Better service delivery
EDUCATION IN FIJI - PART 5
LAST week, we moved focus beyond how world events had shaped the role and expectations of and from the public bureaucracy.
It was highlighted that, over time, the public bureaucracy had become bloated, cumbersome and relatively lethargic in the delivery of public services.
We used the example of an application for a phone from Vuna in Taveuni to Post and Telecom Fiji to illustrate this. The initial application was made in early 1970.
By the end of that year, the application had disappeared into a black hole in the black box that was the public service at that time. The process was repeated with a new application in late 1970.
That also gestated on some anonymous official’s desk and progressed into oblivion. It was then that Hurricane Bebe struck and brought a P&T team to Taveuni to fix fallen telecommunications lines. That divine intervention appeared to finally prompt P&T to install that longawaited phone some three years after the initial application had been lodged.
Pressures for change
It was clear that a new model had to be designed to supplant the traditional public administration model.
This arose largely because of a range of changes in the environment that had rendered the public administration model virtually ineffective and inappropriate for service delivery in the public sector.
The case of “divine intervention” highlighted above clearly illustrated this. The focus of this new model had to fall on better public service delivery and a better bang from the public budget.
In other words, there was a dire need to move towards management from administration.
We analysed the public administration model in our last article (3/02/24) and highlighted that it had an inbuilt rigidity that constrained it from freely responding to a wide range of changing public demands.
It was also highlighted that the public budget was characterised by a tendency to keep increasing in size. This appeared to show a disconnect between public expenditure and the performance of the public service.
Thus, a key concern that arose was that the public service was chewing up inordinate amounts of scarce public funds without any resultant improvements in public services.
In addition to this, it was widely accepted that the public bureaucracy was too large and had to be trimmed down to cut costs. The money saved could be used in other more deserving projects.
Readers will recall that earlier discussions had alluded to government involvement in major projects that were (also) aimed at generating economic activity that would help grow the economy.
There was a time when these projects focused on building roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, etc. These were usually foreign funded and designed to meet the socio-economic needs of developing countries that were, in turn, expected to geopolitically align themselves with their benevolent donors.
There is much to be said about this “benevolence”, but that falls outside the ambit of this column.
What was becoming increasingly clear was that the scope for new public projects had shrunk over time. It was difficult to justify building another hospital in
Labasa for instance.
Developing economies were also expected to reduce their dependence on foreign funds for delivering basic services to their people.
In the case of Fiji, we were expected to carry our own load by the 1980s. After all, it had already been more than a decade since independence in 1970.
Much assistance had come from abroad in the form of aid, grants and soft loans. We had some major achievements in the form of the Suva-Nadi highway, Lautoka Hospital, Monasavu Hydro-Electricity, etc.
However, it was becoming increasingly difficult to find gaps for such projects that could justify the mainly foreign funding needed. This meant that government-led growth through direct government involvement in capital projects was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
On the other hand, from the perspective of foreign partners and donor agencies, the need to assist developing countries needed a relook. It was obvious that these counties continued to struggle with their development imperatives and were constantly falling short on governance, etc.
There needed to be a renewed focus on performance-linked assistance. In other words, the benevolence of “carrots” had to be packaged with the “stick” of compliance requirements.
It needs to be noted that these concerns were coming up during the Debt Crisis and the prolonged Global Recession of the 1970s and ‘80s. Austerity measures were the predominant prescription for economic recovery, and this inevitably focused on (among other things) the public bureaucracy as it was the biggest expense item on the government budget.
The rationale for reforms
Thus, financial burdens had to be shifted and a new model of development had to be implemented for economic growth.
In both the developed and developing economies the size of government had to be reduced with concomitant increases in opportunities for growth in the private sector.
This meant that the fiscal space left by the government sector had to be replaced by the private sector in order to restart, move, improve and sustain national economic growth.
The challenge was to reduce the size of the public bureaucracy while opening up opportunities for the private sector to invest in the economy. This is easier understood when one focuses on the economic equation for gross domestic product (GDP).
GDP is used by governments to measure economic performance. It is often analysed over time to get a better picture of the health of the economy. The GDP equation goes like this:
GDP = C + I + G + (X – M) where: C depicts consumption expenditure throughout the economy by Consumers.
I stands for investment in the economy by Investors.
G encompasses all Government outlays in the economy.
X-M provides us with a calculation for Net Exports (Exports minus Imports).
The proposal for reforms in the public sector was to reduce the “G” component of this equation while opening up opportunities for the “I” component to fill this gap.
This bring us to the next major macroeconomic change that would help galvanise private capital to fill the void left by a shrinking government involvement in the economy.
This necessitated an ideological shift from public-sector-led growth to private-sector-led growth.
In order to attract investment from the private sector, regulations that had been set through the processes of policy making, had to be either reduced or removed through deregulation.
Thus, two sets of mantras of reforms emerged. One was small government, downsizing, rightsizing, etc. The other was deregulation, private-sector-led growth, etc.
There was no stopping the reform process. It had to happen for a number of reasons.
One, the public budget had blown out of proportion and the resultant public services did not reflect the outlays involved.
Two, the public had become increasingly perceptive and appreciative of their right to question the functioning of government.
Three, the private sector had funds and entrepreneurial potential that needed to be unleashed.
And four, donor agencies had begun to demand public sector reforms as a precondition for access to more foreign funds.
The stage was thus set for widespread reforms in the public sector that would involve a neverending roller coaster ride.
We will look at the new model for reforms in our next article. Until then, sa moce mada.
■ DR SUBHASH APPANNA is a senior USP academic who has been writing regularly on issues of historical and national significance. The views expressed here are his alone and not necessarily shared by this newspaper or his employers subhash.appana@ usp.ac.fj