Public sector reforms lack innovation—study
Public sector reforms lack an implementation strategy for new ideas and are merely institutional without addressing challenges, a study has established.
But the Public Service Reforms Unit in the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) has disagreed with the findings that the reforms agenda is only process led.
The study was conducted under the Norwegian Programme for Capacity Building in Higher Education and Research for Development (Norhed) project, the Political and Administrative Studies Department at Chancellor College, a constituent college of the University of Malawi and Centre for Development and the Environment at Norway’s University of Oslo, by associate professor Happy Kayuni.
Titled Innovation and Thought Leadership in the Public Sector: Reflections in the Context of Malawi’s Public Sector Reforms, it found that there was no mention of innovations in the reforms agenda and process.
In a policy brief summarising the research published on the university website, the study identified six challenges, among them, lack of innovations, failure to specify key interactions between stakeholders and ministries, failure to identify people to push the reforms agenda as well as public servants perceptions that the reforms are an outsider’s thing.
The study also found that there was no mention of innovation and thought leadership in the current reforms which President Peter Mutharika launched in 2015 and appointed Vice-President Saulos Chilima to head them as a political champion.
Kayuni described thought leadership and innovation as implying changing the mind-set on how certain things are done and developing a sense of the possibility to allow adaptations to new ideas.
He observed that during consultations prior to the formulation of the reforms, trade unions and donors raised the need to “promote innovation, dynamism and continuity in the public service” but this was never followed up in the subsequent sections of the reform agenda.
Reads the policy brief: “Going through the commission report’s key sections such as ‘reform pillars’, ‘reform enablers’, ‘action matrix’, ‘reform thematic areas’ and ‘quick wins’, there is absolutely no mention of innovation, and thought leadership.”
In reaction to the study, Public Service Reforms Unit chief director Seodi White, while agreeing that the reforms agenda was ambitious and of a bigger magnitude than before, disagreed that the reforms were not innovative or thought led.
She mentioned that undertaking the President, Vice-President and the commission to work with over 60 parastatals, 16 ministries and 35 local government institutions to define reforms areas with an implementation path with clear reporting guidelines conducted quarterly was one way in which the reforms were innovative.
White also said the content of reforms such as the introduction of national identity cards for all Malawians which has never been done before and the unbundling of Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) into two companies which had never been undertaken before, was another indication that they were thought led.
