Japan is regularly hit by powerful earthquakes and has largely adapted its infrastructure to tremors that can cause widespread damage in other
All over the world, innovation has been identified and prioritised as a critical driver for public sector transformation and modernisation to enable governments to pursue their developmental agendas.
For example, the United Nations Division for Public Administration and Development Management has initiated a new programme promoting the replication of innovative practices in Least Developed Countries and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has established an Observatory for Public Sector Innovation.
Various governments are thus focusing their energies and resources on setting up structures to design and drive innovation programmes.
This comes with different challenges because innovation needs to be explicated and made pragmatic for public officials to embrace.
Although one is happy to be inundated with requests for support and engagements, both nationally and internationally, and although we continue to form strategic partnerships with service delivery institutions, questions around our role persist.
There is thus a need for us to sustain a broad discussion on public sector innovation. The discussion should include not only the importance of public sector innovation, but also the most appropriate institutional arrangements to drive innovation within and throughout the public sector.
Driving innovation
Rightfully some may ask if innovation is not just one of the latest fads, which will blow over in a few years.
This strongly justifies the need to constantly clarify the value of institutions that are tasked to drive innovation programmes, whose mandates are fundamental to service delivery.
Innovation is about growth, development and sustainability. In a broader sense it is essential to South Africa’s future economic prosperity and quality of life.
It is about the pursuit of better and effective ways of doing things, it is about doing things differently, breaking away from what is considered the dysfunctional or tardy norm to match prevailing challenges. It is about using what we have at our disposal to achieve more.
It is about fostering entrepreneurship to raise productivity, fostering competitiveness, meeting the challenges of globalisation to thrive as a nation within our environmental, geographic and demographic limits.
Over the past few years, the government, through its various state organs, has made tremendous progress in providing services to people irrespective of their location and socio-economic background.
Data from Census 2011 has revealed a phenomenal improvement in the delivery of houses, water, sanitation, health, education and more.
However, in spite of all the good work, the reality for our government is such that much more has to be done.
What is more, successfully tackling recurring challenges requires of government to adopt a flexible and yet ruthless approach towards the pursuit of innovation to enable the various state organs to effectively dispatch their service delivery mandates in an extraordinary way.
And this, in essence, is where the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) comes in.
In summary, the CPSI’s responsibility is to unearth, encourage, reward, showcase, pilot and influence the mainstreaming of innovation in the public sector.
Before someone accuses me of yet another loaded, wordy, jargonist government-speak, let me explain: Innovative solutions are everywhere, including in the most rural, most remote areas, waiting to be unearthed and shared widely for learning, adaptation and replication.
Evidently, our mandate reaches into all sectors, unlike those of line-departments such as housing, health, education and so forth.
Rewarding and unearthing are intimately linked because many innovations that are submitted for awards are ultimately showcased through national and international Innovation Awards programmes.
Featuring these innovations in our journal or sharing them in conferences or workshops further supports the dissemination of these innovative practices.
Piloting innovation solutions
The CPSI emphasises the importance of multi-sectoral engagement as key to encouraging collaborative cross-sectoral innovative thinking about solutions for persistent challenges.
The potential solutions from such collaborative processes have to be tested and piloted.
As we remain custodians of public funds, we cannot waste it on wild ideas.
One of our tasks then is to facilitate the testing and piloting of targeted innovative solutions in a public sector environment, in collaboration with service delivery institutions and other relevant stakeholders.
Piloting provides a controlled environment to manage risks, determine unintended consequences and iron out implementation challenges.
The pilots can take from a few weeks to three years, depending on the complexity of the challenge being addressed, and the sophistication and intricateness in the development of the solution.
These solutions can be processes, models or physical gadgets, information and communications technology or otherwise. As an institution we derive great value from the fact that we do not directly offer public services because of the neutrality we bring to the table.
Our partner departments are comfortable to open up on the challenges they are facing and to partner on piloting innovative solutions.
The level of commitment and co-operation from the departments is humbling. We are grateful for the wisdom they bring to the projects.
If they did not allow us entry into their business we would not be successful.
In some instances it is not even innovation that is needed. One good example is where a queue management system was developed, but the queue problem persisted.
We were called in to assist some hospitals and we found that it was largely about back office efficiency.
Within a day of implementing the new innovative approach, three hospitals were able to get rid of long queues.
This correspondence was shared with us by one of our innovation champions in Gauteng, Naumi Sithole, in August 2012: “Today the MEC for Health, Mr Papo was having a meeting with central office staff when he received an SMS from a patient from our hospital.
"The patient was praising the pharmacy staff on the improvements done in pharmacy.
"The patient reported that they used to wait up to 4 hours for their medication and now they wait less than 30 minutes.
"The pharmacy manager was praised for the effort and the good work done. The MEC was very impressed about this, read the message to all and everybody clapped their hands on the job well done.
"I would also like to pass my congratulations to you and the team for the consistent effort you make to improve the patient’s experience. Please pass this message to all involved with the project."
An innovation-driven South Africa
These comments and sentiments from the leadership are very empowering and certainly make all efforts worth every moment. They are a huge contribution to an enabling environment.
Based on the discussion, I can boldly pronounce that talking innovation in the public service is in a sense, talking about, not just the CPSI’s activities as a formal organisation, but the extended CPSI that includes our service delivery departments and other institutions, municipalities, Premiers’ Office, our champions, mentors, partners from private, civic and academic sectors, funders and co-workers.
Government cannot and should not accomplish this task alone. CPSI’s role is to champion innovation across the board, and working with partners across and outside government.
This means harnessing ideas and solutions not only from fellow public servants, but also from the private sector and users who are the recipients of services to create more effective products, services, processes and methods of public service delivery.
South Africa must unlock the talents of its people and become an innovation-driven nation.
Innovation draws on a wide variety of sources. It most definitely requires a strong scientific contribution, depending on the nature of innovative solutions and field of application.
We talk in this instance about new technologies and the role of design in developing innovative products and services, hence our partnerships with the science-based sector and role-players. At the same time it can emanate from the most unusual places sparked by a thought and some imagination.
Our partnership with the South African National System of Innovation has been a source of great value to our initiatives and in ensuring that our thrust is in the mainstream and links to science and technology initiatives.
This article forms part of a supplement paid for by the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI). Contents and photographs were supplied and signed off by CPSI