The South African Perspective
Thuli Radebe
Centre for Public Service Innovation
Presentation structure
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Introducing the Centre for Public Service Innovation
Challenges
Key learnings/ lessons
Recommendations
Conclusion
1. Centre for Public Service Innovation
• A government institution mandated to entrench and drive the culture and
practice of innovation in the public service (ICT & non-ICT):
- in response to identified service delivery challenges
- In line with government’s priority outcomes
- to achieve an independently solution-focussed public sector
• CPSI derives its mandate from the Public Service Act
• Brings public service innovation context to the science & technology based
National System of Innovation – to ensure that ICT innovation benefits service
delivery
Core business programmes
In terms of core business, on the structure are 3 programmes with following functions:
Research & Development (partnering with academic & research institutes)
- Receiving, identifying and confirming service delivery challenges from departments
- investigating and confirming root causes, existing solutions to curb re-inventing of the
wheel, contributing to knowledge repositories
Solution Support & Incubation (in collaboration with service delivery departments as
business owners, private sector, not-for-profit organisations)
- Leading the testing and piloting of solutions/prototypes – context & funding
- Managing the Multi-Media Innovation Centre (MMIC) safe space, risk-friendly
environment for piloting & testing & innovation repositories
- Facilitating the handover of completed pilots to business owners for implementation,
mainstreaming, facilitate replication, scaling up
Programmes cont’d
Enabling Environment
- Creating an enabling environment for innovation throughout the public
sector (culture & mindsets)
- driving knowledge platforms and products including Annual Conference,
Awards programme including the Continental programme, Ideas that
work( journal),
- capacity building workshops (general & sector-specific), collaborating
with capacity building expert institutions & individuals (Innovation
Management Module),
- contributing to repository of innovative practices, tools and approaches
- Mobilising, advocacy, (e.g. network of innovation champions)
Innovation does not always happen in a neat straight line:
MATRIXING – processes not smooth but lots of stops, restarts and twists
2. Challenges
• Risk averseness (Public finance legislation & procurement processes,
BUREAUCRACY - counter risk taking and exploring
• New solutions celebrated and launched - no follow-through, scaling up,
replication (sometimes ignored locally but external recognition)
• Silos = competition amongst government institutions (with cross-cutting
mandates)
– hampers learning & sharing of solutions for replication leading to exploitation by
unscrupulous service providers
- Reinventing the wheel (wanting to be first all the time!) - waste of resources
- therefore integration & coordination as valuable building blocks of innovation
are severely compromised
Challenges cont’d
• Developments in the ICT landscape very slow or limited – Connectivity,
interoperability of systems, data integration challenges, remain pervasive –
limiting innovation potential
• Doomsayerism – generally civil sector very slow in adopting innovation
- Fear of venturing into new things - Positive disruptiveness of innovation not
understood by leaders
• Entrepreneurship (audacity/audaciousness) not entrenched - critical ingredients
for innovation to thrive (testing and piloting solutions)
• Lack of or limited political & leadership sponsorship - High turnover rate of
political principals each time there’s a political principal we start all over again
with the convincing game
• No funding model – very few public institutions have funding ring-fenced for
innovation, thus limited scaling up, replication & mainstreaming
3.Key Learnings/ lessons
3.1 Partnerships and collaboration are critical for citizen focused service delivery
outcomes not political correctness, with:
• Public/government institutions - They own the business (they implement &
mainstream, scale up, update policies); CPSI a facilitator, catalyst, project
manager
• Innovation Hub - Solution Xchange Platform: web-based platform on which
public & private sector institutions post challenges to a broader, entrepreneurial
community in search of new innovations.
