Vacancies and reshuffles hamper public sector delivery
KHAYA SITHOLE
The testimonies delivered so far at the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture have South Africans dismayed and horrified in equal measure.
So complex are the issues being ventilated at the commission that most observers have taken to considering each witness with scepticism until the crossexamination is completed.
One witness with interesting insights into the state of the public service was Phumla Williams, who has been the acting director-general of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) for the past seven years.
In her testimony, Williams highlighted that her status as an acting chief for such a long time was at odds with acceptable practice in the public sector. The prevalence of senior employees in acting positions, and vacancies in the public service, have been often cited as a contributor to the poor service delivery outcomes.
Organisations that do not have permanent executives have a compromised accountability process that is only ameliorated by the appointment of a person to act in those positions. The lack of certainty does not assist in ensuring a co-ordination of mandated activities.
In most cases, when an acting chief is appointed, a member of the current workforce is elevated into that position with no-one left to fill the new gap in the structure. This requires that the acting chief either does both jobs or shifts the vacuum down the chain of command.
Acting chiefs in the public sector do not enjoy job security and are merely warming the seat until a new appointment is made. For the public service to be effective, key roles and functions need to be filled with a sense of urgency. However, the recruitment process in the public sector is riddled with delays that leave structures unable to deliver the services required by citizens. Whether the delays are due to a lack of skills or administrative lethargy remains a point of debate.
Controversially, most senior appointments require the blessing of the political principals that oversee the organisation. Multiple cabinet reshuffles and axings of public servants create an additional sense of anxiety that feeds into organisational instability.
These factors, coupled with the skills mismatch in the country that affects the public sector more acutely, make it difficult to imagine that SA will have a strong and robust public service in the near future.
When the public service is so incapacitated, the role of consultants becomes ever more prevalent. But the reliance on consultants does not create institutional capacity within the state organisations, which means they are needed even more than before.
Given the fact that consultancies have not covered themselves in glory and regard the dysfunctional public service as a cash cow, fixing the public service has become urgent.
As we have witnessed in the Bain & Co and SA Revenue Service saga, consulting firms have become cash extractors who cover themselves in disclaimers that leave them with no accountability for the recommendations they make.
The conversations around the role of sector education and training authorities (Setas) should be used as an opportunity for stakeholders to engage on how the prevailing national skills mismatch will be addressed. The research report published by the public service Seta in 2017 relating to hard-tofill vacancies provides important insights into the key issues that need to be addressed throughout the value chain of skills development.
The failure to actively engage in influencing the conversation will leave SA with an unquantifiable cost where the human capital investment in the public service is not matched by the outcomes.