GERALDINE FRASER-MOLEKETI, minister of Public Service and Administration, and her director-general, Richard Levin have said that privatisation and outsourcing has not increased service delivery. They were speaking at the annual Service Delivery Learning Academy conference.
Fraser-Moleketi and Levin are quoted by Business Report as saying “more, not less, government intervention" is needed to ensure a truly developmental state.
Levin noted there is little communication between various government departments, that staff could not move easily within and between different levels of the government, and that employees were demotivated. The result was that programmes were often contradictory or redundant.
The situation was made "that much harder" by the shift towards decentralisation and outsourcing of key functions, which had neither improved service delivery nor skills in the public sector.
He said governments had found it difficult to copy innovations adopted in the market because "the fundamental problem of governments is not one of inept administration, but an overloaded policy mandate".
Fraser-Moleketi said rule-bound hierarchies had become outdated and, instead, the development of networks of people involved in the same fields of work at the different levels of government should be encouraged under the watchful eye of central government, which would set the policy guidelines within which they would operate.
"It is essential to have a strong centre to hold things together," she said.
Source: Lynda Loxton, Business Report
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