scholarly journals Actions and Behaviours Essential for Monitoring & Evaluation to Succeed in South African Public Service

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Malefetsane Mofolo ◽  
Lungepi Mkuyane ◽  
Tembile Skade
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
South African ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Monitoring And Evaluation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
The Public ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks

As an intervention mechanism to improve service delivery, the concepts of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is recently growing in popularity among countries, including South Africa. To this end, questions are posed in this article to establish the effect of making use of M&E in the South African public service. These are posed in view of the fact that South Africa has established a number of sound regulatory frameworks in the past, which should serve as a ‘fertile’ environment for effective service delivery. On this basis, attempts are made to investigate the answers to such questions, and then the body of knowledge through literature review was consulted so as to contextualise and conceptualise arguments and recommendations that could be made at the end of the article. Monitoring and Evaluation could be seen as a critical tool for government institutions to be effective towards achievement of their goals and objectives, as well as making an impact on the lives of South African citizens. In view of this, much needs to be done to several unresolved issues, particularly issues around the organisational/operational culture, peculiar public servants’ attitudes, inefficiency and incompetence, as well as non-compliance with relative legislation. Recommendations with regard to the required actions and behaviours in the public service are, therefore, proposed for consideration.

scholarly journals Operations and quality management for public service delivery improvement

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-45
Author(s):  
Za-Mulamba Paulin Mbecke
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Quality Management ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Operations Management ◽  
Service Management ◽  
Monitoring And Evaluation ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The Public ◽  
Goods And Services

Public service management reforms have not yet contributed to poverty eradication and generally socio-economic development of many African countries. The reforms suggested and implemented to date still prove to be weak in addressing the many challenges faced by the public service in delivering goods and services to the population. The failure of the current public service management calls for a consideration of business-driven approaches and practices that facilitate effectiveness, efficiency, competitiveness and flexibility in goods and services provision. The critical social theory methodology and the literature review technique described and raised awareness on service delivery chaos in South Africa. A public service reform that focuses on operations and quality management is one of the ways of improving and sustaining service delivery in South Africa. Operations management is an essential tool for the planning, execution, control, monitoring and evaluation of production processes. Quality management, in the other hand, is essential to ensure best quality of goods and services produced by the public service within acceptable time and available resources to meet or exceed people’s expectations. The operations and quality management framework proposed in this article is a potential alternative to the current service delivery crisis in South Africa.

scholarly journals IMPROVING THE EFFICIENCY OF CANADA’S PUBLIC SERVICE

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 67-73
Author(s):  
Наталья Касаткина ◽  
Natalya Kasatkina
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Monitoring And Evaluation ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
The Public ◽  
Level Of Training ◽  
Resources Planning ◽  
Made In

Improving the efficiency of public service is an important area for overcoming the crisis in relations between the state, society and a citizen. Modernization of civil service of Canada is carried out in a number of ways. Changes were made in a recruitment order for civil service by means of expansion of the powers of persons competent to solve these issues in ministries and government departments. One of the directions for improving the quality of the civil service was an increase in the level of training of public servants. Coordination of the educational process in various government departments is carried out by the Canadian School of Public Service. The system of human resources planning has been introduced. The quality of public services provided is improved with help of timely providing them in compliance with all requirements of a particular government department, and taking into account the rights of citizens by achieving a balance between the services provided and the money spent for this purpose and regular monitoring and evaluation of the dynamics of the providing process of services. One of the areas of modernization of the public service is the introduction of strict control over of public servants’ ethical standards. Actions that lead to a conflict of interest are legislatively prohibited. Strict bans in Canada are implied regarding the employment of persons who replace public office after the end of their career. As a result of the measures taken to fight corruption, including a sphere that is largely susceptible to corruption risks, Canada is among top ten countries with the least corruption. Achievement of positive results in the activities of civil servants became possible due to the state’s special attention to the issues of its modernization.

scholarly journals The Dilemma of Accountability and Good Governance for Improved Public Service Delivery in Nigeria

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kehinde David Adejuwon
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government ◽  
Effective Service

