Leveraging technology for the future public service
Charity Kisotu
The international community commemorates the UN Public Service Day and the Africa Public Service Day on June 23 to focus attention on public service.
This year’s theme is on innovation for a new era and leveraging technology for future public service.
The primary objective of innovation in the public service is to ensure vital services are provided to people in a more timely and efficient manner.
In an environment of radical changes shaped by global trends, it is only innovation and technology that can enable governments to tackle challenges in new ways, enhancing the design and delivery of public goods and services for the citizens.
Innovation and adoption of technology in the public service requires meticulous planning, leadership and stakeholder alignment.
In its Strategic Plan covering the period 2019–24, the Public Service Commission has laid out a road map for transforming the service for efficient and effective service delivery, where technology and innovation are the backbone.
With a clear strategy on innovation and adoption of technology, the public service can expect a stronger alignment between public service delivery and citizen needs.
In service delivery, technology is an enabler not only for provision of efficient and effective service delivery but also as a tool for monitoring as citizens expect improved accessibility to quality public services.
The ability of the public sector to innovate and adopt technology is a critical element in driving economic development.
However, strategies relating to innovation and technology in the sector are still less developed than those targeting the private sector.
Whereas there are significant differences between the public and private sectors in incentives and motivation, resource allocation, and attitudes towards risk, which are inherent in the different roles played by the two sectors in the economy, these differences should not hinder promotion of innovation and technology in the public sector.
There are potential benefits for the public sector in adapting innovation and technology as drivers of economic growth and prosperity and in delivery of citizen-centric services.
To offer citizen-centric services, the ability of public servants to identify aspirational issues that are important to the individual citizen is central.
It is through understanding issues that affect citizens that enables public service to design better participation and engagement forums to educate them to overcome inertia towards new technologies, while making applications which are responsive to their needs.
In addition, a citizen focused service delivery in government requires unity of purpose.
By adapting a Whole of Government Approach, we are defining innovation in three distinct facets to ensure impact in service delivery: integration of policies and processes between government agencies; developing transparent public services and procedures; and the use of technology to improve accessibility of services.
Together, we expect these elements to contribute towards creating improvements in outcomes and making public services easily and conveniently available to all citizens, and as a result, generating positive citizen experience.
Presently, and going forward, the centrality of innovation and technology in the public service was clearly brought to the fore, by the emergence of the Covid pandemic which forced the Public Service Commission, within a very short period of less than two years to drastically change the way it hitherto organised its activities to meet the needs of the citizens.
PSC responded admirably in this transformed environment, by quickly developing new channels to deliver services to citizens.
It rapidly, turned to technology and developed online platforms for its interviews, adopted online meetings and conferencing as well as working from home for some staff members without compromising service delivery standards.
PSC leveraged and continues to improve its use of technology to sustain the enhanced culture of technological innovations that is becoming a prominent platform for service delivery across the sector.
As the world marks the day today, public servants must not lose sight of the fact that the scale and complexity of the process of continuously delivering quality public services makes it an ambitious and demanding enterprise that cannot succeed without leveraging on innovation and technology.
Our resolve to create a culture of innovation and technology is a commitment about creating public organisations and systems that habitually innovate, improve quality, without having to be pushed from outside.
It is a commitment about creating a public sector that has a built-in drive to improve ‘self-renewing’ system.
Covid pandemic is a wake-up call. It has clearly demonstrated that the public service must continuously redouble its efforts, be instinctively innovative and use technology to achieve the vision of being a citizen-centric public service capable of offering world class services. - The writer is Vice Chairperson, Public Service Commission
