Civil servants sabotaging Gov’t service delivery projects – report

Botswana government’s multi-million pula investments in information technology infrastructure is failing to speed up the sluggish service delivery in the public service because public officers are sleeping on the job, the 2013 Public Service Customer and Employee Satisfaction survey financed by UNDP has revealed.
It emerged in the study by E&M Consultants that the P230 million computerisation of Botswana passports and border control project aimed at facilitating the “swift movement of travellers in and out of the country” has instead slowed down the passport processing system.
We observed an increase in queuing time at immigration counters and inaccuracies in processing of entry and exit data despite the computerisation of the travellers’ movement system by the Ministry of Labour and Home affairs”, states the report.
It also emerged that the P63 million Ministry of Finance and Development Planning Accounting and Budgeting System, (GABS) introduced in 2007 slowed down transaction speed.
“We recall the introduction of GABS in the mid 2000s, which at the time were reviewing the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, had slowed down transaction speed because officers kept the manual system (which they were accustomed to) and the computerised system, thereby doubling the processing activities.”
The report further cautions that, “no matter how sophisticated and streamlined the systems and processes, their effectiveness depends on the staff’s attitude for using them in a manner that expedite services. When employees themselves embody the culture of prompt service delivery, they will collectively act in a manner, and find solutions that circumvent the deficiencies in the systems and processes they use. However, we note from our reviews of organisational structures that employees are often aware of the problems, but nonetheless they do not take steps to initiate the solutions.”