Delivering An Outstanding Public Service  

By Gamini Jayaweera –MAY 2, 2022

Gamini Jayaweera

“A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honour people, they fail to honour you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, We did this ourselves.” ~Laozi, book Tao Te Ching

In a recent presentation given at the BMICH by SJB parliamentarian, Dr. Harsha De Silva to Academics, Business Leaders, and Professionals from various quarters presented a possible way out from our broken economy in the short and medium term. He also gave a brief account of the proposals for creating a Social Market Economy which will be put in place by a future government led by SJB Leader, Mr. Sajith Premadasa. In today’s political environment where some politicians are claiming that everything is done by “The Me Culture” (මම තමයි හොඳටම කලේ), it is refreshing to hear a public acknowledgement by Dr. Harsha that this work is a collective effort of four individuals, namely Kabir Hashim, Eran Wickramaratne, Sajit Premadasa, and himself, is highly commendable.

Dr. Harsha briefly outlined the SJB vision for restructuring the state own enterprises to make them more competitive in the marketplace to ensure that they will become profitable institutions. He also emphasised the importance of generating “out of the box” thinking by the Leaders and the workforce to operate these institutions in a more effective and economical manner. As such, I have decided to contribute to this debate about how a future government can eradicate some of the deep-rooted problems in our public sector and other semi-government institutions in delivering an efficient and economic public service.

I honestly believe that some of the basic problems in our public sector can be eradicated to save billions of public monies in the long run. But only if we are bold enough to challenge the Status Quo and introduce some new processes and procedures to be followed in the public sector. The potential savings will make a substantial contribution towards our debt-ridden economy without lowering the quality of public service.

It is evident that an enormous amount of public money is being pumped into the Public Sector organisations annually, but there are no indications that the Taxpayers are getting value for money. Naturally, it is common sense to realise that in such situations in the commercial world, those organisations will go bankrupt quickly. Unless we take bold decisions as emphasised by Dr.Harsha, to address this erosion of public funds as soon as possible, the country will carry on borrowing more money to jack up these ailing institutions.

The Goal 

The goal for any commercial organisation is to manage its business performance to ensure that it delivers its products and/or services in a most economical and efficient manner, and to the complete satisfaction of its customers and shareholders. If they fail to act accordingly, those businesses will have dire consequences resulting ultimately ‘to go out of business. In non-profit organisations, the eventual goal is to deliver their products and/or services on or below the annual budget allocated by the government and to the complete satisfaction of the public and their political masters.

In the recent past Industrialists, Academics, and other Researchers have been researching this area and inventing new models, concepts, and frameworks to guide management of these institutions to apply new and/or improved processes to deliver good quality products and services which fulfil the goal of improving the bottom-line performance.

Methodology 

In this respect, Bechtel Corporation (USA) has been successfully implementing a methodology called Six Sigma programmes in their worldwide projects. The methodology has been defined as a process used by organisations to design, monitor, and manage their activities to decrease waste, increase quality, and directly impact the bottom line. It is a problem-solving methodology that targets current problems, implements improvements to address them, and changes the way the organisations are run to prevent future problems. It must also be said that the methodology can be a fad if it is presented as a panacea for all business ills, as pointed out by Professor Jiju Antony (2006) and Professor T.N. Goh.

Public Service

To fulfil the aspirations of the people and put the country on the right path to prosperity, I believe that the Public Sector in Sri Lanka has a huge responsibility to play its part in providing an efficient and economically viable public service. We need to take bold decisions to restructure these institutions and implement policies to reduce the wastage and motivate the workforce to accept the reality, no matter who is in government.   

The 2022 Budget forecasts presented by the former Minister of Finance had stated that the Public Service Salaries including Provincial councils, cost the nation a staggering Rs. 1,015 billion this year. It is evident that the government is urgently required to take some painful and decisive actions to restructure the Public Service to provide an efficient and economic service on or below budgets as allocated by the Minister of Finance for each of the public institutions.

We need to accept the bare fact that the human resources allocated to almost all government departments are well above the required number of workers to deliver the services due to the stacking of political supporters, without carrying out a “situation analysis” to find out whether additional resources are required or not. Once this analysis is complete the displaced workers should be offered redundancies, retrained, or redeployed in other trades where businesses are struggling for skilled labour. This is a very challenging task but must be done if we are serious about “Delivering an Outstanding Public Service”.

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