief Scientist and the head of Research and Development.

The approach of Michal Tabibian-Mizrachi, the head of the new department, was to incorporate managerial regulation progressively and gain the support of the central administration’s vice-directors-general in order to avoid resistance. She spent the first year in her job learning the terrain and approaching the central administration in order to gain their trust. Their support was essential, since each project launched by the department needed the cooperation of one or several units.

One of the main goals of the department is to foster data-based processes for decision-making. A civil servant of the department explains the difficulty of making decisions without the needed information: “|For instance, in the case of an educational network with many schools, do you think that I can tell you how efficient is this specific network compared to a local authority with the same characteristics? Impossible, because we don’t have data.” The division plans to carry out studies to evaluate the efficiency of different kind of schools, networks, and local authorities which will enable, according to the functionary, to make proper decisions in education.

The Strategy and Policy Division is responsible for systemic changes such as encouraging inter-organizational relations. Managerial regulation emphasizes inter-organizational relations, working by projects and horizontal circulation of knowledge between the units of the public service (Jessop 1995). It is through the initiative called “Involving Relationships” (Yachasim Mearvim) that the Strategy and Policy Division attempts to encourage inter-organizational relations and the cooperation between units in projects. By instilling a common managerial language and promoting inter-organizational relations, the Strategy and Policy Division aims at rationalizing the ministry’s activities. An official of the Planning and Strategy Department tells us how they intervene in order to rationalize the ministry and eliminate unnecessary parallel activities. “Both units, the Pedagogic Administration and the Pedagogic Office, work on students’ competencies but one speaks about “Skills of the 21th century” and the other about “Learner abilities”; we are working on the unification of the language used in both units. The Strategy and Policy Division leads this activity since as the official explains: “we have the skills for conducting workshops, leading thinking processes, that’s what we know to do, in this case, leading to a common approach, a common language on meaningful learning.” He/she adds:

I think … the units understand our value and our contribution to their decision making and also the fact that they get information about other units. Through us people get a systemic picture and it is important since they want to function systemically in order to succeed.

Another perspective on the language unification process, a dissenting view, was shared by a senior functionary (2) of the Pedagogic Office. Regarding the Pedagogic Administration’s language she/he claims:

They speak about ideas, nothing to do with disciplines. We do not really believe in this separation between generic ideas and subject matters. If you talk to a teacher and you speak to him/her about ‘meaningful learning’ and tell them all the bombastic words but don’t connect them to their disciplines it makes no sense for them!! But [the process] is a struggle, it is a power struggle!

When asked about the activity of the Planning and Strategy Department, he/she responds: “I think it’s nice to have goals and to plan... but the attempt to quantify pedagogical issues is terribly difficult. It is not clear that they know how” (former senior functionary 2, Pedagogic Office, interview 2).

A civil servant of the Planning and Strategy Department discusses the evolution of the managerial culture in the Ministry of Education and in the public service in general. He/she used to participate every year in the Public Governance Committee (PGC) of the OECD “that helps countries strengthen their capacity to govern by improving policy-making systems and the performance of public institutions.”²⁰ And according to the civil servant, it was “in order to learn from other countries’ experiences, mainly from countries such as Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands which are similar in size and population to Israel.” In 2010, Michal Tabibian-Mizrahi, working then at the Prime Minister’s Office, coordinated a committee that dealt with the acceptance of Israel to the OECD and a sub-committee on the public service. The civil servant comments: “We felt very bad about the situation in Israel. But now when I attend the PGC, I feel much better; people learn from us, for instance, the Government Planning Guide has been translated into Norwegian” (Official 1, Planning and Strategy Department).

The functionary stresses the significance of the managerial culture in the eyes of the central government and tells us about the ceremony that takes place every year at the end of the planning conference organized by the Prime Minister’s Office. “General Directors of the different ministries are invited to the podium, to speak to the audience”; she/he specifies, “this act aims at reinforcing planning and performing as the new skills” (Official 1, Planning and Strategy Department).

5.1.2 Main Actors: “Education Picture,” “Present,” “Work Plan,” and “Strategic Plan”

The first projects the new department conducted were the “Education Picture” (Hatmuna Hachinuchit) and the “Present” (Matana—acronym for compilation, planning, and management). The Education Picture is an index to measure schools’ quality through indicators such as students’ achievements, volunteering, enlistment in the army, quality of graduation certificates, integration of special education, and so on. It was developed after a process of online consultation with 3500 different persons, including focus groups in which education networks and nonprofit organizations participated. The Present is a yearly guide for schools and kindergartens; it includes the Education Ministry’s planning framework and is handed to schools in order to plan and attain specific targets and outcomes accordingly.²¹ The Present was developed in closed collaboration with the Pedagogic Administration and involved a complex process based on dialogue with a large number of school principals and district directors all over the country (former head of Pedagogic Administration).

