Bring back the ‘golden age’ to the civil service

What you need to know:

  • There is a need to urgently overhaul the service. The effectiveness and efficiency of Cabinet and Principal Secretaries is dependent on the quality of the technical advice and support they receive from heads of various departments.

Last week, the government launched a public service reform process that seeks to rationalise staffing, to reduce spending and improve productivity.

The civil service has, at its disposal, highly competent and experienced staff. However, their productivity levels do not reflect this power.

The challenge that ministries face is to utilise this plurality of knowledge and skills to improve service delivery.

The problem is that civil service is still autocratic, hierarchical and inflexible. Yet, the best civil service anywhere is flexible and agile, able to identify risks and develop responses to changing priorities and changing demands.

Most have let whatever innovative ideas they have die, because they are expected to act on instructions and implement government policies even when the policies are dysfunctional.

Overhaul the service

There is a need to urgently overhaul the service. The effectiveness and efficiency of Cabinet and Principal Secretaries is dependent on the quality of the technical advice and support they receive from heads of various departments.

Reform of the civil service will not be complete without re-appraisal of the management and leadership credentials of departmental heads. Efficiency cannot be attained if the people who are supposed to make important decisions have no clue on what needs to be done.

Similarly, revamp the processes of hiring and deploying to address challenges of understaffing, poor induction and skewed distribution. 

We have a comparatively highly educated workforce today than we did in the 1970s and 80s, but the differences in terms of service delivery are vastly different. We need to recapture that golden age of the civil service.
John Tsinje, via e-mail.