The public service is again under scrutiny. Despite all the reforms introduced in the last two and a half decades, it is accused of being excessively bureaucratic and not sufficiently citizen-focused.
The Nationalist Party’s report on the electoral defeat superficially put the blame for this on those Labourites in the civil service who “did their best to undermine government”.
Recently, the Principal Permanent Secretary noted that the public service needs better leaders, enhanced professionalism and greater employee flexibility.
Too many decisions are still being made by following rules blindly.
A former top civil servant was reported as stating that the public sector has fallen behind; “the impetus of the early reforms seemed to have subsided along the way”.
The reform he referred to started in the early 1990s and was inspired by international developments.
This was the age of Thatcherism and neo-liberal thinking, which held that governments should do less and markets more. The civil service was deemed to be too big, wasteful and not citizen-focused.
This triggered a paradigm shift away from the Weberian belief that bureaucracy based on hierarchy and strict rules was the best way of working. The new premise was that civil servants, like all other actors in the political sphere, have their own agenda and personal interests and are far from the selfless, non-political beings that conventional thinking assumed them to be. The television series Yes Minister helped to re-enforce this perception among the public.
The primary challenge was seen as getting the public service to be run as the private sector. Top civil servants had to become managers and promote a ‘customer-oriented’ culture.
They had to motivate their staff and earn respect and not just rely on the authority derived from their position.
Employees were to be empowered and the department’s performance assessed through results, not the size of its budget.
Have these reforms achieved the desired results?
If the UK experience is anything to go on, there is still a lot to be done. Lately, The Guardian carried an investigation into the situation at the Passport Office, which had a backlog of some 30,000 applications from UK citizens living abroad. Many of them were risking missing out on their holidays and felt obliged to pay an extra £55 to have their applications fast-tracked.
To cope with the backlog, the management of the Passport Office instructed employees to relax security checks and this triggered an uproar in political circles.
The British media would not let such an opportunity go by without lambasting the public service, questioning its culture, structures and ways of operation. The public service is described as amateurish and has been lambasted for its lack of accountability and for slipping back into its ‘bad old ways’. The situation is not helped by the fact that the UK government wants the public service to cut costs, including the pay and perks of top civil servants.
Coming back to the situation in Malta, we now have a hybrid system which imposes a ‘managerial’ layer on top of a bureaucratic core. Initiatives such as business planning and customer and quality charters have gone stale. Too many departments operate as ‘silos’ and the overriding concern is to protect one’s turf.
In an age when public policy-making and implementation has become increasingly complex cutting across departments and ministries, collaboration is of critical importance. Top public servants should not allow IT technicians to usurp the decision-making process. While e-government has helped revolutionise the ways of working of the public sector, IT is a tool and not an end in itself.
Public service leaders should refrain from taking the line of least resistance to appease political masters
The volume of work facing the public service is massive and citizens are becoming increasingly demanding. But public service leaders should, as much as possible, refrain from taking the line of least resistance to appease their political masters. They need to embrace change and stop seeing it as a threat which inherently reflects badly on their performance. Blaming the lack of resources and personnel for shortcomings is not good enough.
Academics have come to realise the deficiencies of the management approach. Market-driven services may be more efficienct but they are not necessarily cheaper and often lack a social dimension. The emphasis is shifting to governance: the active involvement of stakeholders (including citizens) in determining the nature and delivery of public services. By way of example, governance educates citizens to keep streets clean rather than ensuring that streets are cleaned efficiently. Good governance also takes a holistic approach.
Given the complexity and cross-cutting nature of most public policies, coordination and collaboration between departments and ministries is becoming of critical importance. This requires a changed mindset which encourages and rewards both collective as well as individual performance. This is no easy task and calls for a new style of leadership.
Modern society requires a well-functioning public service. It is time to revitalise our public service to bring it in line with the expectations of the public. The reform has to be ongoing to reflect the ever-changing needs of society. And, if the political class really wants this reform to succeed, it should stop treating the public service as if it were part of a football game.
Public service reform is a journey nota destination.
fms18@onvol.net