The “Education Picture” and the “Present” became main actors in the managerial assemblage, but other actors such as “Planning Days” and the “Evaluation of the Situation” contributed also in instilling regulation by numbers into the ministry.

Every year, the Planning Division organizes common Planning Days for all the bodies of the education system in which officials of the central administration, directors of district offices and representatives of principals take part. As the senior civil servant comments: “these planning days in common represent the highly integrative character of our planning work and the integration we want to attain in the whole system.” The “Evaluation of the Situation” (Ha’arachat Mazav) of the education system, a document that has to be produced every 3 years, is a 2–3 months process in which the Planning and Strategy Department’s staff learn about the Israeli education system based on research in Israel and in the world, through parameters defined by the Section.

The Strategy and Policy Division’s responsibilities include the development of the Work Plan (Tochnit Avoda) at the ministry. Each unit sends its Work Plan to the Strategy and Policy Division and receives feedback on the plan. At present, the Strategy Division works with 19 units including 10 units at the central administration and 9 districts. The Strategy and Policy Division built a forum of “Planning appointees” who corresponds in fact to the second person in the hierarchy of all the units mentioned. As a civil servant from the Planning and Strategy Department explains: “very soon they understood that those who do not participate in the forum would not be involved in the ministry’s Work Plan nor in the Strategic Plan of the Prime Minister’s Office.” Work Plans are a tool for constructing new skills but also for creating alignment among the different units at the ministry. As the civil servant comments: “If in the past people used to plan their work according to what they thought was good, today you have to plan in light of common objectives, targets and in cooperation with other units.”

Another important actor of the managerial assemblage is represented by the Strategic Plan (Tochnit estrategit). In order to build the Strategic Plan, the Strategy and Policy Division gathered all the central administration functionaries along with a number of teachers and principals. Together, they conceived a strategic plan with objectives, targets, and tasks, and the following year they also added indicators. When asked about the past, the functionary responds: “Indeed, there were also targets in the past, but they were targets formulated in the way education people like to think about them, in a very holistic manner,” and he/she adds: “Only the last year we added an indicator to almost each target. We have ten key indicators and several more that are optional.”

The Planning and Strategy Department is in charge of the “Atudot Program for the Senior Level in the Education System” an in-service training program for middle rank officials. It is part of the Atudot Israel, the program conceived at the Prime Minister’s Office in order to prepare a pool of professional civil servants for the public administration.²²

5.1.3 Young Officials with Public Policy Background, Forum of Planning Appointees, and Consulting Firms

As we have seen, the incorporation of a performance-based culture in the Ministry of Education is first and foremost the responsibility of the recently created Planning and Strategy Department. It is a senior-level department outside of the ministry that as a civil servant in the department explains: “is a young and energetic body inside the ministry but it does not depend on it and is not involved in its internal idiosyncrasy and politics” (Official 1, Planning and Strategy Department). As a senior department, it enjoys independence, and as a new unit, it can bypass traditional power struggles in the ministry and foster the new regulation.

The section attempts to instill their performance-based culture without the use of coercion: “we tried to lead a process of learning, a process of development and change through learning, but this only suits some people, I think this is a more modern kind of management that corresponds to the new generation of functionaries (Official 1, Planning and Strategy Department).” The officials in this section believe in a dialogical, non-coercive, and progressive mode of action, and this managerial culture makes it hard to ally all the workers of the ministry into their projects.

The functionaries at the new unit—the Planning and Strategy Department which includes the Planning Division and the Strategic and Policy Division—have a similar profile: they are relatively young, and most of them graduated from Public Policy university departments. Evaluation, performance measurement, and outcome-based planning are the basis of the language students acquire in their public policy studies. Many people in their 30s or 40s with public policy background have been recruited as heads of departments ensuring that the new generation in the ministry shares a managerial culture. But as a functionary of the Strategy and Planning Department comments: “there are still many heads who belong to another generation.” In addition, the young section heads are aware of the limitations of their training: “we do not have any pedagogical knowledge, nevertheless, over time we are developing an education expertise” (Official 1, Planning and Strategy Department).

What is the dynamic employed to advance managerial regulation in the ministry? First, the officials working in the new department and other close collaborators discuss projects and exchange ideas. The work team elaborates the main ideas of a project, and then the Planning Appointees Forum mentioned above disseminates the project to the units. An official of the section explains that the Planning Appointees are the vehicle to spread the managerial language.

