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Olaopa Lists Ways To Transform Public Service
The Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, Prof. Tunji Olaopa, has listed measures for transforming public service for productivity.
Olaopa spoke on Tuesday in Abuja at the Inaugural Conference and the Launch of the Centre for Public Sector Governance .
Prof. Tunji Olaopa giving his speech at the event in Abuja on Tuesday.
Olaopa who spoke on “Strengthening Leadership and Ethics in Public Institutions” commended the launch of the centre by Dr Ernest Ndukwe , former Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). He noted that the launch of the CPSG was a spirited patriotic effort by tested high-end professionals.
He said that such professionals who “have a deep sense of the significant binding capacity and capability constraints that have been circumscribing Nigeria’s development journey and her potential, do not want to resign to the ‘siddon-look’ option, but have chosen to give back through strategic interventions as a generational think tank investment.”
According to him, CPSG therefore constitutes a significant addition to institutional, structural, and managerial architecture, floated to offer services targeted at unlocking Nigeria’s potential in its journey to recover the lost years and therefore fulfil destiny .
Olaopa decried the idea of the public service which has been bastardised, noting : “And we all are familiar with how the public service is taken in Nigeria. To say you are working in a public institution is to mean a lot of things.One, it translates to doing whatever you like—arriving at work anytime, utilizing workplace environment for personal business, loafing during work-hour, or being essentially unproductive.
Indeed, given this perception of the public service, it is no wonder that the Nigerian government has lost its position as the employer of choice.”
Olaopa who described public service as a special calling and service to country, a calling similar to the Levitical order of priesthood in the Old Testament, listed some steps to make public service productive .
The public administrator said that a modern public service should be “fast moving, intelligent, professional; information-rich, flexible, adaptable and entrepreneurial; less employee-focused and rule-driven, delivers quality service;
performance-focused, accountable and inspired to uphold the vision of a transformed Nigeria; capable of creating the policy climate that will unlock the energy of the private sector and other sectors and to install a new productivity paradigm in the national economy;
operated by multidisciplinary team of new generation public managers and project teams ”
For him, such an institutionally reformed system needs a transformational manager rather than a mere administrator, and that such a public manager requires twenty-first century professional acumen that enables him or her to get things done in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, performance and productivity.
“The public service system needs a well-trained workforce as well as a commitment to the value of neutral competence rather than a concern with survival and managerial control. Professional attributes would include: foresight and provision (strategic, pro-active orientation); entrepreneurship (risk-taking, innovativeness); excellence/merit (constant search for perfection); impact or result-orientation (focus on performance and productivity); moral rectitude (responsibility, political neutrality, public spirit, accountability, equity, transparency, subordination of private/personal interest to public good) (UN, 1998: 19)”, he said.
Noting the first charge of the transformational administrative leader, Olaopa said: “The transformational administrative leader is first saddled with the challenge of overseeing the establishment of a value-based public service institution that moderates the persona and personality of its workforce which will require the implementation of a change management framework; initiating a cultural adjustment programme would aim to establish a new administrative ethos.
“This ethos is founded on the idea of excellence in service, meritocracy and spirituality that facilitate personal and public accountability. The transformational leader being a change agent has compelling responsibility to create a change space.”
But he noted that the new generation transformational administrative leader will have to face the contingencies attached to the VUCA—volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous—environment that influence administrative and institutional matters.
“This VUCA complicated change process will be further complicated by the new normal arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and by a new phenomenon that is now called polycrisis—the dynamics of interconnectedness of the problems and crises of the world in ways that heighten the virulence of each crisis and then even more complex to resolve.
“The pressure of doing more with less that is undermined by funding constraints; the service delivery challenge that has been aggravated by the COVID-19 new normal; the twists and turns of government shifts especially in terms of policies and performances; the challenge of managing and retaining the flexible and capable workforce; the need to combat silos mentality that prevent the system from stepping out of its myopic system thinking; and managing volatile and changing citizens’ needs and expectations”, he noted.
He noted that impactful leadership would demand a change management intelligence with ingrained capacity to withstand the polycrisis that has complicated the administrative environment in Nigeria.
“This change management needs a leader/change agent that can combine both the traditional and new skills and competences to both engage with and anticipate any new forms that the polycrisis could take which could be damaging to the public service system or undermine its efficiency. At the traditional administrative level, the change manager is expected to still maneuver through the following
roles: an expert—advising the government on policy decisions, a regulator—oversight over outsourced and externalized functions of government, an engager—shaping the larger issue of the public good and how it affects the community, and a reticulist—identifying new skills and expertise and bringing them together to achieve good results and outcomes”, he added .
He also stressed the importance of competences such as interpersonal
skills: facilitation, empathy, political skills; synthesising skills: sorting evidence, analysis, making judgements, offering critique and being creative; organising skills: group work, collaboration and peer review.
Others include communication skills: better use of new media and multi-media resources; ability to use methods, procedures, processes, tools, techniques, and specialized knowledge to perform specific tasks; ability to work cooperatively with others, to communicate effectively, to motivate and train others, to resolve conflicts; be a team player; ability to see the organisation as a whole and solve problems from a systematic point of view, not simply reacting to issues that are important now but working proactively to anticipate the kinds of issues that will be important in the future.
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