This week, I want to revisit one of the old debates about the calibre of public servants to be appointed into management positions and why certain positions must be filled by career professionals in the expertise required in those structures.
There have been arguments as to how to fill public service positions with cadres of either generalists or specialists training, especially in administrative and/or management positions. It is accepted that public services in most countries consists of these two groups of officers, the generalists and the specialists. Individual countries tend to choose which of the two must dominate management positions and the extent of the balance between the two cadres of professionals.
Countries who choose to prefer generalists in management positions argue that this group of public servants have a broad exposure to generic management roles and are therefore well equiped to perform administrative responsibilities not only within specific departments but across the entire public service.
They are assumed to possess the required skills for understanding and ability to drive administrative policy formulation and implementation. Historically, this line of thinking is common amongst, but not exclusively, commonwealth countries, Botswana included. A fundamental argument for this perspective of thinking is that these officers are assumed to have exposure of various aspects critical in the effective governement functioning and that knowledge is also associated with the ability to consider overall interest of the government.
This affords them the ability to advice and initiate policies and decisions that are in the best interests of the government and presumably also override what may be narrow parochial service considerations.
Public services who prefer the specialist in management positions, however, argue that the skills required for efficient public services in modern times are at times beyond the comprehension of the generalist and therfore require specialists to make informed technical decisions at the highest levels of management structures.
These puts technical and rationality at the core of decision making in public services and therefore prefers a reduction in subjective decision making at the level of policy advise and initiation. As can be expected, there is no common ground as to whether it should be the generalist or the specialist. It is understood that public services by their nature are not only big and complex but more importantly they are diverse in the types and roles found in any country’s public service.
The ever continuing dominant role of the public sector or government in the provision of various services, in itself dictates that public services would invariably have a combination of generalist and specialists of varied expertise.
It is therefore accepted that on account of the type and nature of specific skills and techniques possessed by these public servants and the levels of capacity and ability of each individual officer, governments will often attempt to find a balance in appointing senior civil servants to management positions.
I will argue that this balance should be guided by the need for administrative efficiency and establishing a culture of productivity, integrity and commitment to, not only merit appointments to positions, but also a realisation and acceptance that career public servants of various expertises must be protected in their pursuance of their choice of career.
The latter is often not considered and you have managers in senior public positions tossed around departments and institutions with little regard to levels of the expected outputs and their individual preferences as career civil servants who may have chosen a particular field, profession or path to pursue.
The two most destabilising considerations in this regard are firstly, the blanket assumption that senior managers and generalists can be transferred or placed anyway across the administrative positions in the public service. This has tended to compromise the integrity of the appointment system and aapointing authorities often use this to sideline, punish and create easy promotion passages for those officers who may otherwise not succeed in the presence of those not prefered for whatever reason.
This is a common occurrence in public services such as ours where it has now become a trend that senior public servants who are generally seen as high performers and highly skilled and on top of their professions are either pushed to retire or reassigned to other areas where their professional expertise and levels of productivity would be compromised.
In our public service here we have had a permanent secretary, who at the time was seen by many to be a high performer, retired, only to be re-appointed again later; there was the “forced” retirement of a senior military guru, who was also seen not only as a soldier or repute but was possibly the next inline to assume the leadership of the military and, recently we have also witnessed the re-assigning of a known high performer in the police service and one who has been touted as one of the possible successors to the current police chief, to a position outside the police service and quite possibly not per his preferances.
I can hear one argue that all these were done as per the provisions of the relevant laws, regulations as provided for to the appointing authorities in all the three cases, but I am simple saying sometimes legal actions are not necessarily in the best interest of the public service. I am sure the appointing authorities would argue that they make these decisions in the best interest of the public service and to that I will simply say sometimes consider the individuals career choice and match it with the integrity of the service and outputs exopected.
The second destabilising consideration is political appointments in the public service, especially as it relates to high management positions. Political expediency by its nature need not be guided by the need for administrative efficiency nor even merit appointments.
Public services around the world are riddled with various reforms in public services and amongst these are efforts to correct the negative impacts associated with political appointments that were not cognisant of the need for administrative efficiency and appropriate placement of officers to positions that they can excell but more importantly appointees were not the best available to fill those positions, skillwise, expertise, experience, knowledge and sometimes even qualifications for the positions. In our case the apointment of diplomats would be one to look at and match the skills of what are known to be career diplomats in the public service and those that are political appointees.
Can we argue that all these and other are always guided by administrative efficiency and maintaining individual’s choice of a career?