It began with the fact that they are responsible for planning in their units and we work on planning the project with them. But the idea is to also leverage them to influence the processes of change. So, let’s say, now we want to launch a process on school autonomy, so we will incorporate them into the process and through them, school autonomy or another process will reach their units. We hardly stand on the front, that is, we work only through other central units (Official 2, Planning and Strategy Department, interview 2).

The Planning Appointees Forum comprises 35 members who are deputy directors of the different units. They meet on average once a month, and the Strategic and Policy Division organizes a whole learning day for them. “Each year they work on another issue and they come in order to disseminate the new approaches elaborated in the forum and incorporate them into their units” (Official 1, Planning and Strategy Department).

Besides being the vehicle of dissemination of the managerial language, the Planning Appointees Forum participates in a socialization process aimed at instilling the work team and dialogical spirit among officials of the different units. The head of the Planning and Strategy Department explains:

The main thing, if you ask me, is that a very strong network of people was established here. It is the first time that suddenly someone from Informal Education sits with someone who is responsible for Children and Youth at Risk, and they talk because they never have this interface point. Someone from the Central District learns something from someone from the Southern District, because they never had this forum in which people sit and learn together. This is something that has really strengthened the system.

In spite of the huge task transforming the organizational culture of the ministry entails, the two divisions of the new Planning and Strategy Department rely only on less than ten workers, and part of them are temporary workers, student jobs. This means that the task of instilling a managerial regulation into the ministry is mainly conducted by consulting firms. A civil servant of the department comments that “consulting service is less about thinking and more about technology” and specifies that, for instance, the “Evaluation of the Situation” of the ministry—that, as we have seen above, is about learning about the Israeli education system compared to those of other countries—will be managed by an external firm, Tack-Tovanot, an Israeli firm that won the tender. “Tack-Tovanot, they provide us with a platform that we do not possess, Tack-Tovanot is one of the five consulting firms that participated in the tender of the Planning and Strategy Department in the Ministry of Education, five firms that have been selected from the list provided by the Prime Minister’s Office” (Official 2, Planning and Strategy Department, interview 2).

The use of consultants enables the ministry to launch ambitious projects and at the same time to reduce the number of employees, shrinking the state bureaucracy as fostered by the new managerial culture. Consulting firms provide a temporary workforce, but as the head of the department explains, consultants also provide new ideas and reinforce legitimization of government policy.

When you work with external companies, some of which are non-profit organizations and some business entities, you get more “soldiers” for the work but also more specific value. And I think that with external counsel you have an opportunity to get people from the outside world who are different from you. Consultants… their value is both in their expertise and in their being mediators. Since they are not from the government, it allows them to bridge gaps in trust, thus enabling the implementation of governmental policies.

Part of the work of the Planning and Strategy Department is conducted through consultation with different stakeholders. Since, as a civil servant of the department explains: “We understand that in order to influence education we actually have to involve as many stakeholders as possible, not only principals and parents but also local authorities and central NGOs.” She/he specifies: “such was the case of the Education Picture, it was shaped through public consultation and again, Tack-Tovanot provided the platform,” but as the civil servant clarifies, even with the support of the consulting firm, the process of public consultation is a hard and complex task: “a successful consultation requires a thorough preparation that includes well-prepared background papers and the choice of experts who will be involved in the process, this is not an easy choice at all” (Official 1, Planning and Strategy Department).

During the academic year 2016–2017, a large consultation process was conducted around school autonomy. A committee for the examination of school autonomy was appointed by the Director General of the ministry in 2012. The committee headed by Mr. Shimon Harel²³ and led by the Planning and Strategy Department included representatives of the ministry, the third sector, municipalities, and principals. The committee led a large online consultation in which twenty thousand people were invited to participate: all the school principals in Israel, all the inspectors, and a few thousand teachers. Their input was provided through questions formulated by the committee.

The efforts to involve different education stakeholders in policy-making reflect the culture of the managerial regulation and tri-sector cooperation that the Planning and Strategy Department embodies. However, the consultation mode provides additional benefits: “it is a way of getting legitimacy from the public for our moves and avoid resistance from the ground, but also to hinder opposition from the central administration here in the ministry” (Official 1, Planning and Strategy Department).

When asked about the role of the Planning and Strategy Department, the functionary interviewed summarizes: “We are not the brain here but let’s say we are the neurons of this enormous body called Ministry of Education.”

5.2 The Tri-Sector Assemblage

5.2.1 External Programs: Unregulated and Uncontrolled Nonprofit and For-profit Organizations’ Educational Activities

The involvement of the third sector in the education system in Israel has increased significantly since the 1990s, a trend that continues until the present. The Central Bureau of Statistics reported that in 2009, the third sector was responsible for funding educational projects equivalent to 17% of the total of national expenses on pre-elementary education, 13% of the total expenses in elementary education and 44% of the total of national expenses on post elementary education. In 2010, nonprofit and commercial organizations funded 7% of the total national expenses on education in Israel, a percentage considerably higher than in other OECD countries (OECD 2003).²⁴

In 2007, 353,000 workers were employed in nonprofit institutions, about 13% of all jobs in the Israeli economy. Most of the jobs were concentrated in education and research (49%) (Asban 2010: 15).

