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From the Editor’s Desk
Changing Paradigms for the Future of
Work in the Public Service
Batho Pele beliefs set: “We Belong, We
Care, We Serve” is another example of a
paradigm meant to shape the way public
servants do their work.
Although predating COVID-19 by several
years, one of the emerging paradigms is
the idea of the Future of Work, inspired by
radical technological innovations. There
have been several reports and iterations of
the concept of the Future of Work in recent
years. However, the launch of the Future of
Work Ambassadors by the Acting Minister
of Public Service and Administration,
The dust has not settled after the devas- Thulas Nxesi, is a concrete example.
tating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,
and yet the world appears to be returning Minister Nxesi said the Future of Work Am-
to the old ways of working. It seems that no bassadors would infuse the Public Service
sooner had the pandemic loosened its grip with talent, innovation and fresh thinking,
than societies, economies, and institutions especially in digital innovation, data analyt-
were sliding back to their default positions ics and artificial intelligence. At its launch
and veering away from the promising in- in July 2022, the programme placed 33 re-
novative path that COVID-19 had sparked. cent graduates in internship programmes
in national and provincial departments for
There is no doubt that “something 24 months to reduce youth unemployment
changed” in the ways of the world after and develop digital skills.
the pandemic. Certainly, some innova-
tions that COVID-19 spurred have found The Future of Work Ambassadors pro-
their way into how we do things, but these gramme contributes to a paradigm shift
hardly represent the “new normal” that the in the Public Service in the same way that
post-COVID-19 world once beckoned. numerous policies and programmes do.
However, a paradigm shift does not fall in
So, why is it that some of the great ideas our laps all of a sudden. Instead, it is a pro-
and lessons learned from practice fail to cess of learning from experiences, such as
permeate our daily work? A big part of the those from COVID-19 and applying them
answer lies in habits, good or bad, driven over time.
by our “default” position on issues. And for
this reason, dismantling old habits takes In this issue of the Service Delivery
more than the shock of a crisis, as was the Review (SDR), we have several articles
case with the COVID-19 pandemic. and case studies meant to shift public
service paradigms. Worth highlighting are
In his book Change Your Paradigm, the presentations arising from the South
Change Your Life, Bob Proctor describes African – European Union Dialogue Facility,
a paradigm as a deeply held view of the which is, as the name suggests, meant to
world and its influence on how new habits foster mutual learning - and ultimately shift
and behaviours are formed. Proctor aptly paradigms.
likens it to a computer “programme,” as a
paradigm determines the way we see the Dudley Moloi
world and how we go about our work. The
4 SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW | Volume 15 • No. 1 of 2022
