Despite the public service having achieved progress ten years ago, there are still many challenges a decade ahead.

This is according to the Public Service Commission's (PSC) State of the Public Service Report: A Ten-Year Journey released to the media and the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration here today.

The PSC is an independent body created by the Constitution to enhance excellence in governance within the public service by promoting a professional and ethical environment and adding value to public administration.

The third edition report takes a view of what has been achieved over the preceding decade and what has changed during the ten years of democracy in South Africa.

PSC chairperson Stan Sangweni said lessons learnt over the past decade should come in handy as South Africa faced another decade of public service reform.

"The ten-year journey has been an intense one fraught with pitfalls, leaving the public service fatigued and stressed," Sangweni said.

He added that another challenge that faced the public service, which employs more than a million people, is to unify the previously denationalised public service into a unified one.

Professor Richard Levin, deputy-director general of good governance and service delivery said the report reviewed the nine Constitutional principles and what the new democratic government put into place to deal with the central pillars of good governance.

He said the report identified key challenges as well as strategic priorities for the future.

"The challenges we have identified upfront were performance improvement, inter-governmental relations and the impact of HIV and Aids in the workplace within the public service," Levin said.

He said the principle of the promotion of professionalism was linked to corruption and constituted the use of public resource for private gain.

"In order to prevent corruption there is a need to instill an ethical culture and a wide-spread understanding of what constitutes conflict of interests," he said.

Levin also said people's needs should provide government with clear signals as to what it should be doing.

"Public participation is essential if government is to properly understand what these needs are and expensive mistakes are to be avoided," he said.

He added that Imbizos and public outreach programmes were examples of government participating with the people to improve service delivery. He said social grants had grown since 1994 from R10-billion to R34,8-billion in 2003, with number of beneficiaries increasing from 2,6-million to 6,8-million.

Levin concluded that public service leadership needed to be better fostered and nurtured with grater flexibility and creativity in contracting of top-level staff to avoid the drain of senior management to parastatals. –BuaNews.