NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 1 – The government is being urged to adopt innovative approaches towards improving service delivery if it is to attain its objectives.
Deloitte’s Public Leadership Institute Executive Director William Eggers said on Monday not enough public sector organisations were employing new ideas in their operations and feared most were lagging behind given the emergence of new complex challenges.
Mr Eggers said unlike private sector enterprises, government agencies were not profit driven and tend to lag behind in terms of enhancing their processes.
“Obviously the public sector is never going to have the degree of technology change that we see happening in the private sector so the governments is going to be always following,” Mr Eggers said.
The global economic meltdown has made an already challenging set of circumstances exponentially worse for government.
Mr Eggers said the temptation would be for government to hunker down, to depend on established approaches but pointed out this would be a big mistake.
“Now more than ever, the government needs to embrace innovative approaches to daunting problems,” he said.
He said to have any hope of success; the government needed to embrace innovation as a core discipline, becoming adept at adopting new practices.
He was speaking during the launch of the Deloitte Public Innovators Playbook that provides a guideline on how public sector institutions can enhance their capacity.
Mr Eggers said the government needs to forge stronger ties with private sector organisations that have the technical capacity to help improve processes of such institutions.
“The best way to innovate is by opening yourself up and partnering with others because there is always going to be more good ideas outside an organisation that you can leverage on than there are inside,” he said.
Also present during the launch was Public Services Minister Dalmas Otieno who pointed out corruption remained the biggest deterrent towards making public sector institutions more effective.
“Currently our biggest challenge is national cohesion, fighting tribalism which has successfully sustained corruption in government services,” Mr Otieno said.
The minister however underscored the government’s commitment to spearhead public sector innovations by working closely with private sector institutions.
He said it was only through successful innovations that the government could achieve quality public services in support of sustainable national development.
Mr Eggers is expected to conduct a one-day training workshop with close to 100 government officials focusing on ways to improve the economic environment, create job, and effectively manage costs by harnessing the innovative potential within their institutions.
