The South African public service at the end of the 1990s is facing a range of transformational challenges. The public service is made up of employees in all national departments, as well as those in the nine provincial administrations of the country, as re flected in Schedules 1 and 2 of the Public Service Act.
The concept ”public service” excludes local government, as well as a host of statutory bodies, para-statals, quasi-government institutions and the like. These types of organisations, together with the public service constitute the public sector.1
The transformation challenges primarily originate in our country’s history, while some are based on the lessons we are learning from the experience of others internationally. Neither the challenges nor the responses to transformation are static or isolated from one another. They constantly shape one another and are interdependent. Nothing about transformation is linear, either. In the face of such a syst em, it becomes somewhat artificial to try to separate all the intertwining strands. But to enhance understanding and report progress, this is exactly what is necessary. The challenge is to remain conscious of the bigger whole.
The public service tends to be the most complex organisational system in any country. When any country undertakes to reform its public service, it is taking its biggest organisational transformation challenge. The range of actors, interests, and the scale on which issues have to be tackled mean that the complexity of a public reform exercise is immense. Given this complexity, the process tends to move more slowly than many people would like.
The purpose of this report is to capture the status of the public service at the end of the 20th century, particularly since 1994. The public service represents the human capital of the South African state. It is the public service that determines the proc esses of how the political mandate of government will be executed. Public service managers are expected to make key strategic connections between all resources and the tasks at hand. It is them, who will have to continually revise action taken against chan ging realities and context. They must advise policymakers on emerging issues and plausible scenarios. An understanding of the public service, what is happening within it, and what happens as a consequence of it, is therefore crucial.
This report should be read in conjunction with other government reports, such as the President’s State of the Nation Report, Budget Review, National Expenditure Survey, and annual reports of departments and other public entities. The intention behind these reports is to enhance the availability and quality of information in the public arena to enable informed policy discourse. The reports are, however, useful for the public service itself, enabling individual public service managers and policymakers to kee p in focus the picture of the whole, as they make decisions about their particular spheres.
It is of primary importance to point out that public service organisations are multi-faceted entities. They cannot simply be reduced to a single indicator. A more nuanced and balanced set of indicators is required to have a proper assessment of what public service organisations are about. When public service organisations are effective and developmental, their contribution to society exceeds their costs many times over. However, when they are ineffective, they are a burden and a barrier to development and p rogress. The value of the public service to society is a measure of the extent to which it enables the state to fulfill its obligation in meeting societal needs and objectives.
The judgement of the value of public service organisations is, by definition, always centred in the public arena, and subject to values and contestation in that arena. It is thus for the elected government of the day, as the acknowledged representative of the people, to give concrete direction and shape to the public service at any point in time. Like any large ship, the public service is not easy to steer and direct. But there is no question that it must always and everywhere represent and execute the will of the government.
The form, capabilities and systems of the public service must correspond to the nature of the tasks and activities it must undertake. Given that developing capabilities and systems in such a large and complex organisational system can take such a long time , it is recommended that any society develops a basic consensus regarding the role, shape and tasks of the public service. In our constitutional system we are required to have a single professional public service that is representative and is developmental ly oriented. Like any constitution, ours will develop and take shape over time. So will the public service. To realise the full potential of the public service, all of society will have to contribute to its development. The public service should be owned by the whole of society and should not be easily subjected to the rigours of short-term contestation. Accountable it should be, but in terms appropriate for the objectives and parameters set for it. A key challenge that faces all of us now is to make a de cision as to what kind of public service we want, and proceed to build it as such. This is not an easy challenge, given the dynamics of any transformation process. But it is a challenge that must be met. This would be a legacy to generations to come, and w ould be worth its weight in gold.
Another challenge that confronts us is to improve co-ordination between policy formulation and policy implementation. This is partly dealt with by strengthening the capacity of the public service to implement policy. It also requires that an appraisal of i mplementation and resource implications be undertaken during the process of policy formulation. The challenge for us is how best to structure the policy formulation process so that such appraisals happen as an integral part of the decision-making process. Part of the challenge is to improve the exchange between various agencies in the policy arena, especially in instances where responsibility for formulation and implementation has become separated, such as in concurrent functions.
With this report, the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) seeks to complement other government reports, by commenting on institutional development and service delivery. The DPSA seeks to deepen the knowledge and understanding of the ins titutional challenge facing the public service. This should enrich the policy and public debate about the nature of current problems and potential solutions. It will also give context to the steps we have taken and will be taking to promote the effectivene ss of public service organisations and to accelerate service delivery.
In the first instance, in Chapter Two, the report provides a very brief historical and legal overview of where the South African public service came from in 1994 to where it stands today. Obviously, the various policy papers and legislation serve as the ba ckdrop against which the public service performs and transforms itself. As such, it provides us with one set of benchmarks against which to measure our successes and failures. The measures provided include representativeness, professionalism, effective str ucturing, managerial responsibility and efficient ways of working.
The next chapter, Chapter Three, looks at how the public service responds to the requirement of changing its composition to become representative of the overall population. This chapter also starts looking at the overall structuring of the public service. In brief, this chapter deals with the form that transformation is assuming. Information from the Personnel and Salary Administration (PERSAL) system, and statistics provided by Statistics South Africa are used to empirically capture the current form and, i n some instances, the changes that have occurred since the advent of the democratic dispensation to power in 1994.
Chapter Four provides key information regarding patterns of expenditure in the public service, particularly as they relate to personnel. Issues are raised about efficiency achieved against expenditure.
The prevailing socio-economic and political conditions of the country, and the concomitant expectations from the citizens constitute the next internal challenge to transformation. These challenges are what give real content to the transformation of the pub lic service. It is by focusing on these issues, that we make the connection in the transformation debate between policy making and implementing policy. It is the focus on the status of (under) development for large sections of our population and the dispar ities that mark our society that prompts us to think how the public service can work in different ways, structure itself differently, spend more effectively and have an alternative approach and value system to that which served the apartheid masters. These are essentially the issues that give content to the debate on transformation.
By using criteria of equity, effectiveness, responsiveness and innovation, Chapter Five captures the progress made thus far with giving content to transformation. The chapter points to some of the difficult trade-offs in public management that have to be m ade in the interest of improved service delivery.
Public sector transformation in South Africa closely follows gigantic shifts that are taking place internationally in the thinking around public administration and public management. The South African public service transformation debate does not unfold on ly in a domestic context, isolated from the global developments. On the contrary, through study trips, knowledge-gathering and the exchange of information between groups of both intellectuals and practitioners, the South African thinking was, and is heavil y influenced by these internationally-held views on how public services are changing. The lesson-drawing is, however, a balancing act in which the domestic context must prevail and temper any ideas that are not appropriate in our own context.
In the mid- to late 90’s, we witnessed the change from the way of thinking of the old public administration to the new public management framework. With this change came certain ways of working and many of the current frameworks, guidelines and practices i n the public service now fall squarely within the new public management paradigm.
Chapter Six looks at how we take our challenges forward, consolidate the public management framework and position the public service for the information age. In the concluding chapter, Chapter Seven, we concentrate on the idea of a learning society which we believe is a necessary pre-condition to succes sfully transform the public service.