
The Senior Presidential Advisor, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, says public sector reforms are still not an option for the public sector of Ghana, but a necessity.
He noted that it would help the government respond to the fast-growing environment and society’s needs, and position it competitively on the global stage.
It is in this direction that he advised the government to ensure that Ghana’s public administration system is brought to date and made innovative.
“In the light of the global financial crisis, governments all over the world, including Ghana, are compelled to work with less resources, hence there is a need to continue and sustain public sector reform initiatives and programmes without compromising the quality-of-service delivery,” he said.
“We need to redefine the role of the public sector to enable it serve as the needed catalyst for a competitive private sector and an improved service delivery to the citizens,” he added.
Mr Osafo-Maafo said this at the opening of the ongoing first phase of the National Stakeholders Dialogue on Public Sector Reforms in Cape Coast yesterday.
The Senior Presidential Advisor also referred to and commended the efforts of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who launched the National Public Sector Reforms Strategy (2018-2023) in August based on the government’s new direction to make the public sector effective, efficient and responsive to the citizens and the private sector.
This was in response to the failure of successive governments to align key sectors of the economy with the needs of the citizenry and the private sector for purposes of efficient service delivery and job creation.
“Following the launch of the NPSRS, which was estimated to mobilize funds of about $170 million, the World Bank provided a $32 million credit facility to kickstart the implementation of the NPSRS, 2018-2023, through the Public Sector Reform for Results Project (PSRRP),” he said.
“To further ensure the continuity and sustainability of the activities and initiatives pursued over the last four years, the Public Sector Reform Secretariat under my office has also engaged Pricewaterhouse Coopers to review the National Public Sector Reform Strategy. Our expectation is that the new Strategy will consolidate the results achieved under the PSRRP and build upon them going forward,” he added.
Mr Osafo-Maafo further indicated that the “review and evaluation which will ultimately culminate in the development of a new National Public Sector Reform Strategy for the period 2025-2030, will provide valuable learnings on what has been achieved, what areas of the reforms need more attention, what areas are no longer relevant and to identify the gaps in the strategy because of organisational change or external/contextual changes and emerging issues.”
The PSRRP is an initiative of the Government that aims to help 13 selected entities, comprising frontline service delivery institutions, central management agencies and some ministries to improve efficiency and accountability in the delivery of their services.
In her remarks, the Director of General Administration at the Public Sector Reform Secretariat, Mrs Thelma Ohene-Asiamah, outlined lessons learned from the implementation of past reforms.
“Reform initiatives were unable to fully achieve their intended objectives due to several reasons. For instance, most of these reforms were supply driven. The past reforms were also not informed by any comprehensive national public sector reform strategy,” she said.
“In view of this, coordination of the reforms was weak as it fell short of the following: availability of reform policies and guidelines; prioritization, target setting and sequencing; and monitoring and evaluation. Reform coordination in terms of reform alignment and harmonization was also unsatisfactory,” she added.
Mrs Ohene-Asiamah also disclosed that “lack of continuity in the implementation of public sector reforms was one of the most important drawbacks in previous reforms. Changes in government and leadership in reform entities led to the incompletion and re-prioritization of reforms.”
“Reform outcomes of most of the past reform initiatives had minimal linkage and integration with the planning and budgeting frameworks. Besides, budgetary resources for these reforms were inadequate. This contributed to the failure to institutionalize reform outcomes into mainstream activities, which in turn, led to the truncation of reform implementation and prevented its continuity and sustainability,” the Director pointed out.
The three-day event is organised by the Public Sector Reform Secretariat in collaboration with the World Bank.
The aim of these Dialogues is to engage cross-sectoral stakeholders to take stock of the implementation of the National Public Sector Reform Strategy (NPSRS) and the key reforms undertaken in the public sector between 2018-2023.
This phase seeks to solicit your inputs for the review of the NPSRS which elapsed in December 2023 and court your ownership and support for the development and implementation of a new NPSRS for the period 2025-2030