- Space for them to incubate solutions, mentors, seed funding
• Private sector - best practices and funding for pilots in PS contexts (off-the-shelf
solutions) – Public Finance legislation risk averse; Social Corporate Investment
opportunities
• Academics & CBOs/NGOs – research findings (no reinventing of the wheel),
innovative solutions respectively
Key Learnings / lessons
3.2 Focusing on current challenges & anticipating future ones is key
• Approaching innovation from real-life challenges facing citizens gives public
sector innovation credibility because
- we capitalise on the urgency and desire by public officials and governments
generally to improve citizens’ lives
- Keeps us grounded in practical efforts to find meaningful solutions in response
to identified needs
• 3.3 Enhancing our award programme - a critical platform for entrenching the
culture (awarding with a purpose beyond glitz & party)
– unearth for replication, encourage)
– creating communities and networks of innovators & use them in advocacy
programmes
Key Learnings/ lessons
3.4 Articulate impact (practically) - Challenge of impact-crazed people wanting
theoretical, broad statements). To us, the answer is contextual/context specific (not
neatly packaged, one-directional answers)
• Example of approach we are following:
• Number of Departments or provinces implementing innovation programmes & ringfencing funding for innovation as a result of engaging with the CPSI
• From replication of Schools Water project in a province – monthly water bills decreasing
(costs down and water being saved through learners’ & teachers’ changed behaviour)
• From Ligbron e-Learning solution replication - Maths & Science pass rates from 0% - to
100%
Key Learnings/ lessons
• Impact continued: Retinal screening – on winning the CPSI award,
R19m released for roll out to destitute rural people
• Traffic department – since winning CPSI Award, project took a
different shape – funding used to employ driving schools to train
learners to get drivers licences, some then funding them through
college & tertiary institutions
• From our community security pilot, crime rate decreased by 9%
during the pilot & solution being scaled up in other sectors
4. Recommendations
We should demonstrate our indispensability and that of innovation innovation is not an option but has to be a way of doing things:
• invade all public sector spaces and be the catalysts in weaving innovation
into all important planning debates, discussions & documents
• get involved in making sense of those good long-term plans (e.g. to an
ordinary public official, let alone the citizen, what does the UN’s 2030
Agenda for SDGs mean, the AU’s Agenda 2063?)
– get involved in the development of short-term targets & use innovation
to achieve those targets by tackling bureaucracies & archaic approaches,
short-circuit, leapfrog - (identify what needs to be achieved in the next year,
the next 5 years).
Recommendations
• We should lead the process of creating synergies between
national, regional, continental and global programmes (NDPs,
AU Programmes, UN Programmes, OECD programmes
(simplifying and consolidating)
• Deepen our global networks e.g. NESTA, CIIAP, and others
• Cultivate & support public entrepreneurs by providing/
facilitating platforms for testing ideas (avail public
contexts/spaces for tests/pilots) – clinics, schools, hospitals
Recommendations
• Prioritise convincing political principals & leaders that public sector
innovation does not come cheap
- aggressively sell innovation to them AS AN INVESTMENT that facilitates
saving of government money
• Convince political principals to lead the development of funding models
and availing real funding for innovation
• By influencing the infusion of innovation in the design and development of
policies to ensure that successfully piloted innovative solutions get scaled
up, replicated, streamlined
Recommendations
• By encouraging leaders to embrace diversity
- not to alienate the “eccentric-but-talented” and give comfort to the
“bland-but-mediocre”
- To recruit staff with very different perspectives to spice up their
knowledge mix, NOT hiring “people like us, who think like us” e.g. public
administration scholars only
- Innovation to be included in leaders’ contracts (as Key Performance Area)
• By emphasizing that innovation rhymes more with simple/ simplifying/
simplification than with complex – challenges are complex but
solutions/innovations simple
5. Conclusion
• Persuade by demonstration – do innovation beyond talking about it
(theory versus practice) – American behaviourist on cell-phones & slow
walkers
• Advocacy, persuasion and convincing through practical demonstration of
benefits of innovation to the politicians (else they will not hear us; charm
them; give them ownership of the initiative (sell it to them)
• Have to be vigilant on our core business and protect its space – not be
subsumed under other topics – (ICT, Research, KM)
Thank you