For decades, we have witnessed a growing participation of nonprofit and for-profit organizations in the provision of education programs, nevertheless national policies for the regulation of these external programs were not established until recently. The Attorney General pointed already in 1988 to the lack of control and regulation of NGOs and disseminated a “Procedure for cooperation between ministries and NGOs.”

Since 2000, the Ministry of Education has made several attempts to map and regulate external programs. Some attempts had meager success, but others contributed to the reinforcement of the tri-sector assemblage.

In 2003, the Pedagogic Administration requested from the directors of departments and units a list of all the programs operated by the Ministry’s units or by external entities. The list obtained was partial due to the difficulties in collecting the necessary information. In 2004, the Director General demanded the heads of ten units at the ministry to produce a list of the external programs, but the information provided was still incomplete. In June 2006, the Director General instructed units’ and districts’ directors to submit a list of external bodies with whom the Ministry was in contact. Again, the instruction was only partly fulfilled. In 2007, a public committee, the “Committee for determining criteria for the entry of intervening bodies, and the activities of the third sector in the education system” (Zailer Committee) submitted its report. Among the main recommendations: a comprehensive mapping of the existing programs and the establishment of a procedure defining the criteria according to which those interested in operating in educational institutions will be authorized.²⁵

Since the submission of the report, a number of attempts to implement its recommendations have been made. First, two surveys on external programs were carried out, one published in 2008 and the other in 2009; second, the publication of a circular by the Director General in 2010 with clear instructions and criteria for the introduction of external programs into schools; third, the establishment of a unit in the Ministry of Education for the approval of external programs as a result of the circular.

The first survey mentioned above was a report published by the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Education in August 2008. This report summarized a survey conducted on his behalf to examine the activities of external programs in elementary and junior high schools. The report recommended, inter alia, to proceed with the monitoring and regulation of the activities of external bodies operating in educational institutions and to establish a database including the information about external programs.²⁶

The second survey was a mapping of external programs which the ministry assigned to the Institute for Educational Entrepreneurship, headed by Bat-Chen Weinberg at Beit Berl Academic College. The survey, an important actor of the tri-sector network, was completed in 2009 and gave an idea of the dimension of the nonprofit and for-profit organizations’ activities in the education system. The survey found that associations, foundations, and business organizations operate up to three educational programs in 68% of schools and at least six programs in 21% of the schools. They also found that most of the programs were integrated in educational institutions without any supervision or control by the Ministry (Weinberg and Shifman 2008). In addition, the survey showed the lack of transparency of the external bodies and the pedagogical and budgetary distortions resulting from the inability to manage the resources on a systemic basis which should guarantee an equalitarian social distribution (Dagan-Buzaglo 2010).

The main recommendations of this survey were as follows:

• Formulation of a policy by the Ministry of Education about the partnership with external bodies operating in educational institutions in conjunction with the different stakeholders.

• Development of a detailed common database of existing external programs.

• Definition of responsibility areas for cross-sector cooperation.

• Systematic and professional evaluation.

• Encourage and direct cross-sector cooperation (Weinberg and Shifman 2008).

The survey conducted by Weinberg and her associates is a key actor of the tri-sector assemblage. It is the first official document issued in collaboration with the Ministry of Education that clearly emphasizes the need for cross-sector cooperation reflecting the Prime Minister’s Office resolution of 2008.

The circular, disseminated in 2010 by the Director General, adopts a similar discourse in favor of the cooperation with the third sector: “The entry of third sector organizations and the business community into the education system can contribute to the realization of education policy, the mobilization of external resources and the creation of new professional knowledge. Therefore, the Ministry of Education is encouraging programs that originate from these organizations.”²⁷ The DG’s circular set out a set of clear criteria and an orderly mechanism for approval of external plans and established the founding of a new body in charge of the task: the “Unit for approval of programs from the third sector and the business community” under the “Professional Training and Development of Teaching Staff Administration” in the ministry. The circular also mentions the Ministry’s intention to build a computerized database of programs.²⁸ The latter, as we will see further on, evolved into the online database of external programs inaugurated a few years later.

In the 2012–2013 academic year, the booklet Tafnit (acronym of “pedagogical infrastructure for selecting programs” in Hebrew), mapping more than 211 external programs operated in partnership with representatives from the Ministry’s headquarters, was distributed. It includes pedagogical and organizational criteria that define a proper program, tools, and models designed to help school principals with an informed choice of programs.

