Atudot Le’Israel: Rebuilding Israel’s public civil service

How one program is trying to rebuild Israel's public civil service.

By SHLOMO MAITAL
Isaac Devash, founder of Atudot Le’Israel, a national talent management program for the Israeli public sector (photo credit: Courtesy)
Isaac Devash, founder of Atudot Le’Israel, a national talent management program for the Israeli public sector
(photo credit: Courtesy)
When President Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin announced that 65 newly elected MKs had recommended that Benjamin Netanyahu should form Israel’s next government, he added these memorable words about the toxic election campaign: “We have been through a difficult election campaign. From all sides, words were spoken that should not have been vocalized – neither in a Jewish state nor in a democratic state. The iron wall is one that should be placed between us and our enemies – not within us, at home, and this should be clear to everyone. Now, “us” and “them” are over. From now on, it is just “us”! The time has come to stop battling “them” and to start restoring trust in ourselves – just as we were taught as children.”
Some observers detected in Rivlin’s words oblique criticism of Netanyahu’s repeated attacks on Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, a public civil servant, and others in the Justice Ministry who have recommended indicting him for fraud, bribery and breach of trust in three criminal cases, pending a hearing.
Attention now focuses on how Netanyahu will assemble the next coalition government. Somehow he must fit square pegs such as Avigdor Liberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu’s five anti-Haredi MKs into round holes like the Haredi United Torah Judaism (8 MKs) and Shas (8 MKs). Discussions center on which MKs will become ministers, and which ministries they will achieve.
Almost forgotten is the fact that crucial public goods and services are provided by Israel’s public civil service, which employs more than one million public servants – one worker out of every six. The public civil service in principle is non-political, professional, and its quality is crucial for the everyday well-being of Israelis. Yet it is largely neglected in discussions of policy.
That is, until now. I interviewed Isaac Devash, who initiated and and keeps promoting a unique Talent Management program for strengthening and rebuilding Israel’s public civil service. I interviewed him twice. My first set of questions met this response – too much about me, too little about Atudot Le’Israel, the national program he founded and keeps promoting (https://atudot.gov.il/).
So, I sent a new set of questions, focused on his work. Devash’s unusual request is insightful. Often, those who succeed best in ambitious change-the-world programs keep their own egos and pride well in the background.
My initial questions focused on his decision to abandon a promising career as an international investment banker with Credit Suisse at a high salary to serve his country Israel. After Devash’s polite demurral, the next set focused on Atudot Le’Israel.
Tell us about Atudot Le’Israel.
Atudot Le’Israel is a national talent management program for the Israeli public sector that was started bottom up in 2,000 and, after 16 years, was adopted by the Israeli government to become a synchronized web of more than 25 talent management programs. Every year, about 7,000 people apply to these meritocratic programs and only about 10% of those applicants are admitted. Atudot Le’Israel is focused on four levels: preparatory programs, cadets’ programs, mid-level programs, and senior management programs for the Israeli public sector. This national initiative attempts to nurture a critical mass of managerial talent, from all parts of Israeli society, for areas such as education, health care, welfare, municipalities and some other important areas like universities.
How come the original idea for Israel’s national Talent Management Program came from a person who worked on Wall Street?
Having been trained at Wharton (University of Pennsylvania’s business school) and Harvard Business School, and after working for Credit Suisse on Wall Street, my initial thinking was that the private sector was superior to government in dealing with almost any challenge. This thinking was strengthened after I moved to London to work for Credit Suisse, in 1991, on the first privatizations in Poland and Hungary at the end of the Cold War.
Witnessing firsthand the collapse of the old order, it seemed that capitalism was the wave of the future. Therefore, after I returned to Israel, I worked in the field of private equity and venture capital, and founded the Harvard Business School alumni club of Israel and the Wharton alumni club of Israel in order to help nurture some of the future leaders of Israel’s business sector.
However, the more I faced real-life challenges, the more it became evident to me that these and similar talent pools were in no way sufficient to deal with the massive number of challenges and opportunities facing Israeli society. I realized that the public sector exerts dramatic influence on almost all key factors of production, such as land, labor, capital, knowledge and innovation.
