Olaopa: Why Public Service Reforms are Imperative

The Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission ( FCSC), Prof. Tunji Olaopa, on Monday stressed the need for reforms in the public sector.

Olaopa spoke at a one-day roundtable discussion on ” Public Service Reforms Improvement and Change” organised by the Bureau of Public Service Reform and European Union in Abuja.

According to Olaopa, past and contemporary reforms in the public service have been geared towards strengthening institutions and improving performance.

Explaining the objective of institutional reforms since the mid-1970s, Olaopa declared: ” It’s generally to, in one breath, ignite a shift from rules compliance ‘I am directed’ old Weberian bureaucratic managerial tradition to a more performance-oriented administrative system.”

He noted that a new public service ” is envisioned to be entrepreneurial, technocratic, technology-enabled and accountability-driven within the framework of stewardship relationship with the public as democratic imperative.

“In another breath, reforms had entailed significant drives towards paradigm reinvention of the value-orientation of the civil service of the golden era of the 1960s to the 70s in Nigeria”

For him, public service can be reinvented and institutions strengthened with the
restoration of the basic elements of the management systems of MDAs, updating of outdated national policies and the strengthening of ineffective national councils as inter-tier coordination mechanism within framework of the working of our federal system.”

He mentioned other changes needed as including “revising the one-size-fits-all service-wide operating system activated through circulars; transitioning from reliance on APER-based staff performance appraisals into more robust performance management system”.

He decried a situation where public perception is such that public institutions are seen as not working and that governments have not demonstrated that they can deliver development.

On the relationships that constrain public service delivery, he said: “The relationship is still a client-beneficiary one, one that remains ever so bureaucratic, with the public relying on officials’ best judgement in a paternalistic decision-making dynamic without meaningful public engagement and shared ownership.

“With service provision still largely a monopoly, the whole ‘customer is right’ culture of market, and the idea that they can choose, criticize and reject services as with citizen-centred service delivery and service as human right model has yet to gain prominence.”

0n the need to strengthen the public sector, he suggested reengineering cum automation to remove red tapes and other bottlenecks including silos operations for inter-departmental and inter-sectoral synergies and partnerships.

He also urged the reengineering of MDAs operating system so that they can deliver measurable results and outcomes (effective measures), while being accountable for resource allocation and use (efficiency and productivity measures)

Olaopa listed other measures to include holding MDAs to some form of performance accountability managed with new performance metrics; focus on the human side of the enterprise; and strengthening of public service values through
a shift from the culture of seeing performance as loyalty; compliance with greater emphasis on measurable results and accountability; deepening respect for public interest and citizens orientation; and
re-enactment of professional ethical frameworks and new code of conduct and ethics .