Outsourcing services will increase efficiency

Summary of Supply and Demand side impacts of Huduma Kenya programme. [Courtesy]

In 1993, the book, “Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector” by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler was published to great acclaim. President Bill Clinton declared it a book that should be read by every elected official in America.

This book details the revolutionary idea that government can be reformed and gives positive proof that government does not need to be big and inefficient.

That government should tap into the entrepreneurial spirit in the people to make it more efficient and responsive by using ideas from the market and creating enterprising ideas that deliver better service at lower costs. I was so impressed by this book that I bought 20 copies and sent them to various ministers and senior public officials, but not a single idea was ever implemented.

Government has buried our progress in the morass of bureaucracy. The men and women serving in government are some of the smartest and most committed people who serve our country, yet the system that they operate under is rotten.

Countless times, senior people complain about the system but they cannot change it. Now that we are in the season of changing our constitution, perhaps it is also time that we look at changing our style of government; how it is structured and how it operates.

Greater efficiency

We adopted bureaucratic systems from Britain. Most of our rules and regulations date back 50 years. In many cases, even the British have changed the rules, but we are still using the same. We need a brave soul in Parliament to force a commission to relook at how we operate our government.

Most services in government should be privatised. Why should we make the issue of passports look like a life and death situation overseen only by the Immigration Department?

In the United States and the United Kingdom, passport applications are done in the post office and now online. Your passport is then couriered back to you.

Visas were once the domain of embassies. Nowadays, private service providers process visas for South Africa, United Kingdom, China and many other countries.

In Dubai most government services are outsourced. This has led to greater efficiency at lower cost. The government remains the final approving authority but paperwork and processing has been outsourced. Do I really need to go jostle at Nyayo House to apply for my passport?

Bureaucrats will always raise the bogeyman of ‘security concerns’. The United States, United Kingdom and many other countries that have outsourced are equally sensitive to security. There are hundreds of services that government provides that should be outsourced. In Switzerland, even banking supervision, which is usually done by the Central Bank, is outsourced to international audit companies.

 Efficient services

Then we have the problem of procurement. This is our biggest cause of corruption and losses. The convoluted and arcane processes of procurement are designed to ‘prevent theft and abuse and ensure that government gets the best prices’. We all know that this system does not work. The best way to reduce corruption is to increase transparency.

Procurement should be done online where all suppliers can see prices offered and the public can see that the winner won with the best prices. Last month the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, ADNOC put its procurement online and offered $3.6 billion of sophisticated tenders using smart approach to procurement.

Our budgeting process is another disaster. Instead of being given credit for saving money, officers are penalised for not spending it. Saving money is considered a failure. We waste billions in education, security, healthcare and various other services.

Perhaps we should try try and privatise some services. The critical thing would be to ensure we do not remove government monopoly and give the services to private monopoly which would exploit wananchi.

As long as these services are outsourced to a number of companies that will compete, the public will get better, cheaper and more efficient services.

I believe in government. Government is necessary and we cannot function without it. There are also many public services that cannot be outsourced. I also believe that the people who serve in government are committed people, but we are tying them up in ropes, killing their spirit, frustrating their creativity and saping their energy. It’s time we started doing things differently in government. The models are out there and they work. Let’s be creative.

 

Mr Shahbal is Chairman of Gulf Group of [email protected]