INTRODUCTION
This article is the second of two tenets of President Mahama’s Change Agenda. The first one (in an earlier publication) discussed President Mahama’s ‘ORAL HYGIENE’ (Operation Recover All Loot) and the possible ways of making it eMective.
The other tenet of the change agenda is to Reset Ghana, which will look at the current state of the public sector and discuss possible ways of making the Reset Agenda eMective and sustainable.
RESET
Placed within the right context, RESET should be understood to be returning the country to where it used to be (in terms of economic development and good governance in the public sector) before the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government took over.
But then, the nagging question is: how were these two domains (the economy and the public sector governance) faring before 2017 when the NPP government took over? Is that where we want to return the country to? If not, then how far back are we going in resetting Ghana?
This part of the article will attempt to dwell on the public sector side and leave the economic side to the economists.
THE GHANAIAN PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE
It should be noted here that the Ghanaian public sector has never been in any decent form enough for any new policy to attempt to return to. The sector is historically dysfunctional, or at best riddled with boundless corruption, lawlessness, dishonesty, egoism, tribalism, cronyism, and is utterly chaotic! Rule of law is totally absent, due process is bypassed and abused by the very people who should know better. The tenets of bureaucracy (the Weberian type) are desecrated with reckless abandon or at most ignored and misinterpreted to suit the parochial interests of ‘big men’ and ‘powers from above’. The diMerence between party and government is non-existent and the neutrality required of public servants has only been a fleeting illusion. In summary, politics has permeated the very fabric of the Ghanaian society, mostly in the public service so much that public and civil servants are divided along party lines. And the love for a party is equated with patriotism.
THE SHAPE OF ‘RESET’
Within the context of Ghanaian public sector governance, Reset Agenda should therefore be understood to mean transforming the public sector into a formal rules- based system (fashioned to minimize ambiguity, provide a basis for assessment in a
structured way) where guidelines dictate how public service work should be performed. Uniformity and predictability are needed so that public servants know what is expected of them in terms of their tasks; and they are hired, fired and promoted based on their experience and performance, not on party or tribal aMiliations.
It is not for nothing that Max Weber (the German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist) argued that ‘bureaucracy constitutes the most eMicient and rational way in which human activity can be organized’ and that ‘systematic processes and organized hierarchies are necessary to maintain order, maximize eMiciency and eliminate favoritism’. Perhaps Max Weber was not thinking about the African society and how it is structured when he made this argument! Or probably his argument was/is not meant for the African governance system!
If the 24-hour economy is planned to be anchored on agriculture, then government needs a formidable, reliable and a neutral public sector bureaucracy to undergird this policy agenda. The public sector as it looks now, is not capable of doing that, and the following ideas could be considered if we want to see a real change.
INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS, THE SCOPE OF RESET AGENDA
Public sector reforms generally take two major forms (among others): process reengineering (making business processes as painless as possible for service users; and digitization (automation) of processes where feasible. The benefits of these forms are numerous, the key ones being the removal of waste (caused by redundant processes and non-value-adding activities), reduction of cost and increasing eMiciency in service delivery. These benefits are the reasons why western bureaucracies are more reliable, transparent, predictable, user-centered and result-oriented.
To achieve the reset agenda and reap the benefits of reforms, the following steps need to be taken as part of public sector reforms:
Governance, control and reporting of reform activities
It will be fair to expect a project-based body that will take forward the Reset Agenda, possibly within the Presidency, with decentralized units across the country (Regional, Metropolitan, Municipal and District levels). Structures should be in place for weekly reporting of reform eMorts in all institutions. Issues hindering the progress of the agenda must be identified and communicated within reasonable time to the presidency. The appointment of a Minister of State for Public Sector Reform is a credible statement of intent from the President in this direction.
Reengineer all business processes
The need for reviewing all business processes in key public sector institutions is as urgent as the importance of the sector as the regulator and anchor to the growth of the private sector. The steps are:
Prioritize key public and civil service institutions that will serve a flagship ones. With the involvement of relevant stakeholders, identify all key processes that lead to the delivery of services to the public. Remove all redundant steps, delays, costly steps, non-value add steps, structural imbalances, outsourceable steps. Ensure that all steps in each of the processes add value to the outcome Design the new steps and make them known to the staM and all concerned in the delivery of the service. Publish such steps to enable the general user community to understand what to expect from the service provider. Educate all bureaucrats on the importance of such steps in achieving eMiciency and transparency. Enforce disciplinary consequences for those who jump or bypass the steps. This is where the law must work! There is the need to crack the whip ruthlessly to ensure the right thing is done.
