CHALLENGES FACING PUBLIC SECTOR REFORMS

1. CHALLENGES FACING PUBLIC SECTOR REFORMS

2. FLOW OF THE PRESENTATION • Introduction • The Historical Narrative of Public Sector Reforms • Challenges Facing Public Sector Reforms • Possible Solutions • Conclusion.

3. Public Sector reforms are predicated on both positivist and normative considerations that are both within and external to the public sector. • Reforms only focussing on internal environment at the exclusion of external environment are bound to have limited impact. • Quest for public sector reforms have been triggered by changes at the political, ideological, economic and social-cultural landscapes at global, regional and national levels.

4. The public sector and public administration in particular are expected to be critical instruments of the State in the stimulation and promotion of economic growth and sustainable human development. • It is doubtful whether public sector reforms predicated in procedural and instrumental rationality (emphasizing managerialism and market forces) will be capable in assisting governments to meet quality sustainable human development.

5. HISTORICAL NARRATIVES PRECIPITATING FACTORS IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES • Principally the assault against the big welfare states of Post World War ІІ by the New Right / Neo-liberals . • Economic and fiscal crises within various states • Quest for efficiency and effectiveness in the public services. • The influence pf neo-liberal ideas and consequential criticism of the Weberian based public administration.

6. Changes in the political context. • Development of information technology.

7. African Context • World Bank Report: “Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa”, 1981 calling for economic growth and equity. • World Bank Reports as a response to crisis facing African States: persistent fiscal deficits and unbearable debt burdens, negative interest rates, price inflation, over-extended public sector, etc. • 1980s became to be described as a “Lost decade” for Africa due to a number of negative experiences in the continent:

8. Continued in addition to the above: rampant corruption, rent-seeking and other predatory behaviuor of the political and bureaucratic leaders, “failing states” in all respects of service delivery and failure to eradicate underdevelopment and poverty , systemic clientelism, opaque governments; breakdown of the public realm and other forms of governance crisis.

9. South African Experience • Include some of the global and continental experiences. • In addition it had to deal with issues such as racism, inequality, poverty, divided public sector, lack of orientation to development needs of South Africa, ineffective service delivery (quantity and quality), representativeness of the public sector and its values, etc. The pressure to initiate public sector reforms in South Africa emanated from the following sources:

10. New political dispensation, and • Global public sector reform movement. Global and South African Responses To The Above Negative Experiences • Conceptualization of what became known as the New Public Management (NPM). • Stabilization and Structural Adjustment Programmes in Africa. • The South African unique responses.

11. New Public Management (NPM) Key components of NPM included: • Cutting of direct public sector costs and disciplining staff to improve resource use, • Borrowing and use of private sector management practices and techniques. • Introduction of competition in the public sector. • Disaggregration and decentralization of governement and the public sector. • Controls shifted from inputs to outputs to stress results rather than procedure.

12. Establishment of explicit standards and performance measures to promote accountability for results. • Delegation to and empowerment of managers to make decision in the running of their organizational units. NPM strands emphasized managerial improvement and organizational ressstructuring, and those emphasizing markets and competition

13. Stabilization and Structural Adjustment. • Rolling back the contours of government/ state. • Introduction of market forces and use of private sector management techniques and practices. • Reduction in the size and role of the State and government.

14. Anti – corruption measures • Anti –cronyism measures • Provision of enabling environment for the private sector to effect economic growth, reduce poverty, etc • Etc

15. CHALLENGES FACING THE PUBLIC SECTOR REFORMS • Conceptualization of the Subject Matter. • Is it change, Transformation, Reform, Restructuring ? What is it ? • What are the assumptions about individual, team organizational and societal behaviour and / or responses to specific change.(unspecified) • How would persons from different disciple describe the causes and consequences, of public sector reforms.

16. There has been no leadership to provide continuous clarification of the issues from time and doing so with concrete examples.

17. Performance Gap Determination and Preferred Intervention Levels. • How was the performance gap determined? • How were these questions asked and answered? why change ? What change ? How Change ? And when to change ? • How were to causes of performance gap determined and what were they ? Doctrine or proverbs ?