The lack of regulation of external programs and the public echo about it, fostered the State Comptroller to examine these programs and in the Report no. 62 published in 2012, he concluded: “Thousands of external programs are taking place in the education system every year. Various programs were integrated into schools, many times without any regulated request, examination and authorization proceedings. Due to the lack of clear policy regarding the functioning of these programs, what has been going on in educational institutions during the last few years has been defined by third sector’s and business sector’s actions on the ground […] The findings of this report demonstrate that the central administration has to proceed with a comprehensive and deep regulation of the entire external programs topic and first of all to finalize the formulation of a ministerial policy.”²⁹ The comptroller found that for years ambiguity had existed regarding who in the Ministry of Education was responsible for the examination and approval of external programs.³⁰

Thus, the State Comptroller and his annual report became a significant actor in the tri-sector network since the harsh critiques expressed in the report spurred the foundation of a new and innovative unit in the Ministry as a tool to remedy the long-lasting disorder and uncontrolled functioning of the external programs.

5.2.2 Cross-Sector Programs and Cooperation Unit: Consultation, Roundtable, and Wisdom of the Masses

At the end of 2012, the Cross-sector Programs and Cooperation Unit was founded at the Pedagogic Administration in the Ministry of Education as the unique body to deal with the regulation and monitoring of external programs. The founding of the unit was the initiative of Michal Cohen, who was Deputy Director General at the time and later became Director General of the ministry. A school principal with no previous experience at the ministry was appointed head of the new section. From the outset, the new unit’s mode of operation was different from the traditional ministry’s mode; it aimed at formulating a policy on external programs based on a cross-sector dialogue. The tools chosen were consultations, roundtables, and work teams, all of them technically supported by consulting companies.

The first step undertaken was a large consultation with different stakeholders, including the participation of the Deputy Director General. The consultation consisted of four meetings held during 2013, with hundreds of CEOs of nonprofit organizations, foundations, and the business sector as well as inspectors, principals, and representatives of the ministry’s administration. The aim was listening to nonprofit’s and foundations’ CEOs to try to understand what they thought about the functioning of the ministry on external programs and what were their expectations from the ministry on the topic. And indeed, the consultation clarified the main problems of the interaction of the ministry with bodies operating external programs. As the head of the unit tells us:

They said about us, about the Ministry of Education, you are slow, until you move…we… the associations… we are already in the field […] every office, every section in the ministry speaks a different language, tell us what language to use, what you want. You are the Ministry of Education, we really want you to be a guiding hand, you need to grow up a spine... we want you to be strong … be a beacon for us.

When asked about their desired goals, nonprofit CEOs stressed two main issues: first, “one entrance door to the ministry” meaning that only one unit at the ministry should be responsible for the external programs and, second, “let the school principal … be a professional gatekeeper … give him professional tools to choose a program by mapping out what already exists” (Head of Unit, interview 1).

The second step was the organization of cross-sector roundtables. Four roundtables were organized in 2014, chaired by the Director General of the ministry and with the participation of representatives of the Ministry of Education (from the central administration, districts, principals, and teachers), municipalities, third-sector organizations, and the business community. The main recommendations of the roundtables were as follows:

• A. The external programs’ database—policy recommendations and characterization of an Internet database for external programs in the education system, in cooperation with the ICT Section of the Ministry of Education.

• B. An agreed-upon process for building an optimal partnership at the school level—An agreed-upon work process for integrating external programs in schools was presented. The process was based on knowledge gathered from all members of the planning team, including the heads of the education departments of local authorities, school principals, managers of nonprofit organizations, and others.

• C. Formulation of a tri-sector convention for establishing the rules of the cross-sector dialogue and cooperation (Director General, Ministry of Education).³¹

The third step was the organization of work teams comprising different stakeholders to discuss each one of the tasks decided upon in the roundtable. In mid-2014, the three tasks were accomplished: database’s principles were defined, the process for integrating external programs in schools was delineated, and the cross-sector convention formulated.

The online database was a complex and costly high-tech project. Initially, third-sector representatives demanded outsourcing of the task because of their lack of trust in the ability of the ministry units to efficiently and rapidly fulfill a major task. Nevertheless, the project was completed satisfactorily and in a short period of time by the computerization unit in the ministry.

It was decided that during the first stage of its functioning, every program operating in the education system by a profit or nonprofit organization should be registered in the database. Each program would contain professional feedback, in some cases feedback from the ministerial staff, but in most cases from school principals. Principals were supposed to provide feedback on the programs operating in their schools, assessing the quality of the program. This regulation, based on the wisdom of the masses (the principals), helps address the lack of the ministry staff needed to control and assess thousands of programs already circulating in the education system. The idea was that for the 2015–2016 school year, principals would be able to choose only programs that appear in the database and that in the following year unregistered programs would be forbidden from operating (Head of the Unit, interview 3).

