Public Service Commissions in Africa have resolved to mainstream adoption of ICT in operations and at the same time leverage research in policy making besides championing professionalism of employees to enhance pay off in service delivery.
The resolutions were reached by delegates from 13 member commissions of the Association of African Public Service Commissions, drawn from three regions of the continent, Western, Eastern and Southern Africa, who held a conference in Nairobi, to strategise ways to boost efficiency in service delivery.
In joint communique issued, Friday, at the end of the three-day Conference at Safari Park Hotel by AAPSCOMS President Amb Anthony Muchiri, who is also the Chairman of the Public Service Commission of Kenya, the Association noted that Public Service institutions on the continent, are under pressure to shop for innovative solutions, to address evolving challenges in the workplace.
The Association underscored the need to build a modern citizen-centric public service in all public services across the African continent, by deploying technological interventions and incorporating novel principles in public sector management.
They called on African governments, to create an enabling environment by allocating resources, to roll out use of ICT to enable realisation of e-governments, adding that ICT will help boost service delivery.
The communique further called for capacity building of officers to make them ICT compliant and at the same time enhance trust levels and overcome technology apathy.
Delegates at the conference concurred on the need to professionalise the public service, through continuous skilling and training of personnel to infuse ethical values amongst public sector workers.
In particular, the communique singled out the need to mold an ethical workforce through character formation to achieve a positive orientation that will bridge the gap between systems, policies and the actual people served.
“The use of technology should complement the work done by humans, because technology cannot infuse public service values like empathy and ethics,” the communique reads in part.
Delegates at the Conference were in agreement that the personal character of individual public servants is key in the public service and called on public servants to radically change attitude and be motivated by a call to serve the public good.
AAPSCOMS Conference also called on service institutions to embrace and implement a scientific public policy management system in which policy planning and decision making in the service is based on facts and accurate statistics.
Delegates underscored the need to align research to a country’s national development goals and enhance quality of research, to effectively address challenges faced by the ordinary citizen in the countryside.
The communique advocated for formulation of simple and unsophisticated public policies, whose impact can be gauged in performance, noting that research without impact is not beneficial.
In addition, the Association called for policy making to be prioritised, help inform succession planning, as opposed to deploying research in a reactionary fashion.
Delegates agreed that recruitment in the public service servants, should be restricted to the right skills set and that resources should set aside for training of public servants, who should be able to earn the goodwill of their governments, due to the formation they have undergone.
The Conference advocated collaboration among various public service commissions and other service commissions in Africa, to broaden membership of the association in the entire continent and also called for simplifying and translation of the Association’s constitution into various languages of African countries, to enhance effective communication.
Members of the Association also agreed to translate the Constitution of the Association into French, Portuguese, Spanish and other major languages spoken in African countries for inclusivity.
Among the participants at the Conference included; representatives of twelve constitutional commissions and independent offices in Kenya. The Conference was earlier opened by Public Service and Human Capital Development Cabinet Secretary, Justin Muturi.
By Kizito Maruti
