"Journey to excellence"

"Journey to excellence"
By Editor
Tuesday February 19, 2008 [03:00]

"Journey to excellence" launched by the department of human resource and administration of the Ministry of Finance will be welcomed by most Zambians. "Journey to excellence" being a programme that is intended to work towards making public service delivery more efficient, effective and competitive will be welcomed by our people because this is what they have always yearned for. There is nothing which makes people more appreciative of a government than that it should be able to deliver services.

It should be the task of the government to give millions of Zambians an essential piece of dignity in their lives - the dignity that comes from having a solid roof over one's head, running water and other services in an established community.

And as Secretary to the Cabinet Dr Joshua Kanganja has correctly observed, the country requires a public service that is efficient and effective and that responds quickly and positively to the needs of our people. There is urgent need to redress the declining levels of service delivery in the country.

Of course, we do appreciate that the Zambian public service faces many challenges in its efforts to become a truly representative, competent and democratic instrument and to play its proper role in our country's development process. To fulfil this role effectively, our public service needs serious transformations.

By this we mean transformation as a dynamic, focussed and relatively short term process designed to fundamentally reshape our public service for its appointed role. And a transformed Zambian public service should be judged by one criterion above all: its effectiveness in delivering services which meet the basic needs of all our people.

But it must be borne in mind that public services are not a privilege in a civilised and democratic society: they are a legitimate expectation.

Improving delivery of public services means redressing the imbalances that we currently have and, while maintaining continuity of service to all levels of society, focusing on meeting the needs of the over 70 per cent of Zambians who are living below the poverty line and those who have seriously been disadvantaged in terms of service delivery, such as those living in rural areas.

The objectives to be pursued therefore must include that of welfare, equity and efficiency, and so on and so forth. It also means a complete change in the way that services are delivered. A shift from inward-looking, bureaucratic systems, processes and attitudes, towards new ways of working which put the needs of the public first, is better, faster and more responsive to meet those needs.

It is said that private companies cannot afford to ignore the needs and wishes of their customers if they want to stay in business, because dissatisfied customers can choose to take their business elsewhere. Knowing what the customer wants and providing it quicker, better and cheaper than your competitors, is essential to business success.

Thus, in the private sector "the customer comes first" is not an empty slogan but a fundamental business principle.

By contrast, public sector "customers" cannot choose to take their business elsewhere.

They cannot exert the same pressure on public service organisations to improve. Public institutions which fail to satisfy their customers do not go out of business because of lack of competition. Complaining often has little effect and can in any case be a daunting and time consuming process. The individual citizen's voice penetrates the wall of bureaucracy with difficulty.

A fresh approach is needed: an approach which puts pressure on systems, procedures, attitudes and behaviour within our public service and orients them in the customers favour. This doesn't mean introducing more rules and centralised processes or micro-managing service delivery activities.

Rather, it should involve creating a framework for the delivery of public services which puts citizens or customers first and enables them to hold public servants to account for the service they receive - a framework which frees up the energy and commitment of public servants to introduce more customer focussed ways of working.

Openness and transparency are the hallmarks of democratic government and will be fundamental to our public service transformation process.

In terms of public service delivery, their importance lies in the need to build confidence and trust between those running public institutions and the citizens they serve. A key aspect of this will be that the public should know more about the way our public institutions are run, and who is in charge.

Clearly, improving public service delivery can only be achieved with the resources that the nation can afford. Therefore, "Journey to Excellence" must go forward in the context of a transformation programme that is also aimed at reducing public expenditure and creating a leaner public service. It is therefore essential to make better use of our limited resources. Our public service currently costs us a lot of money to run.

It costs us more than the country can afford. If only a small percentage of this cost was saved in improved efficiency and reducing waste, their would be billions available per year to plough back into improved services.

The key aims of "Journey to Excellence" should therefore be to search for ways of simplifying procedures, reducing delays and duplication and to focus scarce resources on delivering services better.

Many improvements that the public would like to see cost nothing, and can sometimes even reduce costs. A courteous and respectful greeting requires no financial investment.

Failure to give a member of the public a simple, satisfactory explanation to an enquiry may result in an incorrectly completed application form which will cost time to put right.

Improving public service delivery matters, not only to the individual users of services, but also to the whole community. Improved delivery of service is essential for the future economic prosperity and social development of our country.

And economic growth depends, in the very first place, on social progress. Economic justice requires that each individual has access to the necessary services required for his survival and development. But improving service delivery should never be seen as a one-off exercise.

It is an ongoing and dynamic process, an endless "journey to excellence" because as standards are met, they must be gradually raised - as Nelson Mandela once put it: "After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb."

It is in this light that we welcome "Journey to Excellence" and the spirit of criticism and self-criticism under which it was launched by Dr Kanganja. It is a good start that can lead to a lot of progress if pursued consistently and in a disciplined way and if we continue to remind ourselves of the fact that there is nothing which makes people more appreciative of a government than that it is able to deliver services.