Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila yesterday launched the Public Sector Innovation Policy, aimed at enhancing effective public service delivery through good governance, accountability, transparency and improved performance service delivery as part of the Harambee Prosperity Plan.

The launch took place at Nipam in Windhoek and was attended by cabinet ministers and other public institution executives.

The prime minister said to improve service delivery, government, over the last five years, prioritised the implementation of Performance Management System (PMS), which entails strategic plans, annual plans and performance agreements at all public institutions at national and regional levels. 

She said the government made strides in operationalising the PMS, an innovation through automation of the system that will help to optimise the PMS to improve public service delivery, and other interventions undertaken under the sub pillars of effective governance during the past five years include conducting of the citizens’ satisfaction survey in 2017 through 19 government offices, ministries and agencies and the survey yielded a rating of 54% satisfactory rate. 

“Remedial measures were adopted to address the concerns raised through the survey. The Survey will be undertaken periodically to ensure public institutions performance is aligned to public expectation, and plans are now advanced to conduct staff satisfaction survey in the public service,” said Kuugongelwa-Amadhila.

She added that other activities undertaken include the institutionalisation of feedback mechanisms through suggestion boxes at all government offices and an online feedback system. Other reforms introduced to improve service delivery development were done in the Public Service Charters to instil the ethos of professionalism in the public service, and the introduction of a Business Processes Re-engineering initiative to streamline business processes.  “This journey requires us to embrace creativity and innovation as our pathfinder to avoid being left behind as the world migrate from the information age into the innovation age. Government will, as part of these efforts, pilot One-Stop Service Centres with online portals, an innovative platform to facilitate shared public services through these on-line portals or single windows of service delivery,” she explained.

The premier further added that the development of the Public Sector Innovation Policy is, therefore, timely and very relevant, given the current realities that call for innovation. – Nampa