The public sector in Nigeria is irrefutably beset with gross  incompetence and ineffective management. Perplexing difficulties endure in the Nigerian public sector in spite of a number of reform programmes that have been designed to enhance efficient and effective service delivery for almost two decades. The fact that public service has failed dismally to achieve its laudable objectives is the reason for the vote of no confidence passed on its administrators by majority of the Nigerian populace. The article examines the dilemma of accountability and good governance in Nigeria and demonstrates that the critical point in achieving meaningful developments in the country intrinsically lay with improved service delivery in the public sector. The basic reason why the public service has become the scorn of the people is because for too long, both the government and public servants have paid lip service to the crucial issue of effective and efficient service delivery. The article argues that improved service delivery will improve both the performance and the image of public service and re-awaken the citizens’ interest and trust in them to do business with public servants. It suggests that  in order to bring sanity back to the Nigerian Public Service,  all unprofessional tendencies such as ethnicity bias and nepotism in appointments and promotions, lack of security of tenure of office, and appointment of non-career public servants into key positions in the public service must stop. Also,  effective service delivery must be tailored to the circumstances of Nigeria. The study made use of secondary data obtained from various sources. It therefore concludes that without a reawakening of the culture of accountability and transparency lost over the years, the trusting relationship needed to forge between the government and the governed for the actualization of good governance will not materialize.

scholarly journals A reflection on the relationship between performance management and training in the South African public service

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Harry Munzhedzi
Keyword(s):  
Service Delivery ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
South African ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Skills Gap ◽  
The South ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
And Training

Orientation: Performance management plays a pivotal role in the realisation of many facets of public administration, including service delivery, good governance and organisational productivity through setting of performance targets and regular assessments of performance. In search of improved quality and productivity in the public service, the South African government introduced several legislative and policy interventions, including but not limited to the Public Service Act, 1994 (Proclamation 103 of 1994), Public Service Regulations of 2001 and the White Paper on Transforming Public Service Delivery of 1997.Research purpose: The main thrust of this conceptual paper was to explore the relationship between performance management and training in the South African public service.Motivation for the study: The lack of sufficient literature on the relationship between performance management and training. To also prove that the two are inseparably linked, meaning that one cannot exist without the other.Research design, approach and method: This article, which is conceptual in nature, reviewed existing literature on performance management and training in the public service extensively so as to arrive at a definitive conclusion.Main findings: The article contends that as much as training underpins the process of performance management, training is also fortified by performance management. Precisely, there cannot be performance management without training and vice versa.Practical/managerial implications: As much as training is imperative in the management of performance in the public service, such training must be need-based and it must be underpinned by performance management through identification of skills gap in the assessment of performance.Contribution: It is proposed that to enhance the knowledge, capacity, effectiveness and efficiency of the public service performance, needs-based training that seeks to close the skills gap, is developed and adequately implemented.

scholarly journals Ability within disability: Reflective memories shared with Dr Kasturi Varley

2022 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kogielam K. Archary ◽  
Christina Landman
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
The Body ◽  
Energy Agency ◽  
Community History ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Experience ◽  
Shed Light

In a post-apartheid South Africa, the value of reflective memories and their impact on community history gives credibility to their relationship with personal struggles such as disability, be it physical or political. Shaped by South African Indian heritage, an isolated individualised case of a second-generation descendant’s ability–disability experience is researched and narrated in this article. The respondent, Dr Kasturi Varley is a woman of the South African Indian community, who was born almost 101 years after the first shipload of Indian indentured labourers arrived in the then Colony of Natal. Her memories shed light on a unique Indo-African-European experience. Her indentured paternal grandfather arrived in the African continent in August 1900. Her reflective memories and shared experiences of various episodes of the ability–disability paradigm add to the body of knowledge of the Indian indentured labour system that already exists and partially fills up the prevalent gaps in the research on this topic. Her story is unique in that she worked wheelchair-bound at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria and subsequently settled in the United Kingdom. This study applied a qualitative research methodology.Contribution: This article provides insight on reflective memories within the domain of social memory and contributes to an understanding of the historiography of the descendants of Indian indentured labourers in South Africa. In 2020, this community commemorated the 160th anniversary of the arrival of the labourers to the Colony of Natal.

