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Kenya: Public Service ‘must be citizen-centric’ |
| Source: |
Google Alert |
| Source Date: |
Friday, July 12, 2013 |
| Focus: |
Electronic and Mobile Government, Citizen Engagement, Internet Governance
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| Country: |
Kenya |
| Created: |
Jul 12, 2013 |
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PwC’s government and public services industry leader for Africa, Benson Okundi, says future governments must become more "citizen-centric".
"They need to know what citizens require and in most cases it requires a delivery of services right to their doorstep, or close proximity to where they are," he says.
Mr Okundi, who is also the president of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Kenya, says this requires the capacity of government employees to be built up to absorb the resources that have been allocated to them.
"For example, many countries allocate budgets annually and yet only 50% of it is utilised by the end of the year due to low human capacity and an inability to comply with accounting or procurement measures."
According to the report, the internal management capabilities needed to channel resources effectively range from implementation planning to managing finances and prioritising the organisation’s projects, performance, risks, partnerships, assets and human capital.
"We must use infrastructure to become globally competitive," says Stanley Subramoney, strategy leader of PwC SA. But he says a big challenge for governments is to find new ways to lead strategic collaborations and partnerships with people from other sectors such as business.
"In our view, tomorrow’s public body will need to act quite differently. Government and public sector leaders have a key role in this shift, refocusing their organisations on their changed environments and projecting a clear and vibrant picture for the future."
A PwC country partner in Ghana, Felix Addo, says African governments should avoid raising debt if this is spent on salaries and other expenses instead of infrastructure.
"But raising debt from current levels is not necessarily a problem if it goes to infrastructure," he says.
Mr Okundi says it will be critical to encourage free trade to open up sub-regions to exports.
He says Uganda has already reduced its import tariffs in favour of a free flow of goods and services in the sub-region, as other countries in the region did not levy tariffs and were doing better business.
And cutting red tape is important too. "South Africa is a highly regulated economy, but at some point in time there needs to be a normalisation," Mr Subramoney says.
The governments of the future will also need to embrace a lot of public-private partnerships, Mr Okundi says.
"Leaders need to be strong and decisive in pushing through the desired transformation, and setting the tone for taking calculated and well-informed risks in public sector environments which tend to default to risk aversion," says the report.
"We believe the time has come for leaders to focus more on outcome and impact, not output."
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Kenya: Public Service ‘must be citizen-centric’ GOVERNMENTS and public sector organisations need to deliver services that are affordable in the context of deficit-reducing budget cuts a new report from PwC says Regional integration public-private partnerships and infrastructure growth will be key pillars to Africa reducing poverty through to 2030 but this will need a radical shift in thinking from governments according to senior PwC researchers across Africa on Thursday According to the Future of Government report the challenge for public sector organisations worldwide is to adjust to the new reality of doing more for less
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