The online database was an innovative way to regulate the programs and monitor nonprofit and for-profit organizations. By November 2017, 2365 external programs had been registered in the database,³² but only 230 had been rated and gotten feedback.³³ “Principals claimed that they have no time, but in my opinion the problem is that in Israel we don’t have a culture of posting your opinion, it will take some time” (Head of the Unit, Interview 3).

Due to the success of the process undertaken by the cross-sector unit, the Director General of the ministry encouraged the head to extend their activity to other units. “We became experts on processes, experts on cross-sector dialogue and experts on collaborations. We help other units plan and organize cross-sector projects.” The head of the unit mentioned the different roundtables they were organizing, among others, the Health project which depends on the Health Department of the Ministry of Education and intends to involve many bodies (health foundations, dietitians, sports centers, health NGOs, mental health organizations, etc.), and the LGBT project requested by the Psychological Service Administration.

In addition, the expertise developed in the Cross-sector Programs and Cooperation Unit engendered a project outside of the Ministry of Education. The inter-ministerial “Government and Civil Society Initiative” chaired by the Director General of the Ministry of Education and the participation of six “social” ministries (among them Health, Education, Welfare and Justice) intend to transfer the successful experience of cross-sector dialog in the Ministry of Education to other ministries. “The Ministry of Education is the leading ministry on the topic and the only one to possess a special cross-sector cooperation unit” (Head of the Unit, Interview 2).

In addition, the Cross-sector Programs and Cooperation Unit plans to expand its activity to new areas: training and investigation. As the head of the unit explains: “we also want to develop a cross-sector cooperation course for school principals and we plan to undertake surveys and studies in order to understand the geographical layout of external programs, the relationship between their quantity and quality and their impact on school’s performance.”

6 “Who Manages Whom?”: “NGOization” and “Consultization” of Policy-Making

The growing involvement of nonprofit and for-profit organizations in the production of education reflects the NGOization of the Ministry of Education (Yacobi 2007) and represents new challenges to the ministry. As a senior functionary in the area of sciences explains: “working with NGOs is a very delicate ‘game’ between people who want to give money under their conditions and our needs, the needs of the ministry.” And she/he specifies: “One of the problems with NGO programs is that most of the foundations work with matching, they ask for matching from municipalities and sometimes the municipalities that accept the matching (or have the money for it) are not those to whom we want to provide the program” (former senior functionary 2, Pedagogic Office, interview 2). This is an example of the decreasing control of the ministry on policy decisions. Since functionaries are not the sole actors in the scene, their policies have to take NGOs’ conditions into account.

The regulation of the external programs through the wisdom of the masses might work for most NGOs. However, it is more difficult to exert control on big organizations such as the Rashi Foundation and the Trump Foundation. These and other philanthropic organizations that invest millions in education in Israel can bypass the Pedagogic Office or the need to register in the database. The Rashi Foundation functions at the district level, and it “enters certain districts directly, they don’t pass through the ministry” (Former senior functionary 2, Pedagogic Office, interview 2). Similarly, the Trump Foundation is not subjected to the Pedagogic Office’s control, a fact that makes the senior functionary wonder about “Who manages whom? We manage them or them us?” She/he explains:

The Trump Foundation is an extremely strong foundation and his director, Eli Hurvitz³⁴, has direct contact with the Minister of Education and the Director General here and they can ‘do business’ without consulting us [the Pedagogic Office] at all. On some issues they ask our opinion, sometimes they only inform us about their activities but in others they decide directly with the Minister and the Director General. In some cases when the Director General lacks ten million then she knows that the foundation will provide. And as you know, whoever pays gets to decide what goes on, and sometimes we have the feeling that they became the Ministry of Education, in my view they have too much power.

And indeed, the literature points to the evolving role of philanthropists who decide and control to what and how to donate. This evolution increases their influence in education policymaking through seeding and shaping the nonhierarchical structures (Lubienski 2016).

The problem of who controls education policy is even more acute if we realize that when referring to civil society organizations, it is increasingly difficult to differentiate between nonprofit and for-profit organizations. And that is because some of the largest business entities operate in the public sphere, including in education, through NGOs; hence, the motivations underlying NGOs’ activities are not always exclusively philanthropic, but may also be economic (Rose 2009). The increasing use of tender for service provision in the ministries means that the third-sector organization has to conduct itself as a business, preparing proposals, arranging guarantors, etc. Thus, as the use of the tender system increases, the line between voluntary and commercial action becomes blurred (Limor 2004). Moreover, the growing prominence of social impact investment (SII), a variant of venture philanthropy or philanthro-capitalism, blurs even more the difference between nonprofit and for-profit organizations. SII operates with the belief that doing well by doing good or, more literally, “doing good by doing good business” is the best approach to solving entrenched social problems (Mitchell 2017).