scholarly journals Might first-hand experience of ill-health and economic hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic strengthen public support for vaccination and the reallocation of health sector funding towards health emergency preparedness in South Africa?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
R Mattes ◽  
K Dalal ◽  
H Rhoma ◽  
S Lambert ◽  
T De Wet ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
South African ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Emergency Preparedness ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Economic Hardship ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy

AbstractAimsWe examined whether first-hand experience of ill-health and economic hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic might strengthen public support for vaccination, and for the reallocation of health sector funding towards health emergency preparedness in South Africa – a country in which high rates of vaccine hesitancy go hand in hand with widespread discontent regarding public service delivery.MethodsUsing data from 1,600 South African respondents who were surveyed during 2021 for the Eighth Round of Afrobarometer (AB-R8), discrete measures of household- and individual-level sociodemographic and economic factors were generated to permit confounder-adjusted analyses of probabilistic causal relationships between self-reported measures of: personal/household COVID-19 illness and job/income/business loss as a result of COVID-19; and the likelihood that respondents would accept a (government-approved) COVID-19 vaccine, or support the reallocation of health sector funding towards health emergency preparedness.FindingsThere was little evidence that personal/household experience of COVID-19 illness was associated with the likelihood that respondents would (or would not) accept a (government-approved) COVID-19 vaccine (OR: 0.96; 95%CI: 0.72,1.28); or that these respondents would (or would not) support the reallocation of health sector funding towards health emergency preparedness (OR: 0.95; 95%CI: 0.71,1.26), even after adjustment for individual- or household-level sociodemographic and economic covariates considered likely confounders. There was similarly little evidence that personal/household experience of job/income/business loss as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with support for the reallocation of health sector resources for emergency preparedness (OR: 1.02; 95%CI: 0.80,1.30); again, even after adjustment for potential confounders.However, respondents who reported that they or someone in their household had lost their job/income/or business as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic had only around half the odds of reporting that they would accept a (government-approved) COVID-19 vaccine (OR: 0.60; 95%CI: 0.47,0.77) – and this finding, like the others in these analyses, was largely unaffected by the inclusion/exclusion of covariates considered susceptible to change following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e. those covariates potentially operating as colliders rather than genuine confounders).ConclusionsThese findings suggest that – despite the postulated ‘experiential dividend’ of COVID-19 illness (i.e. its expected impact on vaccine hesitancy and support for the reallocation of health sector resources for health emergency preparedness) – no such ‘dividend’ was observed in this broadly representative sample of South African adults. Indeed, job/income/business loss (and associated economic hardship) also had little effect on support for the reallocation of health sector resources for health emergency preparedness; yet this was somewhat paradoxically associated with a much lower odds of vaccine acceptance – paradoxically, since vaccination has been widely viewed as a pragmatic (if somewhat neoliberal) intervention to protect economic activity. However, these findings might simply reflect inadequate confounder adjustment for preceding and entrenched attitudes towards vaccination amongst those South Africans who are also most vulnerable to job/income/business loss as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Protecting the livelihood and health of such individuals and households is likely to remain a substantial challenge and key priority for future emergencies in which economic activity is compromised.AimThe aim of the present study was to examine whether first-hand experience of ill-health and economic hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic might have strengthened public support for vaccination, and for the reallocation of health sector funding towards health emergency preparedness in South Africa – a country in which high rates of vaccine hesitancy go hand in hand with widespread discontent regarding public service delivery. To this end we drew on data generated by the eighth round of household surveys undertaken by Afrobarometer (AB-R8) which interviewed 1,600 respondents across South Africa during 2021 – more than a year after the country’s first confirmed case of COVID-19 on 5 March 2020.

scholarly journals A REFLECTION ON GENDER ACHIEVEMENT IN SCIENCES’ RURAL SCHOOL SETTINGS OF MULTICULTURAL SOUTH AFRICA

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Mokoena ◽  
◽  
Gregory Alexander ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
High Schools ◽  
South African ◽  
The Body ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Rural High Schools ◽  
School Settings ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
South African Education ◽  
Gender Achievement

