UNIVERSIDADE ABERTA ISCED

FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS E HUMANAS

LICENCIATURA EM ADMINISTRAÇÃO PÚBLICA

a) What are the main challenges faced by public administrators in your country
today?
b) Suggest some probable ways to mitigate these challenges.

Madalena Sovia
91231225

Pemba, May 2023

 UNIVERSIDADE ABERTA ISCED
FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS E HUMANAS
LICENCIATURA EM ADMINISTRAÇÃO PÚBLICA

a) What are the main challenges faced by public administrators in your country
today?
b) Suggest some probable ways to mitigate these challenges.

Fieldwork to be submitted to the

Coordination of the Degree in Public
Administration at UnISCED.

Madalena Sovia
91231225

Pemba, May 2023

Index

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….…… 4
The Main Challenges Faced by Public Administrators in My Country…………………….……. 5

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..………. 9

References………………………………………………………………………………………. 10

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Introduction

The present task is for English, within following topic: The Main Challenges Faced by Public
Administrators in My Country, can be insert to talk about To understand how governments are
responding to the challenges of public sector reforms and especially the introduction of NPM to
their public administration, this article sets out to undertake four objectives: (a) to discuss public
sector administration using the Weberian model of bureaucracy and later introduce some of the
elements of NPM that have informed reforms in many developed and developing countries; (b) to
briefly explain public administration in Africa and highlight training as one of the key ingredients
being used to bridge the gap between what public sector reforms prescribe and the competence of
government employees to absorb; (c) to use Mozambique as a case study to describe how some
of the NPM elements were applied in the country’s public sector reform programme, and finally
(d) to show how Mozambique is rebuilding the competences of her public administrators using
new training curricula. It is important to stress these caveats: First, the article does not evaluate
outcomes of the training programmes because they have just been introduced and it would be
premature to start looking for evidence of success or failure.

to public sector reform in Mozambique and shows how the country has applied some of the
elements of NPM. Section five focuses on training and shows how the country is redesigning
curricula that would provide the kind of competences that public administrators need to respond
to the challenges that NPM brings to government administration. Section six draws some
concluding remarks.

The reform frequently also embraces changes to the systems by which government employees are
recruited, trained, appraised, promoted, disciplined and declared redundant. Public
administration, on the other hand, is conceptualized as an organizational structure, a system, a
function, an institutional construct, procedures and processes of government. Weber is believed
to be the father of the concept and structure of public administration. According to Weber,
bureaucracy is technically the most efficient administrative instrument for achieving the highest
level of performance in any organization. Weber’s ideal type comprises the following
propositions

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The Main Challenges Faced by Public Administrators in My Country

Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world. Though the country is rich in under-
exploited resources and in recent years has experienced increased foreign investments, continued
external inflows, and relative peace after long years of political conflict, poverty is still very
prevalent, with about 54 percent of the population classified as being poor and earning less that
US$1.00 a day (Republica de Moçambique, 2006: 10). While the Government of Mozambique
(GoM) is committed to the overall objective of poverty reduction through economic stabilization
and promotion of economic growth (Republica de Moçambique, 2001, 2003).

GoM also recognizes that the efficiency and effectiveness of the public administration will play a
key role in any effort to facilitate economic stabilization and growth. The human resource
capacity of Mozambique’s public sector administration is, however, extremely low.
Mozambique’s current problem of insufficient trained human resources is a legacy of
colonization. At independence in 1975, the overall literacy rate among Mozambicans was only
about 8 percent. Given that the road to liberation was acrimonious, Portuguese colonial
administrators were forcefully expelled from the country. As the vast majority of experienced
administrators left the coun- try as part of the Portuguese exodus, a vacuum was created in the
human resource capacity of the country. From a management standpoint, Mozambique was
denuded of capacity. Although many Mozambicans took up managerial positions in an attempt to
respond to the challenges, they had little or no technical or managerial expertise to deliver
government services.

