Delivery+fetish+obscures+deeper+meaning,+Friedman,+B+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, 22 March 2006
=Delivery fetish obscures deeper meaning of government service=


 * Steven Friedman**

IF WE want government to work for us, we should worry far less about “delivery”, and far more about “service”.

During the local election campaign, democracy seemed often to be reduced to a single phrase — “service delivery”, which voters were said to want from their representatives above all else. All local political happenings or trends — including seemingly unrelated events such as voters’ desire not to be moved from one province to another — were explained by the magic phrase.

Suggestions that people might have other concerns were greeted with impatient hostility.

This obsession with “delivery” misrepresents, as the last column argued, what makes most voters tick and, more importantly, what we should expect from government. Reducing government to “delivery” assumes that it is not unlike a business, and a not very customer-friendly one at that. Its job is to produce (or “roll out”) goods and services. The role of the citizenry — us — is presumably to be delivered to, handing out praise if we get what we want, condemnation if we do not. This seems to exclude any role for citizens except protesting if “delivery” does not happen — in the streets or through the ballot — or approving if it does. There is no role in deciding what government is to do and how it is to do it: the relationship between citizens and government is boiled down to expecting and providing delivery. But democratic government is meant to offer more than this. It is meant to listen to us and to speak for us, not simply to “roll” things out to us.

The “delivery” fetish also ignores one of the realities which makes democracy necessary. A government is not a business, nor should it be — the two are based on very different principles.

If a business does not deliver, its clients are meant to find another which will. We can’t do that with governments unless we move elsewhere, an option beyond many and nonsensical to most — if people abandoned their country whenever they disliked government performance, everyone around the globe above a particular income level would be in perpetual motion.

And so the preferred method of making government do what we want is not to shop around or go elsewhere but to raise our voices. Which is why whether government is taking us seriously and hearing us is at least as important as whether it “delivers”.

One sign of how deep-rooted the “delivery” view of government has become is that when the word “service” is attached to it, it is used as a shortened form of “services”, outputs such as those we might expect from businesses. But the word “service” when applied to government means something very different. It is no accident that we talk of “the public service” or of “civil servants”. For, in a democracy, that is what government is there for — to serve the people, not to “deliver” things to them.

To serve people is to take them seriously, to respect them, to listen to them and to try to do what they want. So a stress on “service” would impress on government and those who work for it the need to work for the people and to respond and account to them. The stress on “delivery” virtually removes people from the equation, turning government and those who work for it into a machine.

Many of the protests which have challenged municipalities in the past year seemed spurred by a desire for “service” rather than “delivery”.

Protestors talk of politicians who have let them down, of government which won’t listen. This suggests a wish to be served by those in whom public trust is placed. More generally, many of the frustrations citizens voice about government would be addressed if it was dedicated to serving.

This realisation should shape the messages we send to politicians and the signals we expect them to pass on to officials. We should be insisting not on management qualifications but on an attitude of service which recognises that even the smartest politician and official will achieve little unless they listen to and respect the people.

The point is understood in principle by some in government — hence the adoption, a few years ago, of the slogan Batho Pele, People First, as the watchword of the public service.

But the slogan has too rarely become a practice because the mania for “delivery” persuades many in government to put trendy methods first, and people a distant third (behind the personal advancement to which those with the best skills and the latest methods consider themselves entitled).

If Batho Pele is indeed to become more than a slogan, and we are to get the government we deserve, we need to demand service rather than delivery. And to remember that democracy works best when the most important thing delivered is the messages we send to those who serve us.


 * Friedman is senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Studies.

837 words
 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A173454