19 Jun 2014

Botswana’s development depends squarely on the good worth of its public servants as the public sector is the main driver of its economic development, acting Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration, Mr Shaw Kgathi has said.

Officially opening the third commemoration of the United Nations Public Service day in Gaborone on June 19, Minister Kgathi said creating access to timely and quality service to majority of the citizenry was the essence of good governance.

Mr Kgathi said it was also unquestionable that the success of countries in providing accessible timely and quality service was the basis for global competitiveness.

He however alluded to the fact that the status of productivity in the public sector was ranked low on global ranking scale adding that the national customer satisfaction surveys continued to confirm that the public sector fell short of expectations.

In responding to the compelling need to enhance the country’s competitiveness, Mr Kgathi said government had embarked on e- government as a way of doing business and managing the people function as drivers of accessible, timely and quality service to internal and external customers.

He said e-government enabled the public sector to leverage on the use of the most innovative and communication technologies to transform old challenges and create unprecedented possibilities for sustainable economic development.

“It is therefore critical that Botswana fully embraces e-government as a reform strategy to enhance good governance, strengthen greater equity, efficiency, productivity, growth and social inclusion”, he said.

He said, as last year’s theme dwelled on e-governance, the public service convention also premised on e-governance as a reform initiative for efficient and effective service delivery to create unprecedented possibilities in all fields of human endeavour.

Focusing on this year’s theme, Minister Kgathi said it suggested creating opportunities for inclusive access to new initiatives with continuing provision of quality services required for growing and changing needs of customers.

This year’s theme is; Innovating public governance for sustainable development. Mr Kgathi therefore called upon all to actively partake in the endeavour to create innovative and sustainable initiatives which will propel the noble of the theme.

“I am optimistic that a lot can be achieved through our collective participation in the journey of innovative governance and sustainable development,” he said.

He said together, the public service can achieve operational efficiency and effectiveness in service deliver business as well as quality and sustainable social and economic benefits.

The public service he said however faces challenges in its effort to provide timely and quality service to customers, citing the attainment of seamless service delivery as one of the major problems confronting the public service.

He said world class public service delivery can only be achieved through a high level of inter- agency collaboration. He also cited poor coordination amongst the public sectors agencies which has resulted in overlapping of roles and functions as well as wastages in terms of time and resources.

He therefore called on the leadership in the public service to work across organizational boundaries and bring together the various agencies to attain synergy in public service delivery.

Despite the challenges faced, Minister Kgathi said there are individuals in the public sector with innovative and creative potential that needs a spark to light the fire of innovative governance and sustainable development.

He advised all officers at all levels of operation to have personal strategic foundations of vision, mission and values and to commit to the ultimate purpose of humanity of serving others as they would like to be served.

He called on the culture of creativity and innovation to start at personal level and that the experiences be invested at organizational live for collective personal productivity to translate into organizational excellence. ENDS