The adoption of the socialist model of development after independence also implied
nationalization of privately owned companies to be managed by poorly trained personnel. While
the government became the main employer of the citizens, there was little or no professionalism
in the management of the public sector. In addition, the political ideology of the liberation party
ensured that all power was concentrated in the hands of the President who was both the head of
the legislative branch and leader of the ruling FRELIMO Party. The resultant blurred lines
between politics and administration further lessened the need for professionalism in public
administration (Macuane, 2000, 2006; Mazula et al., 2004).

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On 25 June 2001, the President of Mozambique with the support of donor agencies launched a
10-year programme called ‘Global Strategy for Public Sector Reform’ (EGRSP, 2001–2011) to
improve public service delivery and facilitate the imple- mentation of policies to reduce poverty
and promote sustainable development. The programme was divided into two phases. The first
phase (2001–05) focused on creating institutional and capacity conditions for reforms in the
public sector. The second (2006–11) was to improve on the reforms initiated in the first phase
and focus on more structural changes. The strategy comprises five cross-cutting components such
as decentralization, human resource management, public policy, public financial management
and the fight against corruption.

An Inter-ministerial Commission for Public Sector Reform (CIRES) headed by the Prime
Minister identified administrative bureaucracy as a structural problem that needed to be worked
on if the objectives of the reform were to be achieved. This resulted in the introduction of a
number of innovative programmes whose principles may be located within the generic elements
of the NPM. They include: ‘one-stop shops’, E-Government, compulsory competitive tendering
for government contracts in service delivery and recruitment of top public administrators
(Permanent Secretaries), a change in management teams, a new salary scheme, performance
management systems and financial accountability, among others (Lucas, 2004; Republic of
Mozambique, 2006).

The e-Government (e-Gov) strategy was designed to rationalize the use of information
technology in the public sector with the intention of improving the quality of services and
accountability of the government to citizens. The e-Gov strategy focuses on creating more
interoperability and interconnectivity among the different systems, such as the civil registry
(which includes ID documents, passports and civil registration), public financial management and
the tax collection system, and intersectional connectivity of the one-stop shops (Macuane, 2006:
70). However, computer illiteracy among public servants became an enormous challenge in
achieving the programme’s objectives. Not only was the capacity to manage very complex
databases and systems a problem, but also the integration of various information systems that in
the past had operated as single entities. This called for civil servants with new competences in
institutional regulatory mechanisms that promoted more cooperation, synergies and coordination
between public sector organizations.
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The salary reform programme that was introduced implied a radical change from input
management to more results-based management, linking pay to performance (Republic of
Mozambique, 2006). The success of the programme required considerable efforts to change not
only the current human resource management systems, but also the mentality of the civil service,
from procedural/input management to a more output-and-results-focused approach. To achieve
this goal it was essential to increase the qualifications in the civil service, particularly those of the
top managers, improve job descriptions, and establish a credible performance management
system that cascades performance assessment indicators from Permanent Secretaries to bottom-
level employees. The implementation of pay-to-performance only resulted in marginal increases
of the salaries of top officials but it is hard to tell if they corresponded to any increase in
performance since Permanent Secretaries and mid-level management staff did not sign any
performance agreement (Macuane, 2006; Republica de Moçambique, 2006).

The standard curricula of any public administration programme would introduce the doctrine of
bureaucracy,5 ethics in administration, organizational theory, and the history of political thought
as the fundamental theories that underpin public administration alongside the traditional teaching
that provides expertise in administrative law, human resources and policy analysis. In the design
of ISAP’s training curricula these theories and concepts were expanded to include, for example,
principal–agent theory, the new institutional economic theory of transaction cost, and information
system theory to provide different and new analytical competences to public administrators and
managers (Ackere, 1993; Kettl, 1993: 22–41).

In the ministries and government organizations, the introduction of information technology

(computers, internet, multi-media, and system networking) was to enable sharing of data, faster
decision-making, and transparency in service delivery (Chemane, 2002). This, in Mozambique,
was understood officially as part of the process to introduce e-Gov to the country and also to
enable government organizations and their staff to become efficient in their work performance.
Instead e-Gov was misunderstood by many civil servants, so use of the Internet was reduced to
the sending of email messages and the development of soon-to-be-moribund websites (Berman
and Tettey, 2001).