Setting in motion the tri-sector dialogue demands complex and sophisticated human and technological platforms. These tools are provided by consulting companies that are in charge of the functioning of roundtables and consultations in all stages of the process. Consulting companies were selected by tenders among the companies selected (also by tender) by the Prime Minister’s Office. It was Sheatufim (literally = collaborations) that won the tender to put in place the tri-sector dialogue in the Ministry of Education. It is interesting to note that Sheatufim and its Executive Director, Shlomo Dushi, led the first constitutive Prime Minister’s Office roundtable³⁵ (interview with a Sheatufim consultant). Moreover, Bat-Chen Weinberg who headed the Institute for Educational Entrepreneurship and prepared the external programs survey, a key nonhuman actor of the tri-sector cooperation assemblage, became a senior consultant in Sheatufim and led roundtables at the Ministry of Education.

Consulting companies are main actors in the tri-sector cooperation assemblage as we have seen is the case of the managerial assemblage at the ministry. This reflects the consultization of the Ministry of Education, meaning an increasing involvement of consulting companies in the different activities carried out by the ministry. Among the companies that have operated and operate in the ministry, we find several well-known international consulting firms such as TASK, TACK, Deloitte, De Levitt, Trigger Forest, and also various Israeli ones such as Lotem, Tefen, Arbiv Management, Tovanot (literally = insights), Tovanot Bechinuch (Insights in Education) (Official 1, Prime Minister’s Office). The increasing demand to provide advisory services to ministries contributes to the expansion of consulting as a distinctive economic sector in Israel. The number of consulting firms—international, international firms with a local branch, and Israeli—has been multiplying in Israel.

One of the consequences of the development of business consultancy is the transfer of educational professionals into private businesses which is also a means to use the public service experience at the service of the consulting industry (Ball 2008). Indeed, in Israel, many professionals who left the civil service have been attracted to the consulting industry. Such was the case of Dr. Gal Alon who used to work in the Prime Minister’s Office and later founded Tovanot, a very successful consulting firm.³⁶ When asked about the different consulting firms that submit tenders, an official of the Prime Minister’s Office responded: “our country is not that big, I know all the companies and their head managers, they also used to work in government offices” (Official 1, Prime Minister’s Office).

Another consequence of outsourcing ministry’s functions concerns long-term influences of consultancy on policy-making. In the outsourcing process, there is the understanding that the public body holds the main responsibility and the private body only implements the policy on the basis of predefined criteria. Supporters of privatization assume that it is possible to truly separate fields of knowledge in a hermetic manner, and to deal effectively on a case-by-case basis, detached from the general, systemic, institutional, or chronological context. However, they ignore the damage that outsourcing processes cause to the overall knowledge of the system. In areas where knowledge is important, such as planning, outsourcing leads consulting firms to accumulate more expertise over the years than the public body that is supposed to guide it has. In such a situation, the administrative unit finds it increasingly difficult to plan and supervise policy (Paz-Fuchs 2012).

It is important to note that the officials at the Planning and Strategy Department are aware of this problem and try to overcome it:

The subject of knowledge preservation and knowledge development, we are really aware of it. If you look at the tender we published then you’ll see that it’s in there, and that we’re really telling the ministries and telling consultants, people who are service operators, that there’s a duty to keep the knowledge in the ministry, because the knowledge is ours. They have to train people in the units for them to develop that knowledge in the government, and that they [the units] will not be dependent solely on them [consultant firms]. (Head of the Planning and Strategy Department)

The former Head of the Pedagogic Administration, the biggest unit in the ministry, clarifies that the tendency is to leave “sensitive” matters such as pedagogical questions or supervision of different types of student populations, in the hands of the ministry in order to avoid the handling of sensitive data outside of the ministry (Interview, former Head of Pedagogic Administration). In spite of the efforts to incorporate the knowledge in the units, experience has shown that Israel does not excel, to put it mildly, in regulating and supervising privatized bodies. As a result, increasing outsourcing and policy-making through consulting firms causes the state to detach itself from its duty to determine policy (Paz-Fuchs 2012).

Officials under NPM (and also NPG) lose their top-down authority over public bureaucracies and managers because it prioritizes performance over accountability to citizens and also because it is difficult to maintain and increase the bottom-up control of all officials, including those employed on contracts (Kersbergen and Waarden 2004). The failed control of the ministry along with the loss of officials in favor of the edu-business and the loss of managerial-education expertise—all these processes weaken the Ministry of Education institutionally. Instead, the new actors, particularly private business and philanthropists, give rise to the global education industry that seeks to set policy agendas, frame policy problems, and refashion regulatory regime to their advantage (Verger et al. 2016).

