Playing It Safe: Why Doing Good is Hard in the Public Sector

For all the right reasons, the public sector has become about avoiding failure instead of achieving success. We need to change.

Dr Stuart Theobald, executive chairman, Krutham

Over my career I've had many opportunities to work with public sector counterparts to deliver good outcomes for the country. I have learned a great deal from the skilled and committed public servants that work hard to try and deliver positive change. Among the lessons is just how ill-informed much commentary about the public sector is, particularly when it is born from a private sector perspective. Getting things done in the public sector is hard, and it would help a great deal if those in the private sector understood that better.

South Africa is into its seventh administration. It is very different to the first, which took on a dysfunctional and institutionally racist Apartheid government and swiftly remade it into something that could better serve the aspirations of the new democracy. So much was done in that time, from remaking the splintered revenue and expenditure functions into a world class National Treasury and SA Revenue Service, to rebuilding the SABC into a (then) functional public broadcaster serving all South Africans. The remaking of the bankrupt Apartheid state into a world class fiscal management machine culminated in achieving investment grade credit rating in 2000, only six years after the change in government.

But those high achieving days seem far behind us. Now we need interventions like Operation Vulindlela to get things done, largely because the state machine has over the last 15 years become highly risk averse. The public sector has been geared to prevent failure, rather than achieve success. Such a statement might be flabbergasting for the commentariat who perceive the public sector as little more than a feeding trough of corruption. In fact, the institutional framework has become desperate to stop such corruption, but at the expense of making it difficult to do good.

Want to order an x-ray machine for your hospital? Get ready for an 18-month process of paperwork, committees, public tenders, cancelled tenders, selection committees and eventually you might get an x-ray machine that costs more than you could have bought it for and is already redundant technology. Want to work on a project funded by a government grant? Get ready to spend your time filling out attendance registers, writing minutes, drawing up process documents, gathering evidence of work in progress, and submitting it to a department that will examine it all in detail and decide if you’ve spent money the way you said you would or if it has been fruitless and wasteful.

All of this is understandable given the last 15 years of escalating corruption. The entire government system has become a bureaucratic sludge that focuses intensely on systems and processes. It amasses evidence of what every cent was spent on but spends little time on what value that spending has created. It is a very difficult place to do good. The best and brightest people try and fail because the bureaucracy has made it hard to deliver. One unhelpful feature is the concept of "fruitless and wasteful" expenditure, which the Auditor General will declare of any money that doesn't deliver the intended effects. Trying and failing is still valuable because it allows for learning and improves the prospects of future success. But the fear of such a declaration has dampened all enthusiasm to even try.

What would gearing for success look like? First, be clear about what success means. It is about good outcomes, not the systems and processes that lead to those outcomes. The work of government is meant to deliver services for the people of South Africa. Those might be good schools that graduate learners equipped to create good lives for themselves, able to go on to further education or work. It can be good services that make it easy to get an ID book or register a new business. It can be successful infrastructure projects that are on time and on budget and function at the level expected, delivering the best economic or social value to communities that can be achieved.

A government that is geared for success will focus on these outcomes and be pragmatic about the systems and processes needed to get them. There is going to be failure. Anyone in the private sector knows that to generate returns you have to take risks, most obviously that a plan won't work as intended. No business will ever achieve its objectives if it is geared to avoid failure, rather than to pursue opportunities to achieve its ambitions.

When it is about outcomes, people in both private and public sectors adapt processes and systems to ensure delivery. They focus on getting things to work, not ticking boxes.

To gear government for success we need to follow a few steps. First, frame goals in terms of deliverables. How many visas should be processed how quickly? How many businesses should be registered? How on target are hospital stock levels? Don’t prescribe the specific processes that must be used to achieve them. Second, reintroduce a variable pay element linked to outcomes. Give departments payroll bonuses for staff if they meet those outcomes, verified by the Auditor General. Third, foster a results-oriented culture by making every public speech about results and outputs achieved. Fourth, create centres of excellence that public servants can draw on for expert advice, training and support to improve delivery of services. Fifth, be transparent, publish the goals and the outcomes achieved against them. Sixth, systematically fix regulations that focus on processes and inputs, like procurement and budgeting rules, to empower civil servants to deliver outcomes.

Ultimately, a government geared for success is one where great people who want to do good will thrive. The corollary also must apply: those who do not want to deliver, or want to extract value, must find government a difficult place to work in, not because the bureaucracy envelopes them but because their failure to achieve outcomes means low rewards and ultimately being managed out. I hope the Government of National Unity, as it finds its feet, will aim to build a public sector culture of success.

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