The annual Public Service Month (PSM) is evolving in a fast pace from a month-long programme aimed at improving service delivery to a year-round initiative that is making citizens to feel the tangible benefits of effective governance.
These are the views of the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), Acting Deputy Director-General for Government Service Access and Improvement (GSAI), Dr Patrick Sokhela.
In an exclusive interview with The Public Servant Online about the recently wrapped up Thusong Service Centre Week and Public Service Month, Dr Sokhela said the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government is emerging as an agenda setting for taking the annual service delivery improvement initiative into a year-round national strategic programme to build trust in government and enhance service delivery.
“One way to restore citizens confidence in government is to take a wide range of basic services and information outreach programmes closer to the people not only during Public Service Month or Thusong Service Centre Week, but daily throughout the year.
“As the DPSA, we are equally impressed by public servants of the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government who, as part of Public Service Month and Thusong Service Centre Week, led a successful integrated service delivery and information outreach programme in Zondela, under Ulundi local municipality.”
“We’ve noticed that public servants are continuing to take the wide range of essential services and information outreach programmes closer to residents in rural communities, a progressive move that is helping citizens not to walk or travel long distances to access government services.”
“This is the true spirit of a caring government that we want to see being implemented across the country where the day-to-day service delivery challenges of citizens are resolved without people embarking on the unnecessary service delivery protests,” he said.
This year’s theme is “professionalising the public service to build trust and restore confidence in government” underscoring the urgent need to strengthen the capacity, integrity and performance of the public service as a critical lever for improving service delivery and rebuilding citizen confidence in state capacity.
The provincial departments, government entities and the private sector partners who are leading the move to turn PSM into a year-round Integrated Public Sector Programme includes the Department of Social Development, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), Capital Legacy, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), Sanlam, Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs (EDTEA), the National Development Agency (NYDA), the Department of Home Affairs and the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS).
The Thusong Service Centre Week is commemorated throughout the country annually in the third week of September and it was initiated by the democratic government in 1999.
The PSM is an integrated strategic national event in the calendar of the DPSA and the public service, and as such all the national and provincial departments are required to participate through putting in place activities and campaigns to take service delivery to a higher productivity.
The objective of the year-long Integrated Public Sector Programme therefore, is to remind public servants of what it means to serve communities and to assess government’s service delivery impact on communities and citizens.
