The NEED for Civil Service
to Reform
by Dr. Humrawali Khan
There has been a lot of rethinking about Public sector administration
or management.
For the last twenty years, or more recently in case of some countries, various
managerial ideas, most of which are derived from the private sector, are increasingly
gaining prominence in the public sector.
The proponents of changes to public sector administration put forward various
new ideas and approaches on public sector administration. These ideas and approaches are collectively termed managerialism and new public
management (NPR).
Managerialism and new public management in the main are a group of ideas and
practices in the effort to inculcate the '3E' of economy, efficiency and effectiveness
into public sector administration.
Farnham and Hotrod (1996) in their book, Managing the New Public Servicestates the managerialism and new public management are terms used to describe
the structural, organizational and managerial changes which have taken place
in the public services since the late 1970s.
They reiterated that in essence they incorporated the application of private
sector management system and techniques into public services.
Among the features of managerialism and NPR are:
- adopting of
a rational approach to managing, which emphasizes the role of strategic
management in setting objectives and clarifying policy issues
- developing active
policies for changing the cultures of public organizations from one dominated
by traditional public service values to one attuned to the market, business
and entrepreneurial values of the new public service model
- replacing traditional
fiduciary relationships, control by budget and hierarchical structures
- with contractual ones, both internally and eternally, between 'purchasers'
and 'providers' based on price, quality and volume.
Before
defining managerialism in the context of the public sector, it is appropriate
to ask the question: Is there one?
This question is appropriate because one tends to think of "administration"
rather than "management" in the public sector.
Although in most instances, it can be argued that the distinction between the
two may be a matter of language rather than practice.
There are subtle differences between them. Fly (1997) in Public Sector Management
refers to administration as "involving the orderly arrangement of resources
to follow previously defined procedures and rules and management as "involving
discretion in the management of resources to achieve a set of objectives".
However, due to the effort in reinventing the government, administration in
the public sector has undergone, in most countries, some from of reform. Morally
and Villains (1997) in their paper Public sector Executive Development in Australia:
200 and Beyond (International Journal of Public Sector Management Vol. 10, No
6) gave the following as the most significant factors leading to the public
sector reform:
- dissatisfaction with
the bureaucracy, which is seen to be inefficient, inflexible, unresponsive
and inadequately accountable.
- Economic recession
which has led to diminishing economic resources with which governments can
provide services, in a climate of increasing demand for services, and
- Continuing debate
over the level of involvement of public administrators in policy formulation;
should they be involved at all in policy or should they be solely implements
of government policy decisions.
- Therefore public sector
"administration" is undergoing a reform to take a "more managerial approach."
- This more managerial
approach in the public sector in the United Kingdom, for example, takes
the form of emphasis in the following principles (Thomson 1992, Public sector
Management in a period of Radical Change: 1979 - 1992, in Public Money and
Management, July - September 1992): Strategic role and empowerment of the
chief executive, leadership (at various levels) in public sector organizations,
the creation, and building, of effective senior teams, the creation or upgrading
or the financial management function, the shift from administration to management
from the enforcement of defined processes and rule to the exercise of discretion,
the overt linking of operational activity to the overall mission and objectives
of organizations, the evaluation of operations and processes for efficiency,
effectiveness and value for money etc.
In Malaysia,
the words of the Former Chief Secretary to the Government in his book Civil
Service Reform Towards Malaysia's Vision 2020:
"The Civil Service is undergoing a paradigm shift... The paradigm shift is from
a rule bound bureaucratic tradition to a more proactive, flexible and adaptable
more of operations".
Further, according to Tan Sri Sari, the objectives of administrative reforms
in Malaysia are:
- To create a Civil
Service which is efficient, effective, dynamic and innovative
- To have a Civil Service
which is highly disciplined with the highest standard of integrity and
- To create a Civil
Service which is action oriented, people oriented and customer focused
To achieve
the above objectives of having a Civil Service that is customer focused, mission
driven, performance based and proactive while remaining responsible and accountable,
various service improvement guidelines or programs have been implemented.
The focus of these efforts is on quality and productivity in order to improve
service delivery.
Some of the Civil Service reform programs introduced to the Civil Service in
Malaysia are:
- Total Quality Management
(QM)
- Client Charter
- Service Recovery Mechanism
- Quality Control Circles
(BCC)
By introducing
these service quality improvement programs, the focus is on the creation of
quality culture in the Civil Service.
According to Tan Sri Sarji, the features of quality culture which should be
practiced by government agencies are:
- Focus on the customer
- Focus on prevention
- Focus on continuous
improvement
- Building a sense of
ownership among workers
- Leadership and commitment
of top management
- Measurement of performance
A thorough
assessment on cultural change in the Civil Service brought about by this effort
to improve services and product is in order to ascertain their effectiveness.
However it is indeed very heartening to note, generally, that there has been
tremendous improvement of services provided by those government agencies that
deal directly with public particularly with regards to their counter services,
work procedures and processes as well as their transparency.
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