The State of the Public Service Report available

The State of the Public Service Report [available at: www. estabs. go. tz] By George Yambesi Deputy Permanent Secretary President’s Office—Public Service Management 1

This Presentation n In this presentation I will discuss the State of the Public Service Report in 3 brief sections: ¨ Its design ¨ Its content or results (what it says) ¨ Its relationship to the broader issues of reporting 2

Design n n n The State of the Public Service Report addresses outcomes. In this case, outcomes can be considered statements about the ideal behavior and performance of public servants and their institutions. For example: “Public Servants are ethical hardworking, and customer oriented” Achieving Public Service outcomes contributes to improved delivery of services This report compliments our progress reports, which describes what we did. It intends to meet citizens increasing demand for information about Government Performance 3

Limits n n Even Australia’s State of the Public Service Report, which is about 350 pages in length, imposes a lot of limits on itself. The “State of the Public Service” is an enormous topic and it is not possible to answer all the questions readers may have. To narrow things down we focused on MDAs. At PO-PSM we don’t have much information about Local Government or Public Institutions (“parastatals”). 4

Limits (2) n n Second, there are financial constraints. Information on outcomes are generated through evaluation studies or surveys; these tend to be expensive. Given this, we picked topics that had dual developmental purposes. For example, we look at whether public servants are following rules and regulations because we are interested in creating a compliance inspection routine. Therefore, the report puts together a series of topics, which are outcome-oriented and which had secondary use within PO-PSM. It can be considered a baseline. 5

Main Findings (Section Two) 6

Service Delivery n n The Good News: Citizens are increasingly satisfied with a number of key Public Services (like primary education, vaccinations, etc). The economy is perceived to be well managed. The Bad News: levels of dissatisfaction are still high. As a rule of thumb around 25% of all clients are dissatisfied with Central Government services, 50 -75% with Local Government Services. Service delivery is still bureaucratic and there is not much improvement in terms of the timeliness of service delivery. 7

Service Delivery Innovation (1) n n n The Government has undertaken several key initiatives to improve service delivery. For example, services are being decentralized to Local Authorities and Executive Agencies are semi-autonomous bodies that operate at arms length from their parent Ministries. Most were converted from departments. Examples include BRELA and the Government Chemist. Has the formation of Executive Agencies caused service delivery to improve? We found: ¨ Moderate improvement in service delivery levels ¨ Vast improvement in revenue collection ¨ Increased dependency on Central Government subvention, but the accounting data was poor. ¨ Not much change in terms of personnel 8

Service Delivery Innovation (2) n n n Client Service Charters are a second innovation aimed at improving service delivery. They commit MDAs to provide a particular service within a particular time frame. We found commitments are being met 60% of the time. The Good News: The charters themselves are well prepared and within MDAs there is a strong awareness about their content. Public Servants understand their commitments. The Bad News: There is no evidence that performance is improving over time. MDAs have not been actively monitoring their commitments and in some cases, the commitments made were not very challenging. There is little evidence of citizens complaining or “demanding their rights” 9

Pay and employment n n n Pay is a major determinant of the government’s ability to recruit and retain competent public servants and thus to provide quality services. We analyzed key pay and employment trends going back to September 2000 using the Governments HR and payroll Database. The Good News: Public Service employment has grown slowly with increases in primary education and at Local Authorities. Pay in Shillings has increased by 12 -16% per year. Tanzania established ambitious pay targets which were largely, but not entirely met. The Bad News: While the percentage of women in the public service is increasing this is not the case in decision making positions. And, despite increases, there remains dissatisfaction with levels of pay. The Government has struggled to identify ways to increase budget allocations and to manage allowances in order to better remunerate Public Servants. 10

Corruption and Ethics n n Corruption remains a serious problem within the Public Service There is no simple answer as to whether corruption is increasing or decreasing. The REPOA study finds corruption to be increasing; the Transparency International surveys find corruption to be significantly decreasing; and, the PO-PSM service delivery surveys find corruption to be slightly decreasing. The recent World Bank “Governance Matters” finds Tanzania to be one of the few countries in Africa where Governance is improving. PO-PSM’s ethics baseline study found public servants to be widely aware of ethics issues but to have observed unethical behavior at the workplace. This behavior is rarely reported due to “fear of victimization” 11

Compliance Inspections n n n Compliance inspections investigate whether rules and regulations are being followed The Bad News: HR rules and regulations (in particular disciplinary action, recruitment, Leave, Performance Appraisals) are being followed 59% of the time. The Good News: some weak compliance is actually poor record keeping. However, record keeping is likely to improve in the future as personnel file management is reformed (beginning this year). The newness of the Act and its procedures also explains some instances of non-compliance. In other areas, such as the adherence to accounting rules and regulations compliance has improved over time 12

Records Management n n The management of files and paper records affects an institution’s ability to make rational decisions or to provide services in a timely fashion. We undertook a detailed study of 15 Ministries and 4 Independent departments to assess their record keeping of subject files. The Good News: Subject files are now accurately stored and can be retrieved (on average) in about 18 minutes. Few folios are misplaced and new records management procedures are largely being adhered to. It is increasingly unlikely that poor record keeping is now a major constraint to improved institutional performance 13

Planning, Monitoring, Reporting n n The Good News: the importance of planning strategically and performance budgeting are widely recognized within Government. Financial control is quite strict and intensive efforts have been undertaken to improve the state of planning and monitoring The Bad News: most plans are still of poor quality. Many MDAs maintain multiple but inconsistent plans. These plans are not outcome oriented, and often lack strategic focus—they are overly operational. Performance reporting is weakly institutionalized. Although the President has been actively promoting openness and the sharing of information, the study by IDASA shows that 63% of citizen’s request for information are not being fulfilled 14

Reporting Revisited (Section Three) 15

Some Final Thoughts n n n One of the points of this exercise was to explore ways outcome reporting can be institutionalised. MDs have strategic plans which should be outcome oriented; how should they report on their progress? Since strategic plans follow a 3 year process MDs should report on outcomes every 3 years Who should they report to? Either (1) Parliament or (2) some other form of “public hearing” chaired by a key Ministry (like Finance). In either case, citizens have a right to know the degree to which Government institutions are meeting their desired results. 16