SA Public Service @ 2004

Prof. Peter E. Franks

The context• Challenge of Globalisation• Challenge of an African Renaissance• Demands of the New Africa Initiative• Integrated and sustainable Rural development Strategy

• Urban Renewal Strategy • The record of service delivery over past seven years

• Corruption etc.,

Human Relations Climate Investigation of the Northern Province Public Service 1996 (Franks, Glass, Craffert and de Jager,)• Confusion of political and administrative purposes.

Lack of mobilisation of skills, expertise and commitment towards a common vision:

A feeling among some public servants that they are ‘professionals’ and therefore superior to those they are supposed to serve.

Conflict between the perceived demands of tradition and custom versus the demands of modern administration.

Historical and contemporaneous Inadequate performance evaluation systems. Inadequate supervision and management. Inadequate training and development. Covering-up, excusing, or simply just not recognising, incompetence.

Treat public w ithrespect

Public benefit fromDept services

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Treat public w ithrespect

Public benefit fromDept services

Figure 7.3.35: Perception of relationships w ith the public

Don't know

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Figure 7.3.28: Perception of favouritism in the Public Service

Yes38%

No62%

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Figure 7.3.29: Type of favouritism experienced in the Public Service

OtherRacialGenderEthnicComradeship

Past

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Figure 7.3.20: Evaluation of w ork perform ance

Inadequate supervision and management.

• is exacerbated by the confusion of roles whereby the investigation in the Northern Province Public Service showed that whereas 50% of the labour group, “trusted the union to look after their interests, which is what one would expect.

• The Middle Managers (26%), Administrative officers (34%) and Clerical Staff (30%) showed a much lower percentage trusting the union.

• However, among Senior Management 48% trusted the union to look after their interests.

• Therefore the middle Managers and Administrative Officers are prevented from acting because their subordinates can go over them to the senior manager.

Attitudes are the key• Above all is the issue of attitudes and commitment, more specifically, the need to deal with what one can call learned obstructionism. We must move beyond the ‘good guy’ versus ‘bad guy’ paradigm, perhaps, the alibi for a new favouritism. Politics is about interests. We must be careful not to get seduced by notions of good guys and bad guys. Good guys turn into bad guys if left unchecked.

lessons of the last five years DPSA Review 1999-2000

Time lines for transformation were over-optimistic.

Tendency to tackle transformation in an unplanned way (doing too many things at the same time) and not necessarily properly sequenced.

Importance of management development was underestimated.

Complexity of introducing new policies were not commensurate with the pace of developing new managers.

Focus of change initiatives was mainly at senior management level.

lessons of the last five years (Contd.)

• Public service remains to a large extent issue and crisis driven. Very little strategic planning and visionary management takes place in practice.

• Regulatory frameworks need[s] to be made more flexible to accommodate the creative approaches that were coming forward. Instead they tended to act as barriers to innovation.

• With hindsight, our transformation approach in some instances may have undermined the resilience and self-protecting nature of the bureaucracy. Our accountability framework remains unclear. Are our managers empowered and capacitated enough to be really accountable for delivery of services?

Concerns• The willingness of all South Africans to take responsibility for service delivery, development and performance management

• The attitudes required for the development of a culture of performance management

• The willingness to unambiguously confront incompetence, learned obstructionism and other forms of corruption from whoever.

• The reality of implementing the systems required to monitor such a process.

• That we may be repeating of the error of introducing too many new policies, systems and structures at the same time –

i.e., the tragedy of Grand Plans

Concerns (Contd.)

• Corruptions of all sorts:•Learned obstructionism•Entitlement•Legal technicism.•Favouritisms (Nepotism, comraderie, baaskap and broerskap).

•Looting, kickbacks, theft etc.,– A milieu which supports and models voluntarism, commitment, sacrifice and meritocracy.

– Pride in a job well done.

Concerns (Contd.)

The aesthetics or progressiveness of the systems and structures is not as important as the willingness to make even inadequate systems and structures work for the people they are meant to serve.

The Bottom Line

You can’t get more out of truth then what you put into itMilorad Pavic

We wont reap the rewards of performance management if we are not willing to make our performance work towards service delivery in the service of development.