Assessment Of The Practices Of Civil Service Reform Program In Ethiopia

Author : Jemal Abagissa Ababushen
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (8 download)

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Download or read book The Evaluation of Service Delivery Reform Implementation in Addis Ababa City Government written by Jemal Abagissa Ababushen and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public sector reform has been undertaken in different parts of the world since 1980s in the name of New Public Management and with the objective to change traditional public administration. The ultimate purpose of the reform is to improve the effectiveness, performance and quality of public services delivered to the citizenry and to enhance thecapacity to carry out core government functions. The advocates of NPM insist that the practices and principles of the private sector can be adopted by the public sector to improve the business of government. NPM has been seen as a global best practice to be adopted usually under various international pressures. Nevertheless, in reality there is no single best approach, every reform-oriented government would have to consider to what degree and how key features can be incorporated into their public management systems and contexts. Because of contextual differences, results of reform implementation varies from place to place and even from organization to organization within a country. In an attempt to improve service delivery in the public sector, the government of Ethiopia launched civil service program in 1996 and service delivery policy and implementation instruments in 2001. The overall objective of the reform is to enable public institutions toprovide their services to the public in efficient, effective, transparent and responsive manner. Based on the objectives of the policy and parameters drawn from service delivery literature, this study aims at evaluating the performance of the service delivery implementation in Addis Ababa City Government using quality, quantity, cost and time as performance indicators. A sample of three purposely selected agencies and offices which are involved in daily provision of services are the major sources of primary information of this study. 600 customers, 78 employees, 13 focus group members and managers from the respective offices provided their views and answers to the questionnaires and interviews forwarded during the data collection period. The study shows that of the three offices, RICSRS( resident identification and civil status registration service) performed better than other offices in most customer related quality dimensions and service deliver speed. Service delivery speed has been improved to the satisfaction of the service users and as the result the number of customers used the service significantly increased over the study period. On the contrary, service delivery at Land Administration Authority is rated poor in most aspects of performance parameters. The causes of poor quality include very low level of transparency, responsiveness, reliability, speed, grievance handling mechanism, employees' motivation, courtesy and other quality dimensions. The number of service users did not increase over the study period. Customers witnessed that service deliveryprocess takes long period of time contrary to the time indicated in service standards. The contacts are boring, too long and unnecessary leading to dissatisfaction. Service delivery at Revenue Agency can be viewed as moderate though it falls short in some aspects. It performed average in timeliness, process easiness, transparency, fairness, responsiveness, grievance handling and competence. It performed below average in dimensions such as consultation with customers, access to service providers, respectfulness and courtesy. The number of customers has increased manifold over thestudy period. Cost incurred per customer has shown varying trends in which highest per capita is recorded initially and the lowest in 2006. It surged in 2007 and slightly declined in 2008. Finally, service delivery improvement together with new tax laws resulted in an increase of revenue collection. The total revenue increased from 729.47 million Birr in 2001 to 2.6 billion Birr in 2006(2.6 billion Birr is about 260 million USD in the year 2006). Overall, the research shows that some progress has been made in the implementation of the reform but there are a lot to be done to achieve the goals aspired in the service delivery policy. The service delivery policy document is well written containing many important service delivery instruments that address important aspects of effective service delivery in the public sector. However, their implementation is retarded by a range of problems: Resistance to change, weak planning and evaluation, weak commitment, lack of objectiveemployee performance evaluation, and failure to fully understand reform implementation techniques compounded with low staff morale due to low salary, absence of incentives and good working environment. In all the three sectors, employees have similar complaints regarding working environment and incentives. The employees also indicated that there has not been objective employee performance evaluation that could link individual performance with pay and rewards. This has created a situation where hardworking employees are treated with non-hardworking in equal way. Cost effectiveness is also easier said than done in the new Ethiopian public service and the choice of alternative service delivery approach is not yet adopted because of ideological subscription to developmentalist state guided by revolutionary democracy.