For example, the Israeli government owns more than 90 percent of the land and it centrally regulates almost all of the land zoning decisions. It became evident to me again and again that, given the unique way that Israel was set up as a socialized-centralized economy and given its sectarian political system, without improving the public sector it will be difficult to drive long-term sustainable change.
Therefore, in the year 2,000 I decided to dedicate myself to this task as a volunteer and try to build a critical mass of meritocratic talent management programs for the Israeli public sector.”
Were there any models that you were following?
Reviewing the history of Israel’s most valuable asset – its human capital – I was able to point to several sectors that attracted many of Israel’s most promising leaders. About 100 years ago, the agricultural sector drew many motivated and resourceful individuals. Later on, the military and academia also became a magnet for Israel’s human capital. Lately, the hi-tech sector attracts many young, capable individuals.”
However, the Israeli political system is characterized by overwhelming sectarian short-term demands and therefore many national long-term projects and challenges are constantly deferred or mismanaged. Apart from a few “islands of excellence,” the relatively large Israeli public sector has not been always been successful in attracting and retaining Israel’s best human capital on a large scale.
All of these observations were in contrast to what I have learned from other countries, such as Singapore or the Chinese Mandarin historical system, or from what I witnessed as a young officer in the IDF, including in reserve duty when I moved from the level of battalion to brigade, division, and higher levels.
Most importantly, I do not believe that the Jewish people could have survived 2,000 years in exile without the rabbinical model that was based on excellence and faith. After the destruction of the Second Temple, giants such as Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakkai understood the need to replace the Cohanim with a new model of leaders that sustained us in the long, cold winter of exile. In historical perspective, one could argue that coming back to Israel after a long exile may not be a lesser challenge than being exiled twice from Israel. Hence the need to think about how to nurture the leaders of this age of “return” with its unique challenges and opportunities.
How did you “jump-start” the process?
Initially in 2,000, I assembled a group of friends and together we tried to convince the Israeli Civil Service Commission and the National Security Council to copy the IDF’s Talpiot talent management program to the public sector and to build a new talent management program that would not focus on Israel’s military needs but rather on Israel’s socioeconomic challenges and opportunities.
The original idea was to recruit every year 100 exceptional young Israelis and have the government fund their studies in leading global institutions. Fifty of these talents would study in the US, 30 in Europe and 20 in Asia. The plan was to build a program for them that would start before they travel abroad and continue during every summer vacation. In return, each individual would commit for several years to serve Israel’s public sector.
 
After two years of unsuccessful repeated attempts to promote this idea, I realized that the system was not yet ready for such change, and we decided to take a calculated risk and start a different program with the same objectives without the full explicit support of the public sector. We joined forces with an NGO called Atidim and we recruited 30 capable young Israelis studying for a BA at the Hebrew University to a program called Atidim for the Public Sector.
The project funded their studies, including a comparative visit to other national public systems abroad, and it gave them a small living allowance as well as an intensive extracellular training and mentorship. In return, we asked them to commit for 3-4 years to the public sector. Along the way, we got semi-unofficial help from exceptional individuals in the Civil Service Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Prime Minister’s Office and others. In parallel, in order not to lose valuable time, we started a program for municipal cadets in Beersheva in 2011 and later on in Haifa to recruit Arab Israeli candidates, as well.
It became evident that we cannot ignore the mid-level managerial talent, above the cadets’ level, and we joined forces with Maoz (a network of values-driven leaders working together on tangible initiatives to transform the Israeli public sphere) and leveraged the goodwill that we have together built in the public sector to open programs for mid-level talent management program in health care, municipalities and education. We also built a few programs with  Joint Israel, including in welfare and digital services.
When did the government adopt the project?
It took us about 16 years to convince the government to adopt the project top down. The reason was that there was no one that saw him/herself as accountable for the task of building a critical mass of leaders for the entire public sector. The Civil Service Commission, by law, is only responsible for about 75,000 employees, leaving out more than 1 million additional people who work for the public. These people work in municipalities, in independent agencies, in NGOs or in universities. Therefore, we had no choice but to work from bottom up forming numerous partnerships.
