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Rudo Grace Gwata-Charamba Correspondent
The public sector, predominantly comprises of entities and agencies that are owned and operated by the Government.
They are synonymously regarded as the Government and exist to provide service to citizens.
Public sector performance is thus, basically, about governments being proficient in delivering on policy commitments for the welfare of their citizens.
In the same context, government officials and political leaders find new and innovative ways to tackle long-standing public management challenges.
Accordingly, governments with well-performing public sectors are capable of translating good policies into development outcomes that are closely aligned with citizens’ preferences and also in line with what the country can afford, making public sector performance critical for national growth and development.
The delivery of such outcome is often, as far as possible, fair and impartial.
Performance improvement, therefore, starts with sound policy-making and implementation coupled with immense coordination of all related elements.
However, many governments face significant challenges upstream with flawed policy development plus equally considerable challenges with ensuring effective implementation at the level of service delivery.
In addition, irregularities in the available information for stakeholders, particularly policy-makers and implementers of initiatives, often impede the quality and efficiency of programme execution and service delivery.
Besides, sound policies have been adopted, in many countries including in Zimbabwe, albeit without leading to any improvements in the target facilities encompassing healthcare, education, sanitation, security or infrastructure management.
This was primarily because of the existence of implementation gaps in the results chains.
During the past four decades, the sector has been brought under immense pressure to do more with less, a situation that demands enhanced efficiency, effectiveness, accountability, responsiveness and governance in all its activities.
That means greater emphasis on results, output control and reward systems, rather than mere oversight on compliance with administrative rules and procedures. Accordingly, Public Sector Reform (PSR) programmes have been instituted across the globe in efforts to improve performance, mostly through improving the state capability to sustainably generate and distribute public goods.
Sadly, literature shows that most of the strategies used for implementing PSRs have remained largely unsuccessful in bringing about lasting improvements.
This is mainly because they fail to address the deeper issues that impede public sector performance, notably patterns of bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption and poor management.
They, instead, largely emphasise training, use of incentives, downsizing and institutional innovations.
Again literature identifies lessons learned as well as new questions to guide efforts to promote different types of peer learning as some of the most effective strategies for capacity building.
In addition, it is essential to ensure government capacity to manage, concurrently with reform, the administration, delivery and renewal of public services.
Once more, the majority of capacity building efforts fail because they are typically confined to training, fragmented and implemented piecemeal.
Many PSRs failed due to poor implementation, as well as the employment of excessive technique without understanding the realities of the specific situation.
Interventions to improve public sector performance mostly relate to policy formulation and government administration.
Several best practices and lessons learned have emerged from success stories of improving public sector performance and can be used as guidelines in Zimbabwe towards realising Vision 2030, as well as by and many other entities.
One of the most important factors for improved public sector performance is effective leadership and coordination from the top which leads to the mobilisation and productive use of collective expertise, from across the public sector, to address the most pressing issues within the country.
Once decisions are taken, government departments proceed with clear objectives while adequate resources are provided.
Concurrently, incentives for implementation, including methodical monitoring and evaluation systems to reinforce accountability, are created.
Drawing on Singapore’s success story, Rwanda sought to develop an active government accountability framework to enhance the effectiveness of its development programmes and improve service delivery.
“Imihigo”, meaning “to vow to deliver”, refers to the local pre-colonial cultural practice where entities set their own goals and commit to achieve them within a specified period of time.
The Imihigo concept was fused with the modern governance tool, the performance contract.
The associated social and traditional pressure is used to impel elected representatives and political appointees to greater levels of achievement.
Annual Imihigo (performance contracts), binding institutions to targets that they set for themselves, are publicly signed between the President and government institutions, with ceremonies aired on both television and radio.
Subsequently, the Imihigo documents are made public online and in the local press providing accurate information to citizens regarding the commitments made by their leaders. Such commitments encompass governance, economic and social indicators up to the local.
That is, an accountability framework at a level with direct relevance to citizens.
Bi-annual evaluation meetings, chaired by the President, attended by policymakers, community associations and citizens, are organised to monitor and hotly debate the performance of government institutions.
Several political leaders, ministers and appointed mayors were dismissed for below-average performance, in line with the agreed targets in the contract while some leaders were jailed for, corruption and irregularities; based on information derived from performance monitoring and evaluations
Similarly, Ethiopia, a post-conflict country, managed to transform its Public Financial Management (PFM) system to a stable and sustainable tool, fully owned and of international standards while appropriate for the local context.
Accordingly, it became the third best system in Africa.
In both cases success was attributed to local ownership and appropriateness of the strategy to the local context.
Effective management of the public sector workforce significantly influences the overall effectiveness and efficiency of a nation while the quality of civil service performance is affected by the policies and procedures that govern recruitment as well as staff management.
Indonesia successfully introduced a computer-assisted testing system to disrupt long-standing manual testing system that created extensive opportunities for corruption in recruitment.
Computerisation facilitated tight control of the database of questions results posted in real time outside the testing centre.
Following the success of the pilot, the strategy was expanded to more departments and units.
Similarly, China transformed the effectiveness of its core tax collection functions through the implementation of performance plan, for all staff, that included quantitative and qualitative indicators
Management systems and institutional incentives significantly impact service delivery and therefore need constant assessment and adjustment.
Rwanda, again drawing on the experience of other countries, has managed to overcome capacity constraints and implemented an e-procurement system that covers virtually all public procurement in the country.
Also, with the help of determined leadership, the Brazilian city of Manaus managed to overhaul its performance management systems catapulting it from being one of the worst performing municipalities in Brazil to one of the best performing in terms of fiscal management.
In many emerging economies, access to information about government services is limited and often tends to give rise to middlemen, inflated costs, long waiting times, and corruption.
Comparably, there are significant levels of absenteeism among public sector staff. Also, where absenteeism was less pronounced, the quality of service was poor.
For example, the presence of a teacher in class does not necessarily mean that students will actually learn.
Techniques to address key service delivery challenges including institutional reform, beneficiary feedback, monitoring, and open data help to significantly enhance public sector performance.
For example, the state of Punjab, in Pakistani, introduced a citizen feedback programme to monitor the performance of civil servants, report corruption and improve public service delivery leveraging the ubiquity of cellphones to actively solicit feedback from users of public services.
This the citizen feedback system helped to significantly improve the quality of facility inspections, reduce absenteeism globally as well as reduce the processing time for passports from three weeks to ten days.
Consistent learning and adjustment, sound governance practices, notably maximum participation, and use of home-grown solutions for reforms can help to significantly improve public sector performance towards meaningful growth and development for nations.
Dr Rudo Grace Gwata-Charamba is an Author, development Project/ Programme Management Consultant and Researcher with a special interest in Results Based Management (RBM), Governance and Leadership. She can be contacted via email: [email protected]
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter