Be rational on public service reforms

As with nearly everything in Kenya, the rolling out of the Government's Public Sector Reforms initiative is being politicised.

The truth of the matter is that it is a rationalisation measure, looking at funding options at the National and County levels. The point to grasp and internalise is that basically, rationalisation is not retrenchment. Neither is it necessarily a euphemism for firing. Not at all; true rationalisation is all about efficiency, not job bloodletting, as it were.

One of the best, because simplest and most direct, definitions of rationalisation available is the one provided in the Rationalisation Policy Principles of the New Zealand Ministry of Education: "When a school has more property than it's entitled to under the School Property Guide (SPG), or has property it no longer uses, the school must find ways to rationalise it. This means looking at the school as a whole and working out what property to keep, what to dispose of and the best way to do so".

Under the devolution system now being rolled out and entrenched in Kenya, "dispose of" does not necessarily mean fire. And here's why: Government at both levels has been on an employment spree. County governments have been employing right, left and centre, as if what they need is a completely new workforce, top to bottom. They are doing this, yet the National Government is technically overstaffed. Layer upon layer of civil servants in the National Government are idle, under-utilised or overlapping and duplicating even the simplest of tasks.

It therefore makes eminently good sense that the Counties hire, in the first instance, from the National Government and only look for fresh blood on the open job market later.

In a nutshell, rationalisation is the maximisation of efficiencies and the minimisation of wastage.

Two good examples have already happened without a single case of sacking — the trimming down of the Cabinet from the 42 previous ministries and ministers to just 18 and the compacting or merger of functions.

The ongoing merger of State corporations has similarly only produced efficiencies, not created joblessness.

Devolution was always going to entail Civil Service-wide rationalisation, and therefore it is not an administrative ambush based on politics and ethnicity or gender imbalance.

Rationsalisation involves much more than just officers in job groups. It must take into account master plans; activity levels; demographic factors; staffing levels by administrative, operational, management, and job description. National and local laws are also considered. There will be collective bargaining and employment agreements that consider work rules, compensation, benefits, training, contracting and all manner of staffing provisions.

The thing to note about the ongoing government-wide rationalisation at two levels across the nation is that it is not a trick at any level. It is one of the most massive exercises ever carried out in the history of Kenya's modern bureaucracy. It is not an ambush by the National Government on the County governments, or by the Presidency on the Council of Governors.

In fact, the National and County Governments Coordination Summit, an entity that gets far less PR and awareness than most others, agreed on the implementation of the Joint Rationalisation Programme of the Public Service.

Much of the debate on rationalisation has actually been taking place in a context of an information and data vacuum.

The implementimng Ministry, Devolution and Planning, has consulted fully with such stakeholders as the Union of Kenya Civil Servants, the Council of Governors, the Public Service Commission, the Transition Authority, and the National Treasury.   The devolution of national government   is a many-faceted and complex process, but it must have no room for ignorance or politicking.

What the Government is undertaking is therefore an essential exercise — and Kenya will not move a centimetre forward at both levels of government without rationalisation.