Delivering an efficient and productive Public Service Delivery in Sri Lanka
A Project Concept Paper
The main objective of the Public Service in Sri Lanka is to serve their stakeholders, the most important of whom are the General Public comprising the citizens and business entities. The success lies in delivering an efficient and productive service to the General Public.
Sri Lanka has adopted decentralisation of some Central Government functions by establishing a three tier Political Governing structure: Central, Provincial and Local Government. This decentralisation has brought a certain degree of convenience to the General public. However, due to lack of direction, training and lack of consistency and certainty of the procedures to be adopted, the benefit of decentralisation has not been efficiently passed on to the General Public.
The General Public yearns for an efficient and productive service without being inconvenienced. To realise this potential of the Public Service, the culture of the employees as a whole and their attitudes as individuals need to change. We envisage such changes to occur in the not-so-distant future, simulated by the challenges currently posed on the government, the public administrators and the General public in the delivery of services. Achieving this depends on orientating the Public Service to serve the General Public with empathy and in a professional and dignified manner.
The purpose of this paper is to propose a project to identify the public entities with which the General Public directly interacts and based on research studies to develop systems and procedures to serve the General Public in a more efficient manner devoid of any political interference.
Purpose of the project
The purpose of the proposed project is to design and implement necessary reforms identified to transform the Public Service, through a process of continuous improvement, into a more effective and efficient one through modernisation and innovation. In terms of administration, this will involve changes to systems and procedures used in service delivery, currently adopted in the Public Service at all three levels. We envisage such changes to occur within a reasonable time period close to the end of the project.
The outcomes of this reform project are expected to entail substantially better service experience for the General Public; higher productivity in service delivery; better outcomes for citizens and businesses; and their enhanced participation, openness and transparency. These outcomes are expected to flow from a better understanding of problems and opportunities; adhering to an empathetic human perspective; developing tested methods and solutions of service delivery; better ownership of innovation and resultant changes and being empowered to be better, more effective and specific in service delivery. The major outcome will be installing professional values in the public service for maintaining secure and accurate public records, for equitably dealing with civil society; making decisions based on law and authorised policy and upholding a trackable responsibility for legitimate actions.
Preliminaries
The proposed project will be based on case study findings by several researchers engaged in determining the state of play of service delivery at all three levels of the government, i.e., central, provincial and district. The case studies will look into the current status of service delivery and priority areas of improvement. Whilst the studies are on, a suitable public entity will be selected to implement a pilot project.
After the preliminary work, organizational mechanisms that are needed to finalise the necessary changes and implement those without creating unnecessary friction can be set up. After a mid-term progress evaluation of progress, arrangement can be made to assess the needs that would be necessary for the full implementation of the project.
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