COMMONWEALTH ASSOCIATION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT 10TH ANNIVERSARY BIENNIAL CONFERENCE, 2004, SINGAPORE

REPORT BY THE PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION

  1. INTRODUCTION

The Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration was invited to participate in the 10th Anniversary Biennial Conference of the Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management (CAPAM), held in Singapore on the 23rd to 27th October 2004.

The Committee accepted the invitation, and sent a delegation comprising of Messrs M R Baloyi (leading the delegation), N E Gcwabaza and R S Ntuli, accompanied by Ms N Gwaza, Committee Secretary.

The Conference took place under the theme; "Networked Government", and focused on three sub-themes, namely:

  1. THE CONFRENCE IN PERSPECTIVES

The Conference was preceded by a workshop organized for the purpose of allowing participants to share their views on the results of a survey that CAPAM conducted with a view to determine as to why Governments embark on new organisational and service delivery arrangements, and to use such an engagement in shaping the discussions in the Conference itself.

The Workshop considered the survey results conducted through engaging experts from Australia, Canada, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Malaysia, Malta, New Zealand, Samoa, Singapore, South Africa and Uganda.

The results indicated that public servants are the key change drivers in dealing with organizational change and service delivery arrangements, followed by politician and then international development agencies. Noting the engagement in this survey report, the Workshop concluded that whereas there is diversity as to which agent directly dictates the course and speed of events in organizational change and the introduction of new service delivery mechanisms, country specifics point to the reality that those changes are the common features of governance. It also emerged in the survey report that all countries that are undergoing changes are faced with unique challenges, they have to increase capacity to deal with such challenges and, in order to do so, it is imperative that they get the best and relevant mix of tools, research and activities to get the best products out of the change processes, and it is in this regard that networking becomes critically important for all the Governments of the World, first at home and in the international community.

Noting the CAPAM survey results that international and country experts agree that factors leading to organisational change depend on individual country circumstances, and applying that observation to our situation in South Africa, it comes to light that we need to pay attention to the following challenges:

In exploring the conference theme, answers to the following questions were sought:

In an attempt to get to the bottom of providing answers to the questions that the theme of the Conference introduced, conference engaged in a mode of experience sharing guided by the sub-themes of the Conference, in which case they show-cased their respective experience, practices, policies and challenges that each country is confronted with. During this interaction, organs of civil society from various Governments were also sharing their experience. What spiced the whole interaction tasty was the fact that Conference got divided into small groups and toured Singapore with a view of exposing delegates on the practical side of the information-exchange.

To acknowledge that the Public Service is, of necessity, a learning organization results from, among other things the following:

The observations that we make in this regard of our Public Service as a learning organization is that we need to examine the role that such institutions as SAMDI are playing in making training and development interventions for the learning advancement of our Public Service.

Through debates on the engagement of civil society on matters of governance, policy formulation and service delivery, a number of things are emerging, namely:

Our country’s participation in features of engaging citizens such as the "izimbizo’s", the citizens forums, the use of Public Information Terminals, the Multi-Purpose Community Centres, door-to-door visits and community mass meetings serve to give meaning to the people governance concept, and practically position us in such a manner as to proclaim our compliance with the requirement of citizen engagement.

Given the reality of globalization, it is possible for governments to form partnerships with organizations beyond their borders for purposes of sharing knowledge, networking and providing peer remedial solutions to problems and challenges.

  1. CONCLUSION

Whereas it often emerged that Governments engaged in self-praise competitive attitudes than experience-sharing, perhaps natural in intergovernmental relations, a lot could be learnt from the interaction.

It is a strong recommendation that we, as Parliament or as a Portfolio Committee or both, should constantly participate in the activities of CAPAM and in fact register as members. Individual MP’s may also register for membership.

 

 

Chairperson: -------------------------------------- Date: -------------------

P J Gomomo

 

 

Secretary: --------------------------------------------Date: -----------------

Gwaza