It is difficult to remember a time when the public service and administration department did not dominate the headlines, just as it is similarly difficult to imagine that increasing economic, social and political pressure from citizens will disappear.
The pendulum of citizens’ experience has swung from good quality public services and works to pathetic and incoherently delivered services, depending on the level of government and geographical location.
The public service is structurally and functionally perverse as a result of having to pull 14 separate apartheid regional and tribal administrations together into nine constitutional provinces, followed by variations in competency from basic to advanced public administration and systems capabilities.
This complexity in our country’s governance and management structure was compounded by the integration of more than a thousand local-government administrations.
For historic and rather odd reasons, the public-service administration refers to national and provincial government — local government workers are municipal officers.
The differences in categorising these staffers has, over time, induced different identities, disparities in conditions of employment and incoherent and unco-ordinated services, systems and structures, governance, leadership and management policies and practices.
The three levels of government require an effective and capable public administration that provides seamless and integrated public goods, services and works to citizens. The separation of responsibilities between levels of government, though constitutional, is artificial from a citizen’s perspective. This is especially so, given increasing poverty, unemployment and inequality.
The citizen sees the state and its public administration as one structure. As a result, citizens expect the administration to provide clean water and public health to households and communities.
In reality, it does not matter where the location of legislative responsibility is, as long as there is clean drinking water.
The administration is therefore seen as a vehicle and an instrument for the delivery of public goods, services and works.
Given different and complimentary responsibilities in the continuum of goods and services between levels of government, greater integration and co-ordination is needed on the public-administration front.
The cycle and value-chain of public goods, services and works — from policy and legislation to planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation — requires horizontal and vertical integration between levels of government and across different departments and agencies.
International experience, especially that of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development and the Brics countries, shows that enhanced integration and co-ordination across levels of government has an ability to improve transparency, optimise economies of scale and improve efficiency.
One of the interventions undertaken by many governments is to ensure that integrated government services, systems and structures are put in place.
The centrality of an integrated and co-ordinated public administration system ensures that irrespective of location — whether it be a national, provincial, regional, municipal or district office — citizens must receive the same good quality service.
The Constitution is clear about this obligation and the Constitutional Court has ruled many times against structural and functional variations in the public service which affects citizens, whether they live in farming communities or metropolitan cities.
Adhering to constitutional obligations demands further functional and structural reform of the public-service administration.
Following many statutory reviews, opinions and studies by think-tanks, and public complaints to political representatives and the executive at different levels of government, it is clear that focused reform is demanded — and on a national scale.
Reform is needed on a national scale because it is about rebuilding the public administration, systems, governance ethos, critical competencies and culture of service to citizens.
Reform is also founded on the principle of improving the quality of governance, leadership and management systems, ending practices that compromise the values and principles of the Constitution and ensuring a good, effective and efficient public-service administration.
The national Public Administration Bill, as put forward by Lindiwe Sisulu, the minister of public service and administration, is a national legislative intervention intended to facilitate further reform of the public service.
The national impetus of the legislation, as opposed to an interpretation of legislation for national government, recognises the different constitutional responsibilities of the various levels of government and their associated departments and agencies.
The legislation redefines public administration to include national, provincial and local government, all referred to as public servants.
In fact, it is about establishing an all-encompassing national public service that sets the standard of measurement for an integrated public administration in terms of structure, systems and personnel across levels. There are already national finance systems, such as basic accounting systems, that are obligatory and which encourage openness and transparency in the management of the fiscus.
The Bill sets uniform terms and conditions for employees in the public service and deals head-on with the disparities embedded in the two systems — public servants and municipal officials. Municipal collective agreements on remuneration and working conditions will no longer be allowed without the prior legislative consent of the minister.
From a public finance and fiscal-management perspective, all employees in the state administration are remunerated from nationally raised taxes through a division of revenue and equitable share allocation to provinces and municipalities.
Given that revenue to different levels of government is allocated not according to a derival principle — funds are allocated based on the volume raised in a particular geographical area, including a range of different incentives in a geographical area — the outcry from citizens and economic and industrial stakeholders for improvement and value for money from the public administration is obligatory.
Furthermore, the achievement of allocative and operational efficiency has to be driven by decentralisation within the public service.
The Bill, therefore, recognizes the constitutional responsibilities of the three levels of government and their respective departments and agencies. Moreover, a Bill based on the current state of public service, irrespective of the level of government, is more about the integration of systems of public service delivery, public finance management and governance than increased centralisation or decentralisation.
Putting our citizens first is what has to drive our public service integration: uniformity of service-delivery, information technology, human resources management and development, national legislation and the fight against fraud and corruption.
Daniel Plaatjies is an adviser to the public service and administration minister