By Staff Reporter
WINDHOEK
The European Commission has provided a grant of N$5,7 5 million to support the Namibia Public Service Reform Initiative.
Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister Nangula Mbako recently said Government is implementing a Performance Management System (PMS) to improve the performance of the public service in line with Vision 2030.
The PMS will be rolled out across all 27 offices, ministries and agencies and 13 regional councils.
“One of the critical success factors in the rollout is capacity building towards the achievement of the 7 technical milestones in the PMS and the creation of a performance culture across the public service,” said Nangula.
One of the biggest challenges facing the public service is to reform and provide capacity building for the approximately 80 000 public servants. This is because such a huge task requires extensive resources, both human and financial.
It is in view of this that the international community through the European Commission has taken Namibia’s hand in support of this Public Service Reform Initiative.
On April 24 this year the Commission granted an amount of N$5,75-million over a period of 18 months towards capacity building and to implement the PMS within all the government offices, ministries and agencies.
One critical capacity building intervention supported by the grant is the development of internal facilitators from implementing offices, ministries and agencies through an extensive three-month PMS Training of Trainers (ToT) course.
Early this month, 35 staff members from 11 offices, ministries and agencies were awarded with certificates for completing the 6th and 7th PMS and ToT’s.
The First Counsellor of the European Commission Alain Joaris was present at the certificate handing-over ceremony and congratulated the recipients for contributing to a reformed public service.
A press statement by Mbako reads that the capacity building intervention forms part of a set of interventions to help public servants become more “service-oriented and a performance-driven public service”.
With this in the pipeline, it becomes apparent that over the next few years Namibia will look forward to a marked change and improved performance in the public service of Namibia.
The PMS system was researched and designed by the Public Service of Namibia. Ultimately, it is the PMS Principles and Framework which provides the background upon which the management of the performance in the public service is based.