In Mozambique, the public sector is changing and a new organizational type (the post-
bureaucratic organization) is slowly emerging despite the fact that the country’s public
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administration never fully developed its capacity in bureaucratic doctrine. The implementation of
the public sector reform programme has introduced uncertainty in the minds of some public
administrators and managers about the future of their jobs. The regular hiring of temporary and
contractual staff (about 25 percent of the total civil servants) in the delivery of government
administrative jobs in the ministries and government agencies as well as rumours of impending
privatization of government corporations mean that the jobs of neither senior public managers nor
the employees are permanent.

Mozambique, just like several other Africa countries, has the following public service values
clearly written in their public administration codes of ethics: impartiality, integrity, service to the
public, accountability, dedication, transparency, etc. (Lock, 2001). Although these ethical values
are communicated to civil servants during induction programmes, they have not helped to check
corruption in government as in most cases civil servants pre- tend not to be aware of them or if
they are aware they know they will not be detected if these values are breached or, if detected,
offenders will not be punished. In the design of ISAP’s programme, the means to acknowledge,
monitor, detect and achieve these values were incorporated into the curricula and are being taught
in the classrooms.

Leadership was identified as the primary factor requiring attention if the reforms that the country
had embarked on were to be successful. Given the national strategic vision (Vision 2025), the
champions of reform were expected not only to be confined to a political class, but to include a
critical mass of senior public administrators who strongly believe in the need for change and are
able to inspire others to work towards achievement of the long-term goals of the country. The
training modules that were designed focus on the use of creative case studies, and individual and
group simulation techniques to improve the leadership skills of the participants. The modules also
emphasize the role of contemporary public managers as advocates for, and builders of, more
democratic, equitable and just societies at both national and sub-national levels.

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Conclusion

Achieving in the last stage, it can conclude that Mozambique and many countries in Africa have
less capacity to manage the new trends emerging in the public sector; they cannot afford to be
indifferent about the changes that are happening in and around them. Building the competences
of government workers is a vital prerequisite for successful implementation of public sector
reform programmes that they are involved in. In Mozambique, the government has instituted
series of training programmes to pro- vide the kind of training that would reflect the new
demands and realities facing public sector administrators and managers.

The technical, managerial and leader- ship skills of government employees in the ministries,
agencies and local govern- ments are being improved through the design of ISAP’s training
programmes. While it is too early to conclude that the new competences have achieved the
expected results since they have not been evaluated, anecdotal evidence from a few of the ex-
trainees suggests that building new competencies will not necessarily fix all the problems
associated with the poor performance of public sector man- agers unless other structural problems
such as remuneration, promotion and other human resource management mechanisms are also
introduced.

Other research has also shown that rule of law, accountability mechanisms and utilization of ex-
trainees also need to be addressed. In a few years’ time, there will be the need to evaluate the
outcomes of the new competences that the training programmes have provided to public
administrators in Mozambique to see if they have made any difference in government efficiency
and effectiveness.

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References

Adamolekun L (1991) Public sector management improvement in sub-Saharan Africa: The

World Bank experience. Public Administration and Development 1(3): 223–227.

Andrews M (2006) Beyond ‘best practice’ and ‘basics first’ in adopting performance bud- getting
reform. Public Administration and Development 26: 147–161.

Argyriades D (2003) Institutional reinforcement for human resource development: How to

implement the goals of the Millennium Summit. In: United Nations Leadership and Social
Transformation in the Public Sector: Moving from Challenges to Solutions. New York:United
Nations.

Chemane L (2002) Mozambique ICT policy implementation strategy and e-Government:

Challenges and opportunities. Paper presented at Regional Workshop on Building e Governance
Capacity in Africa, 27 June, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Domberger S and Hall C (1996) Contracting for public services: A review of antipodean
experience. Public Administration 74: 129–147.

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