The participation of learners in science is important to a country’s socio-economic development impediments, therefore, the argument is that the girl learner should be increasingly encouraged to perform well in STEM related subjects (STATS SA). UNESCO indicates 35% women representative in STEM as students in higher education globally, whilst less than 40% of South Africa’s scientists, engineers and technologists are women. This situation also relates to the South African education system, particularly in rural schools where girl learners are outperformed by boy learners in STEM, especially, in subjects such as Life Sciences and Physical Sciences. The purpose of this reflective paper is to ascertain the factors prohibiting excellent achievement of females in sciences in rural high schools of South Africa. The data has been gathered from numerous documents such as national and provincial analysis of result, examination and assessment directorate analysis and the district statistics in solidifying our investigation as couched by document analysis. Based on our observations and experiences of the conditions prevailing in rural high schools and less participation of female learner access in STEM, suggestions are put forth as to how their performance can be improved. The investment thereof in the body of knowledge will be to fulfil the concern not only of the country but the world at large when the number of female participants increase in STEM.

scholarly journals Proposing a competitive intelligence (CI) framework for Public Service departments to enhance service delivery

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nisha Sewdass
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Competitive Intelligence ◽  
The Public ◽  
Service Departments ◽  
Tools And Techniques ◽  
Improve Service Delivery

Background: The aim of public service departments in South Africa is to improve service delivery through the transformation and improvement of human resources and the improvement of service delivery practices. Furthermore, it is important for the public service sector in South Africa to improve the quality of its service delivery, not only by comparing its performance with other sectors within South Africa but also by positioning itself amongst the best in the world. This can be achieved by benchmarking with other global industries and by implementing the most recent competitive intelligence strategies, tools and techniques. The environment of the public service organisations consists of competitive forces that impact the functioning of these organisations.Objectives: This article focuses on proposing competitive intelligence-related strategies, tools and techniques for gathering and analysing information in the public service departments in South Africa in order to enhance service delivery.Method: The study was qualitative in nature and was divided into two components, namely, (1) theoretical – through an extensive review of the literature and (2) empirical – an ethnographic study at the chosen public service department, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). Ethnographic interviews with management-level staff, focus groups and document analysis were used to obtain adequate information to determine the current state of public service delivery in South Africa.Results: The results of the study was the development of a new competitive intelligencerelated framework for gathering and analysing information, and it represents a formal and systematic process of informing managers in public service departments about critical issues that these departments face or are likely to experience in future.Conclusion: The strategic planning tools and techniques of this framework will fill the gap that exists in public service departments. Once this framework has been implemented, it could assist these departments to improve service delivery to its citizens.

Training and development model for municipal frontline staff

2021 ◽  
pp. 014473942199752
Author(s):  
Rochelle G Wessels
Keyword(s):  
Service Delivery ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Training And Development ◽  
The Body ◽  
Development Model ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Frontline Staff ◽  
The Public ◽  
Customer Care ◽  
The City

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa states that public servants must deliver services to improve the general welfare of the citizens. The public servants therefore have a duty to the citizens to deliver effective and efficient public services that will be to the satisfaction of the citizens to improve their well-being. However, this is not the case since service delivery protests have become the norm, with citizens regularly protesting about the services received from the various municipalities. Citizens are not happy about the level of service delivery received and therefore take to the streets to render their unhappiness. The City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality is no exception, as service delivery protests have also plagued the municipality and during 2016, the media referred to the protests as Tshwane burning. The municipal frontline staff are at the coalface of service delivery and are often the only public servants that the citizens come into contact with. The municipal frontline staff deliver services to the public on a daily basis and should possess the necessary knowledge, skills, behaviours, attitudes and competencies to deliver professional services. This article will describe what the Customer Care Consultants think should be included in the design of an essential model for training and development for Customer Care Consultants at the City of Tshwane, as they are at the forefront of service delivery. It does so by drawing on an extensive case study using a qualitative questionnaire toexplore the views and perceptions of the municipal frontline staff. The article seeks to add to the body of knowledge by critically analysing the views provided by the Customer Care Consultants on the content for a training and development modelfor Customer Care Consultants at the City of Tshwane. This study reports on research undertaken for the author’s doctoral research conducted during 2018 and culminates in a training and development model for municipal frontline staff.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document