7 Conclusions: The Post-bureaucratic NGOization Regulation Model

A rich literature deals with the shift in the mode of regulation of public administrations in the world to a performance-based model inspired by New Public Management (NPM). However, empirical studies that explore the way new regulations are incorporated in the public bureaucracies are scant.

The aim of the study presented here has been to understand the complex process of transforming a bureaucratic public administration into a post-bureaucratic one through the incorporation of a mode of regulation anchored in New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG). Drawing on actors-network theory (ANT), we followed the formation of the governance network first at the Central Government and then in the Ministry of Education in Israel by tracing the different human and nonhuman actors that participated in the formation of the managerial assemblage and the tri-sector cooperation assemblage. The literature points to two kinds of post-bureaucratic turns—a quasi-market model or an evaluative state regulatory model (Maroy 2012). Since the introduction of NPM in the ministry was tightly linked to a growing participation of NGOs in education provision and policy, we conclude that the Israeli case represents a third type of post-bureaucratic regulation, the post-bureaucratic NGOization model.

Three main strategies have enabled the adoption, still in progress, of a post-bureaucratic regulation in the Ministry of Education. First, the creation of two new units with an autonomous status and a relatively clearly defined intersectorial mandate: the Planning and Strategy Department, as a senior department and the main actor of the managerial assemblage, along with the Cross-sector Dialogue and Programs Unit, the main actor of the tri-sector assemblage. Second, the appointment of officials with public policy background who did not belong to the Ministry of Education bureaucracy to head main units. We have noted that the incorporation of the post-bureaucratic regulation has been possible not only because the new actors embodied NPM and NPG cultures and did not have vested interests in the ministry but also due to the bureaucratic tradition of ministry officials. Even if they were not convinced about the advantages of the new culture of planning and measuring performance, most officials respected hierarchy and rules and felt they could not refuse or criticize decisions coming from their superiors. Third, the creation of a new inter-sectorial, prestigious forum that included deputy directors of the different units—the Planning Appointees Forum—responsible for the dissemination of the managerial culture at the different levels of the ministry.

In addition to the main actors mentioned above, the Planning and Strategy Department whose main target is the incorporation of a planning and evaluation into the ministry and the Planning Appointees Forum, the managerial assemblage includes also The Present, a planning tool published every year that transfers the ministry’s objectives to the school level, and The Education Picture, an evaluation tool of the quality of schools.

The main actors in the tri-sector assemblage are the Cross-sector Cooperation and Programs Section, specially created to promote nonprofit and for-profit organizations’ cooperation with the ministry and the schools and the Online Database of External Programs, a tool to regulate and control programs operating in schools by NGOs or commercial firms.

In addition, important actors common to the two assemblages are represented by consulting firms chosen by tenders that instill the managerial culture and governance mode into the ministry and operate new nonhierarchical and dialogical techniques such as roundtables and public consultation.

The implementation of managerial regulation and the governance mode in Israel reflects the global education governance’s ideology on the need to increase education quality on the one hand and efficiency in public service delivery on the other (Sellar and Lingard 2013). However, policy recommendations are highly conditioned by how national societies define social efficiency and by the historical paths of national politics (Carnoy 2016). And indeed, the incorporation of NPM and NPG into the Ministry of Education in Israel was promoted by the central government through governmental resolutions and under the direct responsibility of the Prime Minister’ Office around the time of acceptance of Israel as a member of the OECD in 2010. Although, national states have “control” over their policies, they are inexorably driven to “conform” to global institutional norms in order to meet a particular, global elite-defined conception of a “well-functioning, modern” state (Carnoy 2016). In fact, Israel was accepted by the organization after an assessment of Israel concerning OECD instruments, standards, and benchmarks.³⁷

As the literature indicates, the adoption of global education policies is locally mediated (Carnoy 2016; Mundy et al. 2016). Particularly in Israel, the adoption of a managerial regulation in the Ministry of Education entails the NGOization and consultization of the ministry, which both respond to the NPM’s mandate to reduce the size of public administrations. Consulting firms, as external bodies disconnected from the bureaucratic culture of the ministry, can “efficiently” work to instill a performance-based language without the need to recruit new permanent workers. NGOs have been important actors in education since the inception of the State of Israel.³⁸ Their growing influence resulting from the governmental encouragement of third-sector participation linked to the new managerial regulation, engendered an idiosyncratic Israeli regulation mode—a post-bureaucratic NGOization regulation model—in which NGOs play an increasingly significant role in education provision but also in education policy-making.