18. Was the perceived performance gap a function of the role and functions of the executive, of the public manager of both? • What sort of reforms have been directed to the executive domain ?

19. Participation of Stakeholders Subject to the Scope of Change • Reforms to cover both executive and bureaucracy domains. Did they cover both of these ? • The folklore on the relationships between the executive official and public manager! is this folklore or facts? • What was the source of the performance gap ? • How are external factors considered.

20. Multiple Accountability Issues • to whom is the public manager accountable; public citizenry, politician (executives authority). • Serious implication for multiple or dual accountability. • Dual accountability assumes that the interest and preferences of the citizens and that of politicians are in harmony. • What happens if they are not in harmony?

21. Institutional Capacity • capacity to conceive, archestrate, design, implement and to subject to monitoring and evaluation. • Limited capacity at executive and bureaucratic domains. • What sort of capacitation programmes were but in place ?

22. Lukewarm capacitation programme accompanying the reform programme. • Delegated Powers • Unpredictable environment • Executive involvement • Identity crisis of the concept of performance management. Similar to administration, public management and governance. • Assumption on the sharing of delegated power and its use for public good doubtful.

23. Are the two parties fully appreciative of their roles and the relationship of these roles ? • Is delegation formally or implicitly done ? Implications.

24. Performance Management • Ill-defined • Promotes the adoption of private sector techniques and practices • Assumption of what happens to delegated power. • Weakness of the harmony thesis.

25. Concerned with higher order management: not only focused on the attainment of goals and objectives but in dealing with the obstacles in realizing these objectives and goals. Dealing with what we “what to see happen” • Both internal and external environmental factors collude to influence performance: how has the public sector reform programme (s) taken this into account ?

26. Results of Public Sector Reforms So far The results of the public sector reforms in the World, Africa and South Africa are mixed in making: in other areas there are successful failures. Policy making, strategy and programming designs and decision making remain poor; accountability of politicians and bureaucrats to citizenry lack tightly institutionalized structures and mechanisms; delegated powers are not shared and not always used for the public good; the autonomy of the bureaucrats with respect to their roles ( remain ambiguous and shifting) is

27. controvertible; the use of financial controls and information technology have reintroduced controls and de-empowering of managers by back-door; quality and quantity of services delivered is mixed but at the net level still below expectations; corruption is still rampant; the size of government and corresponding budgets have increased; privatization schemes including contracting out, tenders and the use of user-charges for rendered services are under fierce contestation; citizen participation in governance and public policy formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation is still very limited, truncated and ambiguous, etc. At the societal level anomia is

28. becoming prevalent, corruption is becoming the way for transactional engagements, getting rich quickly and at all costs is becoming the norm, the states, governments and public sectors are more becoming avenues for private appropriation of public resources, etc. This is the external environment with which the public sector and government is interacting. What results can be expected in this regard ?

29. Possible Intervention To Improve the Situation • The nature of improvements are implied by the above enunciated challenges. Accordingly, they include the following: • The concept and nature of Public Sector Reforms must be precisely defined, described, communicated and understood in a shared manner. • Causal factors to performance gaps should be explicated and should be conceived from an advantage position of interdisciplinary perspectives. Agreement on what performance outputs and outcomes matter and indicators thereof should be precisely determined and be agreed upon. The scope and level of reforms must be explicit.

30. The scope of change should be used to determine stakeholder participation. Reforms should not be confirmed to the public service/ public administration but should cover the executive domain as well. • The existence of multiple accountability on the part of public administrators/managers should be understood and streamlined. • The necessary capacity for executing public sector reforms should be ensured to exist. • Sector is defined by a political system and political behavior.

31. It must be ensured that delegated powers are shared and are put in use for the public good. • Performance management should b e precisely described, defined and be understood by all those who are involved. It must be emphasized that the Public Sector will never be in totality, like the private sector. The logic of the Public

32. The Public Sector Reforms require the presence and active role of political, public management and civil society leadership. It is such leadership factor that will bring about the reforms that everybody dreams about.

33. Conclusion In this paper the historical origins of the Public Sector reforms globally and within South Africa have been briefly given; so are the expected results of such a reform programme. A number of challenges facing the reform programme have been stated as well ; as the possible solutions to these challenges.