One of the most important and critical aspects of public administration practices is the element of control in public institutions. It is probably obvious that all organizations (public or private) require processes and mechanisms of control that ensure optimal and productive use of human and material resources at their disposal.
This need for control is an important step towards maximizing the use of scarce resources and chanelling patterned behaviour by employees for set purposeful targets. In the absence of systematic controls, there is a possibility for misuse, underutilization, and overutilization of resources, which may include serious corrupt practices.
This need for control is more pronounced in public organizations because the resources utilized are public resources and require prudent managing.
Control therefore may be understood to be simply the ability and capacity of public institutions to check whether actions or activities undertaken do occur as planned.
It has also to do with the inbuilt capacity and culture to take corrective action to ensure conformity to policy regulations and targets. In other words one of the most critical concerns of control is to identify and correct any deviations between planned performance and actual performance. There should be a very thin line if any between the above, but the ideal would be to have the two look as similar as is practically possible.
This is one of the most challenging aspects of public service practices and the extent to which our public services are able to put in place strong and effective control measures and processes is in itself a step towards limiting unproductive use of public resources, and more importantly it institutionalizes specific patterned behaviours amongst public officials, anchored on the need to observe set standards and expectations.
We need to note that control as a concept entails, among others, certain specific features, such as been forward looking in nature.
This suggests that controls focus on creating a framework for future happenings/activities and not the past. From the past we can only utilise the measurements of our achievements and failures on which our plans for corrective action are based. In its entirety, control is firstly, an executive process in organizations, it requires executive decisions and guide lines to effect and ensure conformity. Secondly, control in the broader organizational visions and goals, is a result to seek.
This means that public organizations must of necessity continually identify their control mechanisms and processes and measure their effectiveness in assisting attainment of organizational goals and objectives through narrowing the gap between planned and actual performances. Put simply, control structures, processes and methods are not optional undertakings in public service settings; they ought to be an intergral part of the public service’s core activities.
Another critical feature of control is that it has to be a continous process embedded in all the stages of both plans and policies as they pass from one stage of the bureaucracy to the next. Corrective measures are not a one stop type of activities or only necessary at some of the many stages, they require a systematic entrenchment of all aspects of control from the very first step to the last.
Only then do control processes yield better results and limit occurences of unwanted usage of resources. Some have argued that a larger percentage of unethical practices, corruption, personal or individual interest advancements and related negative practices in public services can be explained by both the level and capacity of the control processes, including of course the capacity to enforce the control measures.
Lastly, control processes, mechanisms and requirements must be coordinated and integrated for ease of enforcement and maximum benefit for the public instituions. This process allows for reduction in duplication and divergent practices that often send conflicting messages to public officials and this will compromise the institutionalization of the required patterned behaviour that can be predicted and culturised as good organizational values.
In the context of effective controls, what are the pre-requisites? The most important pre-requisite for effective controls is the preparation and establishment of realistic plans which clarifies the specific standards against which measurements are to be made. It is more critical in public organizations that the set standards are a true reflection of the various positions within what is usually a diverse bureaucratic organization. In other words standards are to address, very succintly, areas of necessary standardized controls for relatively similar instituional characters and also show appreciation and ability to devise specific control processes for those public institutions that are simply unique from others.
This is probably one of the most critical aspects of controls processes in public services, because we tend to often assume that public institutions are the same and therefore can be controlled by one “universally applicable” control measure. This has far reaching effects on our ability to control resouces’ use across public instituions.
A case in point would be the new public service act that simply created a more standardised and universal public servant in many respects and we now have problems in schools with teachers saying they will work eight hours as per the provisions of the act. At an organizational level, management functions are affected by the extent and impact of controls and inversely activities of other functional roles in the organization affect the extent to which controls can be effective and therefore a critical aspect in public organizations would be to ensure that there is close synergy between planning, delegation and communication of the organization’s planned targets.
This relates directly to control because, often when control exists in the organization, employees would know and understand what targets they are to strife for, they would then know how their work relates to the set targets. In the same continum they will know and anticipate any deviations or changes, if any, more importantly they will be in a position to know what to do to stay afloat and maintain performance at satisfactory levels, under control.
Maladministration, corrupt and a hoist of other unethical practices in the public service is a test to our capacity to control.
*Molaodi teaches Public Administration at the University of Botswana