During these years, each program had to be built ad hoc by a Sisyphean process without us having any formal authority. In each of the programs we had to convince the relevant ministry of the need to build a talent management program for their field. We also had to find the relevant individuals at the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister’s Office to help us jump-start that specific project. And we had to find an NGO, such as Atidim or Maoz or Rothchild Caesarea or Elka/Joint Israel, a semi-public entity, which could run the project on a day-to-day basis.
The change came in 2015 when we achieved a critical mass of programs and when the professional staff at the Prime Minister’s Office started to witness the impact of these programs across a variety of sectors. We asked for, and then were given, a mandate from the government to harmonize 15 years of efforts from bottom-up with a top-down strategic plan.
At that point, I recruited McKinsey for a pro bono project and we assembled a large team of key stakeholders to write the national program that was eventually adopted by the government in 2016. It took 16 years until the bottom-up efforts met the top-down plan. As part of this governmental decision, a new unit was created at the Office of the Prime Minister and at the Ministry of the Interior to oversee the Atudot Le’Israel programs. It was also decided to keep a decentralized structure for these programs, while trying to make sure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
I feel that in recent years the public civil service has been somewhat politicized. This could be highly damaging for Atudot le’Israel. What can be done to keep the civil service independent of political influence?
Given the structure of Israel’s political system, it is quite difficult to keep the independence of the civil service from political influence. Let us not forget that the political system is based on the will of the people, which must be respected. However, the political system is typically short-term oriented and it focuses mainly on the senior positions in the public sector. Therefore, we try to put our focus on the entry-level as well as mid-level positions, hoping that in the long run politicians, elected by the will of the people, will prefer to work with fellows of Atudot Le’Israel, who arguably understand how to work in the public sphere and have been exposed to real life constraints, and the potential of the public sector and Israeli society, as a whole.
How can Israeli universities help Atudot le’Israel? For example, I feel that the Technion has done too little in this regard, when most of their focus is on hi-tech and start-ups?
The Technion is the home of two important national cadets’ programs. The first one is Cadets for National Infrastructure and the second one is Cadets for Urban Planning. Also, not too long ago we launched a new national talent management program for the universities of Israel with the Council for Higher Education. The president of the Technion, Peretz Lavie, was very helpful in this process. However, I agree that  academia can add more value in strengthening Israel’s public sector. At the end of the day, academia trains our future teachers, our future welfare workers, our future nurses and many more. In all of these fields academia can do much more, especially in integrating real life experience with academic knowledge. With the advent of technology and a slightly new state of mind, academia can contribute greatly to upgrading our teachers, our welfare workers and our nurses. These workers and the like are the backbone of our public services. Also, academicians, academic think tanks and research institutes can add even more value by focusing their research on the challenges and opportunities facing Israeli society.
What are the key challenges facing Atudot Le’Israel today?
One of the key challenges facing Atuddutot Le’Israel is that graduates of these programs are not given proper challenges and proper promotions. As you may know, many of the new openings in the public sector are open only to employees of that specific sub-unit. This prevents fresh talent from entering these units. In addition, there are too many positions in the public sector in which one can remain until retirement – at times for decades. This creates stagnation and does not allow for new talent to climb up the ladder or move among units. Yet another challenge is that at times a small minority of politicians or of union leaders try to appoint people to positions in the public sector for sectarian reasons, serving only a sub-segment of the public or serving themselves. Last, but not least, there is also the challenge that the alumni of these programs, over time, will become a closed elitist self-centered club. We are trying to avoid some of these risks by having the programs aspire to represent all populations in Israel, without compromising on quality, and by trying to put much emphasis on values. But to be fully honest, the project is still a “work in progress.” It requires non-trivial ongoing efforts, and it will take several more decades until we know if it has been truly adopted by the public sector, the political system and the Israeli public.
FOR A journalist, the compelling story of how Devash turned down millions of dollars and a promising career as an international investment banker to push a huge stone uphill, like Sisyphus, for 18 years – just because it was the right thing to do – was irresistible.
But in the end, those who change the world often need to put their own egos securely into a drawer for the duration. In future, if Israel does have strong reserves of dedicated, capable, professional civil servants, it will be in large part due to Isaac Devash and his colleagues,  and their persistence, skill, vision and determination. So, on behalf of all us consumers of public services – thank you!
The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion and blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com


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