What this means is that each oMicial is responsible for their actions and how their actions lead to the quality of the outcome. It will then be easy to track who is responsible for any service and how they help deliver eMiciency.
Digitize services where feasible
Digital transformation should be at the heart of any public sector reform in Ghana at this crucial stage of development. This will involve the process of using digital technologies to change how public services create and deliver outcomes to meet user expectations. If done without fanfare and propaganda, this form of transformation will engender the much-needed transparency and eMiciency. The digitalization eMorts of the former Vice President Bawumia need to be reviewed and pursued with more vigorous scrutiny and less propaganda and political influence.
Educate the public
In Ghana, the public service oMicial is more of a demi-god than the public he is employed to serve. Public education should be able to put the service user (the public) at the center of government activities across all sectors. Public servants should be made to understand who they are serving and not whom they are lording over! Public service design should be user-centered, user-driven and result-oriented.
Reset agenda should whip public servants into knowing their obligations towards the public and the parameters that determine their adherence to these obligations. That is where disciplinary measures will follow whenever users express dissatisfaction with the service provided!
‘Assuredly I say unto you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him’ (The Holy Bible, John 13:16. NKJV)
Mental Reset
The agenda should maximize the use of the Ministry of Information and/or the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) to design public education materials that inform both service users and providers of their respective rights and responsibilities. There needs to be a kind of national consciousness of the need for probity and accountability. And the value of patriotism should be engrained in the minds of the people. The order from the Minister in charge of Education that schools should include Ethics and Patriotism in their curriculum is a great move towards achieving the reset agenda in the long term.
Monitor and evaluate
A strong and reliable performance monitoring and evaluation regime for all programs helps in ensuring that they are on track and deliver the required value for money. There is a monitoring and evaluation oMice in various ministries. These oMices need to be ‘reset’ to stand up to their tasks.
Reform the judicial system
The current judicial system has many questions to answer. No wonder the public hooted at the Supreme Court judges on their way out of the Presidential inauguration on 7th January!
Even if the reset agenda could be vigorously implemented in the judicial system alone, the eMect would be wide-ranging. A formidable judicial system will not only support the implementation of the reforms in terms of adjudicating oMences, especially procurement breaches in the bureaucracy but it will also serve as a deterrent to potential oMenders.
Carry the people along
The need for the new government to carry the Ghanaian public along in all activities cannot be over-emphasized in view of the existing goodwill from the electorate. This is because of the misinformation and disinformation perpetrated across the country via a vibrant social media and other non-traditional means of disseminating information.
Educating the electorate on for example, procurement laws should not be done via political debates on privately-owned and party-oriented radio stations. This should be done by the government’s public engagement machinery.
These steps, if followed with the necessary political commitment, will benefit government in the following areas:
Procurement breaches, like ‘one-man’ decisions where responsible oMicials side-step the bureaucracy, will be curtailed. The situation where a political head assumes a position and carries along ‘advisory’ staM from his former oMice will cease. Because these ‘advisory’ staM immediately outmuscle career civil servants, distort and desecrate due process and bloat the government wage bill. EMective public service re-design stemming from a thorough business process re-engineering will lead to drastic staM cuts, putting into practice the ‘LEAN GOVERNMENT’ the President dreams of.
CONCLUSION
This article would again emphasize that the Ghanaian civil and public sector has never been in any good shape to return to. And it got worse with the past government and therefore needs a total clean-up, a drastic one! Institutional reforms, as currently touted about, need to be radical, uncompromising and all-encompassing as well as systematic. The amount of eMiciency savings to be derived from this reform will be unimaginable! The issue of decentralization should also be progressed aggressively in this government, giving more powers to the lower levels of government, with resources to deliver. Most importantly, intensive training should accompany the policy to enable local staM deliver as required by the center. Resetting Ghana should be continuous!
The writer is a UK-based Public Sector Transformation Practitioner. He can be reached at [email protected]
