10 Jul 2014

Coordinator of the public service reforms at the Office of the President, Ms Goaba Mosienyane, says Botswana has a focused agenda for public service reforms that assist government to have an efficient public service.

Responding to comments from participants at a two-day public service reforms workshop organised by her ministry, Ms Motsienyane said this was evidenced by the state of good governance across government ministries and departments.

Ms Mosienyane said government institutions must be closer to the people in service delivery while there was need at the same time for economic development and speedy delivery of quality service.

She said public sector reforms were designed to make the state effective, efficient, responsive, accountable and productive because there were necessary conditions for the development of given country.

Ms Taboka Nkhwa, the coordinator of public service reforms in the Ministry of Education and Skills Development, said her ministry sought to provide education that would drive the national development agenda.

Ms Nkhwa said the design of the Education Training Strategy Sector Plan (ETSSP) was under finalisation after the development of an operational roadmap for the ETSSP as well as the development of a detailed situational analysis for the whole education sector, including its different sub-sectors.

She said one of the challenges to the reform programme was the inaccurate qualitative data for decision-making, as well as limited capacity in the management and education system. 

She noted that the coordination of the reform was not aligned and streamlined to that of other ministries.

She said there was need for coordination with other ministries and agencies such as the ministries of Local Government and Rural Development and Finance and Development Planning, Infrastructure, Science and Technology and Lands and Housing as well as the Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) for the successful implementation of ETSSP.

A DPSM official, Nathaniel Tlhalerwa, said government employees did not manage their performance despite the introduction of the performance management system to all ministries and departments. He said right-sizing had not yet resulted in significant reductions of staff and public service wage bill.

Mr Tlhalerwa said one of the major challenges was lack of data to conduct a human resource policy analysis and to support human resource policy reforms and public service management. ENDS