Delivering Quality Service to the Poor

1
Delivering Quality Service to the Poor

• Service Delivery Learning Academy
• 14 August 2007
• Oupa Bodibe

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Agenda

• Importance of public service to the poor
• Evaluation of Progress since 1994
• Factors affecting delivery
• Way Forward

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Importance of Public Services to the Poor

• Production and Supply of Public services are
  important to poor people because
• Markets, especially in societies with high income
  inequality fail or under-provide to poor people.
• Pricing of goods and services by the market based
  on cost recovery principles make goods and
  services inaccessible to the poor.
• Provision of public goods is vital for economic
  and social development.

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Importance of public service (2)

• The poor depend on the state for
• Documents like identity documents to participate
  in the economy and access public services.
• Income especially grants which provide a buffer
  against poverty.
• Human capital investment (health, education)
  provide healthy, skilled and productive
  individuals and to society.
• Provision of infrastructure and basic services
  are crucial particularly to poor women.

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Assessing the Record

• State redistributed incomes, assets and
  capabilities and basic services in the last
  thirteen years.
• Despite this record enormous backlogs or social
  deficit continues as people lack basic services
  such as water, electricity, housing and so forth.
• Adoption of service delivery policy incl. White
  Paper on Public Service that emphasise Batho Pele
  Principles.
• Apartheid balkanisation overcome through
  integration of fragmented state institution. BUT
  public service reform focused on downsizing
  transfer of power to managers. In nutshell public
  sector reform focused on efficiency and less on
  equity.

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Factors affecting delivery

• Slow delivery attributable to
• Blind faith in the market and market based
  solutions
• Privatisation, outsourcing and corporatisation
  leading to closure of public institutions and
  adoption of cost-reflective tariffs. Policy
  dependence on the market e.g. Housing
• Austerity measures of the 1990s resulting in cuts
  in budgets and cuts in public service personnel.
• Development indicators displaced by deficit
  reduction target. Worsened the crisis of
  apartheid public service in key areas of
  delivery. Are public services becoming dualistic
  in character?
• Poor alignment between national, provincial and
  institutional levels ala Chris Hani Baragwanath
  Hospital. Baragwanath as a microcosm of a
  failure of management in public institutions.

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Moving Ahead

• A new era resources available to accelerate
  service delivery.
• Implications of ASGI-SA targets to halve poverty
  and unemployment for policy and capacity of the
  state. Focus on institutional and management
  capacity of state institutions
• Public service transformation from a service
  delivery perspective addressing resource
  allocation and mobilisation including support and
  professional personnel. Building on the Job
  Summit Resolutions and revising transformation
  vision set in the white paper on public service
  delivery

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Thank you

• QUESTIONS??